Unity Reintroduces the Runtime Fee Through Its Industry License
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Unity has reintroduced a revenue-based fee for its 'Industry' license, sparking controversy among developers who are concerned about the cost and implications of the new pricing model.
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According to our terms of service, the distribution of the Unity runtime for commercial purposes by Industry Customers requires explicit authorization from Unity and is subject to a fee ("Distribution License') which is generally equivalent to 4.0% of the revenue generated by the software product that incorporates the Unity runtime (discounts may apply). Please contact sales to discuss further."
For folks who didn't make the move to Godot the LAST time Unity pulled this, there's Godot... (not saying that move is easy for everyone, but am just sayin'...)
Also...a 4% license for the underlying platform upon which your product is based is relatively cheap by historical standards. The numbers used to be well into the double digits.
https://kotaku.com/unity-ironsource-merger-ad-tech-layoffs-1... https://mobilegamer.biz/inside-unitys-troubled-4-4bn-ironsou... https://unity.com/news/unity-completes-merger-ironsource
Surely "china" had access to unity this entire time, no? Isn't this the entire point of open source? "Unity" needs to provide some value if it wants to retain control of what code is being executed.
Neither my product owner, tech lead, or skip-level knew about it and were surprised when I showed them
The worst part of it isn't even that devs would get their wallets shaken out but that it's really just surveillance in disguise. Those apps would “““have to””” spy on me as an end-user in order for them to know what to charge.
like I am pretty sure that the only way that they can do this is via giving it internet access and if that's the case, I wonder how much spying it does on our computer before sending it to unity headquarters in the name of this industry fees
Please, someone create a #usegodot or some twitter thing to just get it trending. We need to use goodot (I tried typing godot but I wrote goodot TWICE which is so funny and ironical so I am keeping it here)
Also I wonder how it might stand in eu / gdpr
Aka my guess it's a combination of trust, verification using public numbers (like downloads on Steam) and the ability to do audits of some kind?
The issue here is the surveillance aspect.
At this point, we should all treat Unity like we do Broadcom. Utterly toxic and should be avoided at all costs because they will shake you down and leave you with a lesser product for no reason other than blind greed.
Nothing Unity does will ever recover the goodwill they nuked for money
Genuinely curious.
Plus we'd have to either re-train our Unity devs (more than half the software team) or find new developers.
The extravagant cost of a Unity seat meant we couldn't afford to give anyone except the Unity devs a license. The rest of the software team can no longer tweak the Unity project, and instead must file a ticket for one of the Unity devs to make the change and upload a build. For the same reason, we couldn't set up a build server in our CI system.
It was an absolute nightmare. At the end, I had to resort to ripping apart old copies of our android apps to inject new libraries into them. We couldn't afford Unity at all by that point, so it was the only option to get things working right now.
So glad that my new job has nothing to do with Unity or desktop software at all.
in this case, unity grabbing a percentage seems like a trading exchange taking a cut. is the exchange really the 'bad guy' in this interaction?
its the 2020s: We're All Trying To Make Money.
Scamcoins are comparable to disease or even cancer. Theoretically every scam is.
Welp
I’m not going to say that never happened. But I can’t think of any examples off the top of my head.
The fortunes of small independent teams have certainly risen and fallen multiple times over the years.
>someone would make a game to express themselves, it would be picked up by a major studio, it would be expanded and polished until it had mass appeal, and became the next "blockbuster" game.
Warcraft was a big success and Warcraft 2 was a huge success. Both of those games were published by Blizzard themselves. They were purchased by Vivendi a few years later.
I can’t think of a single game where a major studio picked up a small game then expanded and polished it into a blockbuster.
The closest I can think of is maybe DOTA. Where the creator of a mod was hired by valve to make a stand alone game. But that definitely wasn’t normal.
Honestly, memecoins are just ponzi schemes. They are created on hype and people buy memecoins with the idea that it would trade higher and so on.
Noone in their goddamn right minds would just pay for an app showing some image of something. No, it is the idea that you can sell it for higher price, or if you can't, then why not just donate to them in the first place??
like if you think pepe is cool, just mail matt fury (I think he's the creator, just searched) some money and email him thanks on why pepe matters to you.
But nope people buy these shitty ass things just so that they can sell it to some other person believing the same dream as them.
And no, every cryptocoin is like this unless stablecoin in this sense but some coins have some utility that I can understand but still, if they have utility, just buy them when you want the utility man, but memecoins are the worst of the worst, just leeches on gullible people.
Indie devs are more like clippy (louis rossman, lets go, I am doing my deal spreading clippy) Once you bought them, 99% don't want anything else from you. They don't want you to sell it to an higher fool. they want you to play. they want you to give them feedback (both critisicm and praise) they want you to recognize the work they put in and they are proud of what they created which is why they created it.
Indie devs making games usually also take a lot more time and effort and that can only happen 90% of the time when you love the project than memecoins
But also I will admit that there are games that are not like that (think mobile ad games) and yes they are as much an evil/scummy as memecoins. Maybe a little less since trading factor and selling to others is gone but still some apps target little kids so they are worse in that. Maybe those apps take some time to develop but that's it. In my opinion yes shitty mobile games are comparable to memecoins, they are both (scams?), one might take more effort than other but honestly that varies but yeah even then they both are scams.
But doing the disservice of even comparing every indie game to memecoin might make you A) completely wrong, doing a great disservice while basically spreading lies that basically ragebaited me man B) the most downvoted person
You kinda ragebaited me no offense and I know you might be a good person. And its okay, misunderstandings happen. I may be wrong too, I usually am and that's why lets discuss if you think there is something wrong with what I said
Not to necessarily disagree with anything else you argued, but there's a small relatively profitable genre of games for consoles that are just a unity template with an image of a turtle or whatever, and you mash a button to pet the turtle. The reason these exist and people buy them is because you get trophies for pressing the button.
So "an app just showing an image of something" is not very far from what those games are, and a bunch of them exist and do make money. It's tremendously weird.
There are also games like that Banana steam game that exist as part of a weird microtransactions economy instead of existing as what most people would consider a game.
Regarding about petting a turtle, the thing that I don't get is uh, who are paying for it. heck, I can just ask gpt 5 for the code to do so or why not just open source so small things? the only reason I can make petting things make sense is kinda like that banana game (yes I had heard of it) and to be honest, that thing still doesn't make sense to me and is absolutely a memecoin kinda thing and I think that they are targeting the same genre really. Men who want 100x returns because the whole industry is of liars who are selling you courses saying that they have 100x'd and you can too. Also the fact that people are genuinely so stuck in the world at the same time that the only thing that they think that they can reasonably do is buy memecoin (which is almost like gambling if the odds were 99% casino .01% you since maths stop working in scamcoins ) The same people who gamble man, its chasing the highs. Maybe memecoins are a little bti less illegal or maybe its sorta allowed / less shunned than gambling in the world makes it more relevant. I thought for more and I think I finally get it. just as how gambling is addicting, memecoins are also addicting.
Once people start they can't really stop just as in addictions, and uh the more they fall, the more they feel like it that the only way out is by shouting out loud about memecoins and making more people fall into the trap/ making it more lucrative/fashionable just as mostly any other addiction (think flashy casinos) I am not even kidding but this idea goes sort of mainstream because the same principle applies to bitcoin etc. too, pardon me for being crude, but digital gold my ass. As someone who genuinely uses stablecrypto and mostly uses native coins barely just to transact the stablecrypto. I never used to get it why the hell would people do what they are doing. I now actually understand. Suddenly things make sense to the behaviour I see.
Maybe some people believe it in because they want to be part of such utopian future idea that they have and so good for them, if someone's in for the tech, that's really good. But I'd much rather not do that since I don't want to fall into such addiction or trap or something and I genuinely want almost peace of mind in that sense. I am not compromising on psychological effects that I or heck anyone can have if they say their money fall in value and doubt about themselves. I don't want that. The best/ only thing that I will do is maybe invest in world index funds because I genuinely believe that their value comes out of productivity and not scams essentially. And its infinitely better than keeping your money in a jar and infinitely better for atleast my peace of mind than even normal crypto aside from stablecoins which I hold, I like stablecoins) Its just not worth it but maybe for some it might be and I get it but still they are a fraction of the real userbase and the real userbase is making things worse for everyone by being a speculating/almost gambling machine man.
I think I get it, some people loved it for the tech and they used it, then there was some utility for sure but then some (malicious?) people started to sell the idea to everyone that it would 100x (maybe they genuinely believed it) and then it got attraction by (stupid? people) and got mainstream news to either attract more (stupid?) [I don't like that word, almost is deregatory] and maybe more tech lovers too.
This all kept on happening and the internet really just spread this like a wildfire to almost the gambling state thing that we have today.
So I get it if people are still in there for the tech but Like said before, can't hurt my psychology / go into almost imo addiction at this point of recouping loses etc. just because i like the tech. but I get it if people are like that, I met someone online like that who genuinely loved crypto for the tech and thus was investing into them and I was just shocked man (I also like such tech but I don't make my wallet to speak that) I always wanted to prove them wrong because I wanted to be right but I mean I am right from my pov and they are right from theirs.
Basically, I think that this person who has this "stupid" thought had it because they were wrong in their reason and nothing wrong with that and they just showed the world that they have it.
Now here's what I think, if I mock them, they would hate even more and they would actually convince themselves that they were even more right
And if I say nothing, then they are just living in their own bubble and the algorithms serving them are either ragebaits or their own echo chambers.
But even then, if they are truly "stupid" (i don't think they are, they just have a wrong take), then worst case they don't change and even then I had fun writing the comment. but yeah I did get ragebaited in the beginning, they were so punchable as a face when I first read it but I mean, I don't know man, we need to burst echo chambers or atleast have good discussions around it instead of just making them live in their bubbles with wrong takes imo.
But I also understand that we have no moral obligation to, but I really try (I think) in this world to not make myself an echo chamber by helping others who are in so.
Not that we have to do it, but I got complimented once in some sense for it and I kinda aligned with it ever since.
Small things like compliments / actually listening to others can actually have the potential to compound so much for the other person that honestly its worth it in my opinion. But I think that I wish to get such reciprocity back, someone actually discussing things / helping others but the world just feels so mixed man idk. I just don't want to be shining hero but uh I genuinely wish that I can be the change that I want in this world
https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/35xt2r/unity3d_gam...
The real problem is that the gambling business model is inherently incompatible with revenue sharing, because unlike a video game, you're paying money back to your customers every time they get a small win.
Let's say a gambler is wasting away $500 and getting back 95% every day and he plays until he runs out of money. Then unity would be getting $400 and the casino would be getting $100.
They're going to feel all kinds of pressure to monetize users harder, and if they fail at that, they go bankrupt.
https://valustox.com/U
I find it worrying if "make good software and sell it to people" isn't sufficient to have a profitable business.
And of course, Unity doesn't merely sell licenses, they also run an asset store and take a cut from every transaction, a business model that has been gold for other technology companies. Of course the market for Unity assets is smaller than mobile apps, but this is in addition to actual Unity licenses.
I have no clue how profitable Unreal Engine is for Epic Games or if its subsidized by Fortnite. I believe their pricing structure only became favorable after that smash hit.
But if they have a great product and a high price, then maybe they're just using way too many resources as input. It's easy to see that happening with bloated org charts / massive cloud bills / lots of overhead of some sort.
https://investors.unity.com/news/news-details/2025/Unity-Rep...
Making games is hard and worrying about stuff like this is virtually guaranteed to ensure your failure. Having 100% of $0 isn't gonna take you very far.
In terms of tooling experience, Unity does provide a very compelling blend. If you have any Java or C# background at all, it's very easy to get productive quickly. I think the integration between VS and the unity editor is exceptional.
If you want to make a game, go for it. If you want to make one that works well into the future, I would question going with Unity. (fmr creator of Reactor 3D, contributor to UnrealEngine, donator to Godot, grand-uncle to MonoGame, I know this space).
They really should of straight matched Unreal's revenue cut from the start, and maybe offer a deduction for site licenses.
Instead they announce something like a 20 cent fee per "initial interaction" which they track via embedded spyware. You had a massive backlash from indie developers who realistically weren't Unity's target in the first place.
People who never programmed or made a commercial product already complaining Unity is coming for them.
That said, Godot is often good enough for what most new programers can actually do.
It's also OK for certain non gaming projects. No need to worry about Unity deciding your not making a game and hiking your fees.
They announced it, but based on their actual pricing tables effectively nobody outside of a tiny extremely unlucky proportion of users would have paid that much. The effective fee was several times smaller and they also switched to a per project instead a per company revenue limit for personal tier (which would have resulted in a significant price cut for a quite a few people).
Yet nobody noticed any of that because their announcements were incomprehensible .
Not that I am a fan of the whole pricing model but they were so exceptionally bad at communicating it. Like it's hard to even fathom what sort of incompetent idiots they had running their marketing department (I mean an average intern would have had handled it better). IMHO it would have been hard to bungle it more even if they tried doing it on purpose...
Crazy things can be done once you learn it though. It's just math underneath. You don't need to know the math per se but understand what's going on under the hood, what is "world coordinates" vs "local coordinates" vs "device normal coordinates". What is a material, a texture, a light source (how many can I use at once in a single pass?), what is a pass?, what is culling, what is a face, index, weight, or bone? All 3d programs, whether it's 3DS Max, Maya, Blender, Unity, Unreal, Three.js, all share a pretty similar concept of these things. Some abstract it further into just a buffer (vulkan, metal, wgpu) that you can do with as you please on the gpu side.
I had some fun just the other day making earth (again) in three.js (https://gabereiser.github.io/earth) with physically accurate shaders. Once you learn, it's actually really fun.
I would love to hear how godot is better than Unity other than editor speed and being open source.
Godot is much more hacker friendly than Unity, IMO. Ymmv
The only thing is editor speed but given how few features godot has, it's not surprising.
I wish someone just took what Unity does and made it a copy with better editor performance and open source.
With Unreal on one side, and Godot on the other, where while C# is supported, it is mostly for Unity refugees, there are very few other options left.
Yes there are MonoGame, FNA, Stride and so on, but they lack the same kind of mindshare across the industry.
I'd be ecstatic if there were something checking those boxes that wasn't owned by Microsoft.
However I would point out that before Unity took off, jMonkeyEngine had a good following.
And since reference counting is also garbage collection from CS point of view, I would add Swift with the game development kits, however that is pretty much Apple only, thus not really the same league.
Microsoft unfortunately since XNA, the whole DirectX team has been anti .NET, they didn't even provided Windows Runtime Components for .NET Native, even though it would have been relatively easy to do so, as it is based on COM (plus some extras).
The moment key people responsible for XNA left the building, it was done.
https://youtu.be/wJY8RhPHmUQ?si=QvtVZHhB6ZhT95eT
Game developers usually are the last ones to move, and tend to do so due to external factors, mostly pressed by platform owners.
It was like that when we moved from Assembly in 8 and 16 bit platforms, slowly into Object Pascal (Mac/PC) and C.
Then it took until Watcom C/C++ on PC, and PlayStation 2 SDK, for C++ to finally start being taken seriously by game devs, then XBox did the rest on console space.
C# had a first victory in 2004 with Arena Wars, in OpenGL
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arena_Wars
Managed DirectX was already around, then XNA on XBox Live Arcade was the needed push.
When Microsoft killed in name of C++ and replaced it with DirectX TK, as usual in Windows in their territorial attitude, Mono project came up with MonoGame as rescue.
This is what enabled them to eventually join efforts with Unity, when they were rewriting the engine to be cross platform, and go beyond OS X.
Eventually Unity alongside C#, use to have a certain Flash like vibe, and for many, the entrypoint into the .NET ecosystem.
So it is kind of sad see this go away.
I don't believe in the one true language for everything, other than Timex BASIC, the moment I learned Z80, I have been a polyglot ever since.
A cool designed game, even in PyGame, has probably more entertainment value, than yet another remake in Unreal running on a PlayStation 5 Pro.
It's such a pleasure to write in C# and you know that you won't get dumb ninja issues because of pointers or types.
The upside is Unity's C# support is the worst available in any game engine. It's stuck on an old C#/.NET version, .NET (Core) runs C# code 2-5x faster than Mono (and IL2CPP) [1], and its garbage collector is slower than the one Mono ships with (which is also slower than .NET).
[1] https://xoofx.github.io/blog/2018/04/06/porting-unity-to-cor...
Note that Native AOT doesn't do consoles, and Godot can't target them with C#, it is also why they've problems with targeting Web.
Also Native AOT, and proper C# still lack some of Burst (HPC#) capabilities.
IMO Burst was a mistake. C# running under .NET runs significantly faster without needing to write code differently. And if you need to go even faster you can write code differently to make use of modern C# features to boost performance rather than relying on a secondary compiler that only allows a subset of C#.
When the whole C vs C++ quality of code generation debates started, that were the genesis for Matt Goldbolt while still working at the games industry, to have created Compiler Explorer as means to shutdown discussions regarding C++'s adoption, which nonethless persist to this day, especially in the Handmade community.
Burst was necessary, to have industry legends like Mike Acton come and join Unity, despite their strong opinions against C++.
If you haven't seen it before you should check out the kind of code IL2CPP generates. Literally starts almost every function with a branch.
https://www.jacksondunstan.com/articles/4533 (2018 but still the same today!)
This license appears to be intended for users using Unity to augment their business' operations; creating a commercial product with the runtime is treated as an edge case under this license.
E.g. Unity argues that the entire production plant is the result of the software, therefore charges 4% on the revenue of the factory, meanwhile the customer argues that the software produces no revenue, because it is not being sold and therefore the bill is $0.
A fixed monthly fee solves this problem.
Also it's super annoying they have several different rendering pipelines, they all have different ways of doing something and they haven't chosen one to rule them all, that will be the one going forward. I hate this ambiguity.
I think it makes more sense now to learn epic instead of diving into whatever pipeline is unity's current baby knowing it'll probably change again.
A percentage of revenue is already what their biggest competitor (Unreal) does, and if they had announced that new versions had it they would have had backlash but not nearly to the extent that occurred.
Unity hasn't been profitable in 5 years, the revenue percentage doesn't even sound unfair, though the download fee was obviously exploitative.
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