SideQuest’s Official Response to Unity’s New Runtime Fee

Our deep concern and our duty to defend developer revenue by opposing Unity’s new pricing model

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SideQuestVR

7 min readSep 13, 2023

Unity Technologies, the software company behind the widely-used game engine, ‘Unity’, announced an update to their pricing model this Tuesday that will take effect from January 1, 2024.

We at SideQuest feel it is our duty to speak out against this announcement as we believe it to be damaging to developers of all shapes and sizes — and damaging to the gaming community as a whole.

The Unity Runtime Fee — what’s it all about?

On their official blog post and community forums, Unity has stated that their new Runtime Fee will kick in every time a game that was created using the Unity engine is installed, initialized, or streamed on a device.

They have stated that the Runtime Fee of $0.20 per install on average will be collected if a game has passed a minimum revenue threshold of $200k in the prior 12 months and has passed a minimum lifetime install count of 200k. Fees will vary depending on the Unity pricing model chosen, with higher tiers — Unity Pro and Enterprise — charging a lower ‘volume discount’ fee starting at $0.15 and $0.125 respectively, and at a higher install count of 1 million. Exact details of the Runtime Fees can be found in their original blog post.

While Unity has assured the community that this model is intended to protect smaller developers “who have yet to find scale” and target only those who have reached “significant success” (that they consider to be a very small portion of their user base), we feel that this is a gross miscalculation and the model will only serve to damage developers and consumers at every level of the industry — particularly the mid-level where developers are just beginning to take off.

Unity’s response to our collective concerns through the FAQ thus far has been vague at best. We need immediate further clarification on how they plan to address pirated installs, cases of re-installs or installs across multiple owned devices, free-to-play and subscription-based installs, installs obtained via free giveaways or early access demo, web-based games (where every page refresh is considered an install) — and many more.

As such, here are our major concerns at SideQuest, some of which we feel have not previously been addressed or discussed in sufficient detail.

Our first big concern: Predatory revenue thresholds

Unity’s official statements so far have noted that the revenue threshold is based entirely on gross revenue — which includes any revenue from in-game ads — before deductions are made.

That fails to take into account the already huge costs associated with game development such as publisher fees and platform listing fees, which already eat into a developer’s bottom line and could eat up to 70% of every sale from the start.

By failing to acknowledge these added costs, Unity is further eating into that bottom line, ensuring that hard-working developers will be left with almost no profit to a) pay their staff or b) reinvest into making new games.

For example, if you spend $500k developing a game, marketing it, publishing it, listing it, and more, then go on to make just $200k back, you’ll be $300k in debt. But Unity will charge you anyway—for the lifetime of the game—if you’re over their threshold.

That is predatory.

Our second big concern: Retroactive terms of service

While the pricing model and any fees incurred will kick in from January 1, 2024, Unity has stated that they will look at a game’s lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the fee.

That means they will be targeting developers and studios with existing titles in the market from day one. These could be groups who have used the Unity engine in the past, no longer use the engine, but because their game has previously, they’ll be charged a fee for every download after 1/1/2024.

Our third big concern: They’ve contradicted themselves

Moreover, we’ve noted that Unity has directly contradicted itself in the past regarding such terms of service.

In a blog post from 2019, Unity stated: “When you obtain a version of Unity, and don’t upgrade your project, we think you should be able to stick to that version of the TOS.”

However, a legal representative for Unity regarding these new Runtime Fees has subsequently said: “Our terms of service provide that Unity may add or change fees at any time. We are providing more than three months advance notice of the Unity Runtime Fee before it goes into effect. Consent is not required for additional fees to take effect, and the only version of our terms is the most current version; you simply cannot choose to comply with a prior version. Further, our terms are governed by California law, notwithstanding the country of the customer.”

That’s a contradiction that speaks to our above concern about retroactive terms.

Our fourth big concern: The death of free-to-play games

Undoubtedly one of the most troubling implications for this pricing model is the irreparable damage it will inflict to the free-to-play market.

Free-to-play games are costly to develop and usually recoup those costs through in-game ad revenue. However, the markets they serve are enormous — they rely on vast numbers of downloads and installs to feed their growth. With this pricing model, every successful FTP game will be charged per download or install. With this new (and clearly substantial given their player base) cost eating into profits, it is likely that these games will be forced to either shut down or convert to a paid model, which will ultimately hurt consumers.

This will harm the web-based and streaming-based services too, as they have stated that each initialization of a game will count as an install — that means every page refresh for a WebGL game.

Our fifth big concern: A general lack of transparency

Finally, we at SideQuest are deeply troubled by the lack of transparency — or apparent concern for the community — shown by Unity with this announcement and within subsequent FAQs.

While the FAQs go some way towards providing an answer in some areas, there are many aspects of this pricing model that remain unclear, particularly around their acquisition of install data and their ability to detect whether a game has been pirated.

As a pirated install of a game will still count as an install, they have said, “We do already have fraud detection practices in our Ads technology which is solving a similar problem, so we will leverage that know-how as a starting point.” This is, however, vague at best. Developers could easily end up being charged in the event of piracy because, as we all know, piracy cannot be stopped entirely.

Moreover, when it comes to procuring the data for the number of installs, Unity has said: “ We leverage our own proprietary data model, so you can appreciate that we won’t go into a lot of detail, but we believe it gives an accurate determination of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project.” We would like to see more information on this data model as the dev community deserves to know how it will be leveraged. As it stands, all we know is that, “the creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data.”

They have also said that they will procure data from outside sources, stating: “We use a composite model for counting runtime installs that collects data from numerous sources. The Unity Runtime Fee will use data in compliance with GDPR and CCPA. The data being requested is aggregated and is being used for billing purposes.”

This implies that they could attempt to use our data at SideQuest for this purpose. And, as using our data in this way will be nothing but harmful to developers, that is something that we will not permit.

Closing thoughts

In the past, it was possible that developers could spend all their time creating a game and make no money from it. With this new Runtime Fee from Unity, they could spend all their time creating a game and end up in severe debt.

Developing games is hard. Developers deserve to be rewarded for their work. And consumers deserve to choose from a wide range of games on the market. That’s how our community has grown and thrived.

While we appreciate that Unity is addressing the many (many many) concerns of their community in a forum and that our immediate concerns may be commented upon at a later date, we could not sit on the sidelines.

We at SideQuest are proud champions of both independent and seasoned developers. And we feel that this announcement is damaging to them all.

Yes, Unity Technologies should be rewarded for creating a beloved game engine. But this is a step too far and, for all intents and purposes, speaks to little more than corporate greed that will sour the gaming community we know and love.

To ensure that our data at SideQuest—and the data of the many VR developers who use Unity and list their games on our platform—is not wrongly used, we must issue this statement.

Our official statement:

SideQuest does not authorize Unity to use any data obtained from us to determine a per-install fee.
Links found on the game listing pages within SideQuest are referred to as ‘clicks’ through to external sources and do not constitute a download or install of the game.
Any data Unity obtains from our platform for the purposes of determining install fee calculations will not be tolerated.

About SideQuest

SideQuest represents the ultimate community in standalone VR. A place where developers and players around the globe can create, share, and get excited about the virtual reality apps they love.

Developers (like us) are free to experiment with mechanics and modes on their journey to official stores, while players can safely explore thousands of apps across the wonderful world of VR — the largest collection all in one place, actually.

Because who needs limits, right?

Let’s keep your SideQuest going…