Unity Changes Pricing Scheme

If you haven’t heard yet, Unity is changing its pricing scheme. What is the new scheme and will it effect you? Let’s find out together.

Unity is enacting a new per install fee for Unity applications. They are calling it a “Runtime Fee.” The price you pay or if you pay at all is based on your license and what type of application you have.

First let’s get the exceptions out of the way. If you are a Unity Industry user, then you are exempt from the fee. It you are a Personal, Pro, or Enterprise member then your Unity application is exempt if it is:

• a film
• a gambling application
• an educational application

How to Qualify for the Runtime Fee

If you are on the Personal (free) license then you will qualify for the Runtime Fee if you make $200,000 in revenue over the previous 12 months and have lifetime total of 200,000 installs.

If you are on the Pro or Enterprise license then you will qualify for the Runtime Fee if you make $1,000,000 in revenue over the previous 12 months and have a lifetime total of 1,000,000 installs.

What is a Revenue? What is an Install?

Before we get into the pricing for everything let’s make sure we are on the same page with what is what, because you may be surprised. These are the terms as described by Unity

Revenue — A game or app’s “total revenue” includes all revenue generated (without limitation) from retail sales, in-app purchases, subscription fees, web payments, offline payments, ads-based revenue, etc. Total revenue is calculated without deduction, including any relevant digital store fees.

Install — The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee. Each game or app’s cumulative install amount cannot be reset or reduced even if it has been sold, transferred to a new party, changed its name, been republished as a new version, added expansion content, or had its unique identifier (e.g., BundleID) altered. Additionally, a change in publisher or distributor does not reset the cumulative install amount.

The term “install” and Unity’s definition in particular has led to some interesting interpretations both on Reddit and X. Some people are speculating that installs can be counted multiple times for the same device. Using GamePass by Microsoft as an example, people will often install and uninstall games as they run out of space on their devices. Will these count as installs if they have already been run on the same device?

We are going to find out more about these edge cases as we get closer to January 1.

Pricing

The pricing will go like this, Unity will check to see if you qualify for the Runtime Fee on January 1, 2024 and if you do, you will be charged for every install of you application above the threshold for your license between Januar 1 and February 1. The actual price will be determined by the license, and total lifetime installs of your application.

If you are on the Personal (free) license then you will be charged $0.20 USD per install for every install over 200,000 installs.

If you have a Pro license, then you will be charged $0.15 for your first 100,000 installs over the threshold(1,000,000 installs). Then you will be charged for the 100,001–500,000 installs at $0.075 per install. Between 500,001 and 1,000,000 installs above your threshold and you will be charged $0.03. And every install above 1 million will be charged $0.02.

If you are on the Enterprise license then you will follow the same pattern as the Pro license but will pay $0.125 for your first 100,000 above 1 million installs. $0.06 for your 100,001–500,000 installs above the threshold. $0.02 for every install between 500,001 and 1 million above the threshold. And finally $0.01 for every install after that.

You may also notice an emerging markets section. This means that countries that aren’t in emerging markets pay in full. Standard rates apply to end users located in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea, United Kingdom, and the United States. And by end users it means that it doesn’t matter where you are.

Who this is going to effect

So there are many strategies you can make to get the cheapest and best deal per your situation. One group of developers that Unity has bolstered and boasted about over the years is going to be hit the hardest. They are mobile developers.

Free to play games are everywhere on mobile game stores. They are free to download and then make their money on in-app purchases. And Unity definitely knows about them. Unity owns the largest market share of mobile applications.

These games survive on what are called “Whales.” A whale is a user that spends a lot of money and keeps the app up and running for all the other users. These games are typical of really high download rates and a really small percentage of paying users. So what happens when a game receives 100 million downloads but only makes 1 million in revenue from the whales. They lose money.

Assuming the absolute lowest cost of $0.01 per install. 100 million installs would begin to eclipse all revenue from that game. And this isn’t exactly a theory. I’ve spoken personally to mobile game developers in this exact situation.

So prepare for a very interesting future for Unity mobile developers running free to play applications.

Will this mean free to play applications end up going away? Will we see a massive exodus of large but not large enough mobile games? Will all the solo-devs vowing to leave Unity forever but don’t actually release games mean anything for the Unity ecosystem or Asset Store system?

Only time will tell. I expect there to be a much larger discussion about this moving forward as the implications may be larger than people might think.

The Author

I am a software engineer, project manager, and self-taught Unity/Unreal developer currently working in cutting edge enterprise AR/VR. I spent over a decade in the food service industry starting as a dishwasher and leaving as a general manager when I switched careers into tech.

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