Today, on exactly the one year anniversary of Unity’s biggest mistake, Unity have announced they are completely removing the maligned run-time fee. When first announced the fee was a massive overreach and caused a huge backlash within the Unity community that can still be felt to this day. In response Unity has undergone massive changes including the ousting of CEO John Riccitiello the exit of the Ironsource founders and the hiring of new CEO Mathew Bromberg. That new CEO has decided that the best way forward is to get rid of the Unity run-time fee.
After deep consultation with our community, customers, and partners, we’ve made the decision to cancel the Runtime Fee for our games customers, effective immediately. Non-gaming Industry customers are not impacted by this modification.
Over the last 20 years, we’ve partnered with brilliant designers and developers, artists and engineers, publishers and platforms, to build a world where great games could be built by anyone, for everyone. We called it “democratizing game development,” and it remains our core mission today.
However, we can’t pursue that mission in conflict with our customers; at its heart, it must be a partnership built on trust. I’ve been able to connect with many of you over the last three months, and I’ve heard time and time again that you want a strong Unity, and understand that price increases are a necessary part of what enables us to invest in moving gaming forward. But those increases needn’t come in a novel and controversial new form. We want to deliver value at a fair price in the right way so that you will continue to feel comfortable building your business over the long term with Unity as your partner. And we’re confident that if we’re good partners and deliver great software and services, we’ve barely scratched the surface of what we can do together.
So we’re reverting to our existing seat-based subscription model for all gaming customers, including those who adopt Unity 6, the most performant and stable version of Unity yet, later this year.
Changes to plans are as follows:
Unity Personal: As announced last year, Unity Personal will remain free, and we’ll be doubling the current revenue and funding ceiling from $100,000 to $200,000 USD. This means more of you can use Unity at no cost. The Made with Unity splash screen will become optional for Unity Personal games made with Unity 6 when it launches later this year.
Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: We’ll be modifying subscription pricing and the qualifying annual revenue thresholds, effective January 1, 2025. These changes will apply to all new and existing Unity Pro and Enterprise customers when you purchase, upgrade, or renew a subscription on or after this date.
While prices are changing in the following manner:
Unity Pro: An 8% subscription price increase to $2,200 USD annually per seat will apply to Unity Pro. Unity Pro will be required for customers with more than $200,000 USD of total annual revenue and funding. ○ Unity Enterprise: A 25% subscription price increase will apply to Unity Enterprise.
Unity Enterprise will be required for customers with more than $25 million USD of total annual revenue and funding. A minimum subscription requirement may also apply. Because this set of our largest customers have unique needs and use many of our products and services, we’ll be contacting everyone in the days ahead to discuss customized packages.
Key Links
Runtime Fee Removal Announcement
You can learn more about the history of the Unity run-time fee, the removal of the fee and the updates to Unity pricing in the video below.