The Unity Run-Time Fee is Dead!

Exactly one year ago today Unity set itself on fire with one of the most ill advised business decisions in decades... the Run-Time fee. A blatant and overreaching cash grab that IMMEDIATELY faced backlash from the community.
A year later, the Unity run-time fee is no more! Learn more in this video as well as new pricing details at come along with the announcement.
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Key Links gamefromscratch.com/the-unity-run-time-fee-is-dead-prices-increased/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- *Support* : www.patreon.com/gamefromscratch *GameDev News* : gamefromscratch.com *GameDev Tutorials* : devga.me *Discord* : discord.com/invite/R7tUVbD *Twitter* : twitter.com/gamefromscratch -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[@Scudmaster11]

For some reason I want to make a 2d and 3d game and launch it on CD-ROM (pressed data CDs)

[@zxcaaq]

Unity is dead

[@Daniel-be6cj]

I love how they announced it by literally just sending an e-mail with the title "runtime fee is cancelled", like they don't even need to explain what that's about they know you know they messed up

[@thefoxicreator4556]

I can confirm. They send me the same e-mail

[@bmanxy3363]

@@thefoxicreator4556 me too

[@mikol.69420]

I just read the gmail notification. Went to KZbin for the story. 🤣

[@GrapeParfait]

I came to GFS just to have a huge laugh.

[@Shinesart]

Me too. But everyone will be learning Godot parallel even if people are using unity. I had to use unity because my company uses it but will be learning Godot at the same time.

[@widrolo]

An anniversary for the mistake that almost killed you company is crazy😭

[@victims5820]

The "Can't believe we survive this long after this" anniversary.

[@user-hz4tc2pf3x]

Fr💀

[@Zvrra]

lol

[@drillerdev4624]

"almost killed" not sure that's not still going to happen in a not-so-distant future

[@funlabsdesignstudio]

😂👍🏼 Clown Town for sure.

[@edwoodgrant]

I don't think this is for people who have already left the Unity engine, but it's more likely for people who are finishing their current project and planing to bail out (but can't yet). It's more about stopping the bleeding rather than try to bring old grumpy customers back.

[@nasfoda_gamerbrbigproducti5375]

Yeah, the old customers won't ever come back unless Unity becomes the ONLY option.

[@VaMage]

@@nasfoda_gamerbrbigproducti5375 Their loss.

[@joshuabautch8936]

@@nasfoda_gamerbrbigproducti5375 OR if Unity Provides something that INTICES Them back

[@DarkKakashi7]

Either way anyone with above room temperature IQ would be better bailing and never looking back.

[@test-rj2vl]

@@nasfoda_gamerbrbigproducti5375 if that game was my hobby project if which I don't plan to make money then I wouldn't become their customer even if it was the only option. I would rather make my own game or if I can predict in advance that besides only 10 people will play this game I would rather pirate that engine and modify it not to phone home than associate this engine with my account.

[@theguyfromsaturn]

I don't understand what they teach in MBA schools. It's obvious that the most valuable asset for a company is customer goodwill. Trust is hard to earn, very easy to lose, and once lost practically impossible to rebuild. EVERY business decision should be run through a filter of "how is this impacting the goodwill of our core audience". I don't see Unity coming back from this.

[@DougFromTheBayou]

It's mind blowing isn't it? I think the problem is these people only think short term (Quarterly), I can't imagine Unity meant anything to the previous CEO john riccitiello he just saw it as a quick buck and didnt care about the future of the engine or company. He probably got a few big bonuses and a nice paycheck at the end of his stint as the CEO and is probably already looking for another company to run into the ground.

[@GoblinArmyInYourWalls]

They thought they were the defacto "no other options" engine and didn't realize they were fsr from the only option

[@AliceErishech]

The issue is that American businesspeople view things as how much they can get in the next quarter. This is true of both CEOs and shareholders. And since those people never bear the consequences of their shortsightedness, things never actually change and highly respected companies, such as how Unity was in the past, end up getting driven into the ground and left floundering dealing with the consequences of those shortsighted actions. From what I've heard from people who have gotten business degrees, the curriculum actually encourages this sort of behavior.

[@halo129830]

@@AliceErishechwhat college did you go to because business 100 was teaching ethics and goodwill are your most important assets…. Granted I went to small community college in nowhere USA on 2018-2020 but I got my computer technology degree

[@daniloribeiro7254]

Rent-Seeking. They teach rent seeking. Look it up

[@mahkhardy8588]

This is good for anyone still using Unity. For those who left Unity, it's all good you don't have to go crawling back. Keep moving forward so we all have more competitive options.

[@Maridany]

Godot was the best thing that ever happened to me

[@funtecstudiovideos4102]

@@Maridany any game finished in it ?

[@VaMage]

@@funtecstudiovideos4102 Zero. The engine swappers are usually beginners that didn't even have a game finished in Unity as well.

[@ivan-_-8577]

@@funtecstudiovideos4102 My finished project is currently being moderated on Steam - the engine is great.

[@MrERJ1992]

​@@ivan-_-8577 Yeah, but is the only engine you use, if not the only engine you'll EVER use?

[@ThiVasss]

A few months before that fiasco I was 50/50 on Unity and Godot. I finally ended up on Godots side because at the time I felt it was easier to upload to the web. Then that happened and solidified my choice. Now I am a Godot fanboy.

[@EddyNottingham]

I can't wait to become a Godot fanboy too once I finish my current Unity game! Godot looks so fun to create in!

[@matheuscordeiroKH]

I was already experienced in unity, but after that, i moved on to godot, and for me, it was the best thing i could do. Unity has some useful stuff that i miss sometimes, but godot is so light, and the open source nature of code have my trust in a way that unity will never get back. Now i genuinely prefer godot

[@novac1]

femboy*

[@NeverendingRevolution]

I was also 50/50 Unity and Godot, but there have been just far too many issues I'm not encountering in Unity, that I don't see the motivation to switch. Aside from that I'd also say I feel like all the same things I'm doing in Unity just work better. Again, what's the motivation? Easier to upload to the web? Say what?

[@ADTDev]

If you crumple a sheet of paper, and flatten it back then say sorry, the piece of paper is still wrinkled. Unity messed up bad.

[@jmssun]

Baumgartner will tell you to put on a vacuumed heating plate and pressed under weight, it will relax the fibre and restore the paper back anew

[@mousepotatodoesstuff]

Crumple? They shredded the paper.

[@ADTDev]

@@jmssun ig the equivalent of that for Unity is to go open source lol

[@codyvandal2860]

The tree remembers what the axe forgets.

[@katoun9]

@@jmssun It will never be as new. It will look better then when it was crumpled, but there is some damage done to the fiber. And as many times you will do this process of crumpling the paper and then fixing it, more damage will be added to the fiber, until...

[@cefcephatus]

Since it's been a year, half of devs who changed their engine won't come back now.

[@TaliyahP]

how many of them went back long ago

[@teemosaint6157]

I don't believe the message is for those who abandoned unity but rather for those who still uses unity. Gamejam last year, about 60% of games uses unity but in less than a year it dropped to about 40%. When the developers are finishing developing their current game on unity that is bout to drop harder, just desperately trying to stop the bleeding now

[@teemosaint6157]

But seeing how their stock price dropped by 50% since the runtime fee incident, I believe most devs are still going to quit after this annoucement anyway. Trust is absolutely evaporated.

[@cefcephatus]

@@teemosaint6157 Well, I don't know the turnover rate for beginner game devs. But, increasing more free user capacity means the new game devs can stay with them longer. It's true that the more senior devs in community makes more new comer for the engine, but suggestion/tutorial contents is a bigger motivation. So Unity seems to aim for getting more new devs instead.

[@braiesteanu]

I'm a unity Industry user, and have been for a couple years now. They have fucked up beyond repair and we're still being seen as a complete cash-cow. Even now, they didn't revert the runtime fee completely for everyone, and we still have it. They also silently added this whole required industry license silently last year a few months before the runtime fee announcement but nobody batted an eye because "eh, who cares about the industry side of Unity" but it's a massive massive industry and a stable job for many devs. So, while I would love to come back to unity, it's expensive as hell and quite risky.

[@hopelessdecoy]

Especially when there's engines like: Godot Defold GDevelop And so many more completely for free and honestly really good :)

[@Phvli]

Same here. Looks like the indie devs didn't budge so now they're turning to us industry people with our apparently infinite cash printers, asking if maybe we could keep them afloat because their previous masterplan backfired. To me this looks like scrambling in panic than nothing else. I wasn't considering switching to something else before, but now I am genuinely worried if they will soon go under and end our support.

[@Sk4lli]

Me too, I'm on Unity Industrial, but I might put a bit more effort into adding the code we require to Godot so we can switch over. Right now it's too much effort and risk for a tight deadline, but afterwards the savings for us will be immense. Basically, if we would need 2 months to modify Godot to match our needs we would still safe money within that year if we can move away from Unity.

[@reahreic7698]

@@hopelessdecoy With utterly incomplete VR support sadly. We (industry user) looked at several alternates, Unity owes me for a year of pain and suffering having to transition our tech stack to unreal. (Which is painful to use, but for different reasons.)

[@braiesteanu]

@@reahreic7698 Godot for both VR and XR worked out of the box for me (compared to the clusterfuck that is unity) but yes third party documentation and examples are kind of lacking. Thankfully the community usually can hand hold you into completion of most things.

[@LukeAGuest]

When people move to different things, they don't come back.

[@lxudgvming]

The past couple years really did some damage to unity rep

[@avstract3085]

You never used Unity, always been a godot guy, shut up troll

[@WizardofWestmarch]

This is probably as much/more about not losing even more people and hoping future devs still consider them. Anyone who left for Unreal/Godot/other and decided they are happy are almost certainly gone for good.

[@avstract3085]

@@WizardofWestmarch in your dreams, who tf told you blud? Fokin trolls

[@dotcom4389]

not true. nice on a bumper sticker though.

[@monawoka97]

Great. So is my trust. It doesn't matter. You can never come back from trying to retroactively change pricing models on ALREADY SHIPPED GAMES. I will never enter into a business agreement with a company that pulls a stunt like that.

[@DrEnzyme]

It still boggles me how unintelligibly stupid the leadership team must have been to make that decision. It would be like if Steam decided to charge a subscription fee for access to their platform. Even if it was a dollar a month it wouldn't matter, what matters is the years you spent convincing everyone to put their faith in you. That you were a *safe bet*. Now they aren't, and Unity will never get that back. Unreal exists. Godot exists. The former does what Unity does and the latter doesn't require your trust. Unity isn't worth the risk any more.

[@monawoka97]

@@DrEnzyme It's more like if Steam tried to go back and retroactively add a 5$ service charge to every game purchase you've ever done on their platform

[@mylesdavis135]

Yup. If it can happen once, it can happen again. This is undoubtedly not the last we've heard of this.

[@TheMeanArena]

@@DrEnzyme Don't worry, devs are paying that fee for gamers.

[@akunbora]

Years ago, Unity started requiring weekly renewals for the personal license. After doing it for the 4th time, I realized it sucked and was demotivating. I tried Godot but was already burnt out from my studies, so I stopped game dev altogether. Lucky.., a year later, I regained my motivation and learned Godot. Can’t imagine going back to Unity. Godot is just so simple and convenient. Open-source apps and all behind them are a blessing. I recently tried Defold cuz it’s kinda open source.. it was fun. Hope the community grows.

[@DAG_42]

You should get into unreal engine! My day job is C# dev and I thought getting into unreal wasn't too rough

[@tishaak2800]

​@@DAG_42 The problem with Unreal engine is that we yet again are reliant on the decisions of a corporate company The Godot devs so actually listen to us and with it being open source Features most people want will be surely implemented by the community Plus one could fork Godot and change it to fit their needs if Godot decides to add features we dont want unlike unity Godot might just become the blender of game engines on the right conditions

[@tau4333]

@@tishaak2800 nonononono, blender is (was) the blender of game engines ;-) Really wish I could work with Godot, but doesn't work for my kind of projects.

[@ferinzz]

​@@DAG_42i dunno. I was pretty let down by how difficult it is to do stuff outside of the editor or blueprint system. Godot you just.... write what you want it to do. Still Some stuff i don't like about its structure. But then there's also Odin. Raw coding with support for all the major graphics libraries. Feels as straight forward as python but with all the tinkering available like in c++. Start drawing polygons in a couple of minutes purely through code.

[@madduckling4436]

@@tishaak2800 its fine... DAG_42 is talking about the jobs... he's not talking about personal projects, he's saying he should learn unreal engine to get a job , godot is still not on demand in the gaming industry.... yet hopefully it will in the near future!

[@igorkluev5682]

Do not go back to technologies and companys who pull these kind of stunts! Let Unity die so other Corporations wont attempt such horrid policies and be every vigilant in the future!

[@WuCSquad]

Already gone and not coming back. Godot doesn't have a run time fee, a cancelation fee or any other fee. Godot gives me a good engine and they get my donations; it's mutual benificial.

[@arocomisgamusclademork1603]

Is Unreal engine suck? I mean, big known business better make quality for attractive persons. Open source cannot be same quality Blender organization or Firefox provide

[@TheMeanArena]

Glad you like Godot but I personally think it has a horrible UI.

[@WuCSquad]

@@TheMeanArena That's fine, everyone has different tastes and needs for an engine. The UI is fine and I customized it a bit. Try out all the engines and pick the one that suits you but if I can make a suggestion; keep in touch with a couple in case one of them does "an unity" again.

[@NeverendingRevolution]

@@TheMeanArenait absolutely does have horrible UI, but there's this, which helps a little: kzbin.info/www/bejne/jZ69omaLnLR6gbs

[@panthrax555]

The most valuable lesson I ever learnt is, once you lose trust, you lost it for a reason. You don't ever trust that same person again.

[@etherealregions]

For myself. Unity seems like that Ex that just won't go away. "I'll quit screwing around, I promise!" 😂

[@95mcqueen5]

Exactly 😂😂 than they see you with someone else (Godot for me) and get all jealous "I promise I'll never add dumb fees again" 🤥

[@mikol.69420]

You bump her once in a while

[@KrullMaestaren]

Sadly cannot unfriend and/or add them to a spam list...

[@SoaringSimulator]

LOL, Well said !!

[@TheManOFCulture155]

"Hello Ladies and Gentlemen it's Mike here at Gay from Scratch 0:01 " Captions are wild 💀

[@warunanirmal9537]

😂

[@user-uq2ko4jq2v]

it's on purpose

[@DenysAlmaral]

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂🤣🤣🤣🤣

[@igorthelight]

"M" is VERY quiet there! Listen carefully ;-)

[@1KiloDepartment]

Auto-captions are wild. Like it somehow understood one of Winston Churchill's speeches, yet makes mistakes like this, and hearing words in instruments. (Sadly it no longer captions that speech correctly anymore :( )

[@peterharaszti2020]

You literally posted a video about this sooner than the mail arrived in my inbox.

[@Taylor55055]

Does this mean the 2.5% royalty is also gone?

[@nolram]

Yes

[@FinnTG]

Yes it's in the Unity official Email

😞

[@MrFrostCA]

They foolishly removed that too. They should have kept that. I get that their stock price is going downhill since 22 and they need money. that is why they tried the runtime fee in the first place. 2.5% was fine. More than fine. No body would have said absolutely nothing, its fair. But they foolishly removed that too. I give them a minimun of 6 months to do something stupid again because they need money. This is tiresome, honestly.

[@FinnTG]

@@MrFrostCA I agree with you 100%

[@ZebulonsPi]

I've moved off to Godot for my game dev, and I'm WAY happier. Unity has become so bloated, the difference is incredible. Trying to get back into a prototype I had built to harvest some stuff, it took minutes for it to even start. I like the tightness of Godot, and the energy surrounding the community, a lot more than Unity's right now. I'm gone for good.

[@user-uq2ko4jq2v]

make room for one more !

[@johnq.public3302]

Godot is fun! Love a tool that takes seconds instead of minutes to start and is fun. Nodes rock!

[@liam4606]

I'm glad you're having a good experience, I genuinely tried Godot but it was just not feasible for our projects. Godot on the surface seems like a great option, but behind the scenes the direction is deeply misaligned with what indie game devs actually need.

[@lillybyte]

@@johnq.public3302 Just wait until your project gets large enough-- you'll be lucky if Godot launches at all.

[@thejoblesscoder]

can GoDot handle custom NPM packages?

[@TheIronicRaven]

Unfortunately for me, its too little too late. I am Thrilled that Unity is getting rid of their mistakes (both policies and people) but I've already spent the last year rebuilding my old project from the ground up in Godot. I am not going to spend another year switching back to Unity. Not only that, Godot is free, and will always be free. I just don't have any reason to go back to Unity. I am very happy for the gamedev community, Unity is again becoming a viable option that will bring quality and stability (or so it appears right now) but as for me, I'm out. Never coming back. Not because Unity is bad, but because I found something that works for me much better.

[@arocomisgamusclademork1603]

Good luck make 3d main game for ambition title interest vision video game

[@afjer]

​@@arocomisgamusclademork1603 ...what?

[@arocomisgamusclademork1603]

@@afjer say again

[@Alex-vq7fz]

Thank you Unity for fucking up so royally and giving me a reason to check out Godot. Been loving it the past year more than I ever did with my 6 years with Unity.

[@MattGuerrette]

Shame people are not as equally outraged at Apple doing the exact same thing with the "Core Technology Fee". They'd rather complain about Tim Sweeny and Epic....

[@adim101-b9l]

lets be honest, that side of crowd is dumb

[@LordCritish]

Sweeny and Epic are no angels either. They belong with 40% to Tencent. That's horrible enough.

[@SethDrebitko]

Many developers and Apple customers are actively talking about and critical of them over it. Something important to consider with the EU though is that unlike with Unity Apple is still basically in negotiation state with the EU. The EU asked them to come up with their own rules and as a company it would have been pretty stupid to start at the offer you were willing to take. They went for the biggest broadest least fair options knowing that what ever they did the EU was going to push back anyway 🤷‍♂

[@95mcqueen5]

Apple is like McDonalds or Coca Cola, people know what' going on but they like the status

[@dotcom4389]

@@LordCritish Tencent is an investor. do you understand what that means? Are you against any Chinese people investing in western companies? do you buy chines made products? YES YOU DO.. enough said.. not really i just like saying that...

[@dingosmoov]

This sounds to me like they are getting ready to be acquired.

[@TheRealAfroRick]

Who is in the market to buy game engines these days?

[@mikol.69420]

Too little, waaay too fuqin late. Barring something truly worth coming back to, I expect to be dancing on Unity's grave a few years from now.

[@johnny2552]

I've literally stopped considering unity at all because of it. I'll never trust the company though, they could always try again.

[@Marc-gj9vx]

They changed the CEO and a lot of the management. So I think we can trust the new managementm especially after the new changes and removing fees.

[@NachoKsp]

@@Marc-gj9vx .... until they change it again and you can't escape. Having alternatives I don't see the point in using Unity

[@niblet8308]

Who cares

[@seeibe]

@@Marc-gj9vx Until the next bad CEO comes in. Honestly the takeaway is don't trust a company for something you absolutely rely on, it always may get into financial trouble and start pulling stupid shit to try to save their skin. Porting games to a different game engine is usually not worth it, so open source game engines have a huge advantage.

[@MrShitthead]

This is actually the second time they’ve done something like this, in 2019 they tried to retroactively change Unity TOS and screw over users who never agreed to their new terms. They 100% will try this again.

[@jeanmakesgames]

this mean one thing: Unity 6 installs number are very bad, they finally realize how much they have shot themselve in the foot and before to launch the final version of Unity 6 they are removing it to try to get the number of install up. Which is a very good thing. But that doesn't mean that Unity not gonna come up with an other bad idea soon.

[@ZedDevStuff]

Unity 6 isn't out yet... The preview is available but not worth a LTS

[@jeanmakesgames]

@@ZedDevStuff Yes I know, Lts version of unity 6 will be out around December, but Unity is using (like many others company) the "preview" (or beta version) of the new iteration to test how well it's gonna perform, and I guess the number of the preview are very low, which doesn't come as a surprise.

[@dotcom4389]

yep. i just installed it now.

[@ZedDevStuff]

@@jeanmakesgames I mean it's pretty normal, pretty sure most people don't actually use non LTS versions outside of testing the waters

[@jeanmakesgames]

@@ZedDevStuff I'm not saying it's not normal, that's the entire point: it's a guideline for unity to see if their new version will be a success or not, and it is not so far. Now I'm just curious to see the actual number to see the amplitude of the damage

[@MFool64]

I still go with Godot

[@theoathman8188]

I still go with Godot for being a better engine for real. At least for my needs. (Internationalization)

[@monolofiminimal]

That's right, you either Godot or you Godon't 😂

[@carloscadori7086]

Yeah, Godot fits my needs better than unity, I'm not going back.

[@ivanonlyone7160]

Good choice for 2D

[@sean7221]

Good choice for 3D

[@kusog3]

The people who pulled support away from unity despite the possible additional costs for moving their projects are the real heroes here, still I wouldn't advise immediate trust and restarting a big project on unity. Maybe the next one, just remember that unity can still return runtime fee And maybe, just consider that supporting open source tools like Godot can go a long way for all of us developers like blender did

[@v-alfred]

That last statement is the humanity key to success and get out from corporate greeds choom! Well said.

[@TaliyahP]

They can't return it for existing versions. Like he said in the video, that part was likely never legal.

[@vi6ddarkking]

Well now that I got a taste of Blueprints I'm not going back.

[@gnom_anonim]

wait till you got taste of bp slowdown

[@thomasfalcon6350]

You got a taste of shit spaghetti and you liked it? OK...

[@HyBlock]

blueprints are horrible.

[@Kreesty]

The taste of spaghetti, yum!

[@monolith-zl4qt]

@@gnom_anonim you don't seriously expect unity script kiddies to learn C++

[@FR3NKD]

This is absolutely insane 🤣 They destroyed a company for nothing. Thank God we have Godot!

[@adamodimattia]

😂 Godot is a piece of...

[@igorthelight]

Thank developers ;-)

[@Foreversun33]

@@igorthelight Thanks for altruism.

[@edgertondavis8441]

Godot Hype is REAL!!!

[@owl4638]

godot is useless

[@EricLefebvrePhotography]

After a year of learning a new system (Godot or Unreal) why would anyone swiktch again? I never used Unity myself but that's the first question that comes to my mind.

[@denisquarte7177]

"Added value" like with most products. Question: Did Unity add this value? Answer: 🤣

[@syriuszb8611]

"What did it cost you?" "Everything" "And what did you get?" "Nothing, we cancelled it after a year anyway" Didn't really expect that they would reverse the course, I guess they lost many important clients and they think they need to rebuild the trust more and runtime fee would not work for them anyway, without those clients. There has to be something more than we can see, since they already pay the price, and they cannot reverse time or make people forget. Or take away all the money and support other engines got.

[@ajhanaimu2343]

the most important clients were the indies. Most people doesn't know how things work and think several big clients are enough. Those indies (single or small studio) were in millions and they where who gave Unity a good reputation. They are the major factor for income (asset store, paid Unity version because many of them can). Imagine millions of customers paying in average, let's say, $20/month. I promise you just form assets store and paid Unity version, indies only, will give Unity $100M monthly while no few big clients together will pay this much monthly. most people think indies, are free riders.

[@syriuszb8611]

@@ajhanaimu2343 Sure, but the (modified) runtime fee was banking on those big customers. And if they would leave, the runtime fee would bring nothing, so in the end it would become a dead weight.

[@MedusaZenovka]

I'm not going back to Unity. I learned Godot in April / May and I made amazing progress there. Granted, Unity has benefits - or rather some things I made there are working better than in Godot -, but that is stuff I will figure out and master in Godot as well. Plus: if I do make a buck some day some how with my software / game then I don't have to pay any fee what so ever and I can freely choose to support Godot if I like.

[@NeverendingRevolution]

I'm still using Unity. Well, technically I never left, I've been doing the same game in both side by side for a couple years, just to see how it could go in both. Speaking honestly, Godot has some real problems and I've seen little to zero attempts to correct them, which has been unfortunate. Both engines have that though, but I've not encountered anything like that in Unity that didn't have a work-around. I found a work-around to the 3D performance in Godot, but it's a ridiculous amount of work to maintain going forward. It's true someone could fork Godot and make their own decisions on the direction of the engine, and a few people have done that, but I feel like that's not what I'd want to spend my time on. The easier solution is to just continue in Unity, so that's what I'm doing until I see a real reason to jump ship, and a runtime fee I have no chance of hitting was not going to be it.

[@Yezu666]

Still not touching that engine with a 10 meter stick.

[@HyBlock]

it's ok you wouldn't make anything worth a damn with it anyway.

[@mrtegs]

​@@HyBlock Have you ever made anything worth a damn?

[@DefaultPotato]

​@@HyBlock With other game engines, he could create something truly extraordinary.

[@ivanonlyone7160]

​@@DefaultPotato until he faces massive performance issues with UE5 or lack of essential engine features in Godot (for example shader compilation)

[@DefaultPotato]

@@ivanonlyone7160 Well, Godot has shader compilation in 4.x Versions. It has everything necessary to create a professional end product. Lots of features! You can create anything with it knowing basic code. 2D/3D Performance is fantastic after many deep detailed tests. Then, regarding Unreal Engine, the bad performance you see is due to the lack of optimization. Some devs just throw assets to create a game, doesn't care about optimization. The engine cannot do everything for you.

[@srmarcosx]

I think it's hard to say that all those layoffs and the Weta thing were caused by the runtime fee. A lot of companies did the same thing like Microsoft and Embracer that just like Unity, made huge acquisitions during the pandemy and after the tech hype cooled down had to dispose a lot of what they had just to have good numbers to show on their reports

[@NihongoWakannai]

Unity as a company was bloated for many years, layoffs were inevitable. They had significantly more employees than unreal for seemingly no real benefit.

[@srmarcosx]

@@NihongoWakannai good point. They were already bloated even before the pandemic, so things just got worse. I think they took a big hit with the runtime fee but things wouldn't probably be much better anyway

[@thesteammachine1282]

If they did things like that once, they will most certainly do it again . Trust is build for a long time and can be lost in a second . I for sure will not go to them . This will be like giving autodesk a chance .

[@Greenlaser]

im still sticking to my custom game engine, the damage has already been done

[@PRIMARYATIAS]

Odin by GingerBill is nice for custom game engines or “framework style” engines

[@dieyproductions4403]

@@PRIMARYATIAS Odin is programming language, not an engine.

[@charlieking7600]

Good luck writing the game, not the engine, unless your game concept is simple.

[@PRIMARYATIAS]

@@dieyproductions4403I know

[@Greenlaser]

@@charlieking7600 ive been working on my engine for 8 months, im pretty comfortable making good games with it once it enters beta in 2025, im doing pretty good with it so far

[@toxic_champ]

Thanks to mr rici I've become middle c++ dev in the last year. Great experience, gonna stick with C++ from now on. F*ck unity!

[@fodogamer6654]

as Unity dev since years, i didn't change just because of the runtime fee, and Godot as in this state it is unmanageable and not an option for a studio (maybe in the future it will be) but for now , unity and unreal are the big dogs of game engine, no one can replace it in this industry. The game engine itself is huge compared to godot in many ways. i can't even think about moving to whole engine who is targeted for learning or for small solo projects. so for everyone thinking about changing, you should go to unreal if you hate unity that much. otherwise stick with unity. that's my thoughts don't overcomplicate it.

[@JaguarPanda]

Does that mean we can update to the latest version without the hassles?

[@gamefromscratch]

Yes

[@zORg_alex]

No, you won't escape hassles. Renderer features API is changing. Old one was changed, so that many tutorials are outdated, and new one isn't well documented yet. So you'll need to dig into existing features that support both APIs.

[@dungeoneering1974]

When a company destroys your trust like this it is really hard to recover from that. Especially in game development because it is such a huge investment of time and resources, to gamble that the company won't screw you over is a big ask.

[@Null-byte]

Had a subscription back then, but since this stuff went down, I switched to Godot, and will stick with Godot ... As we say in Germany: "Tja, Pech gehabt" ... hope a lot of people think the same way ...

[@AndrewFomin]

They can't just undo and pretend that nothing happened. It is pretty much a 'trust me, bro' situation. A company with a lot of goodwill can do this, a company like Unity have to offer some actually enforceable guarantee of not doing a similar shit again.

[@gamefromscratch]

Well to be fair that's not all they did. They replaced the CEO. They got rid of the Iron source board members. They got rid of the guy in charge of Unity development. The got rid of most of the non gaming investments they made since the IPO Honestly beyond taking a DeLorean 88mph and not doing the entire stupid thing in the first place, there's not much else they could do. That said, not trusting them is perfectly valid.

[@Robot257onlinehue]

​@@gamefromscratchmost of those layoffs were for financial issues and not to gain goodwill. Even by replacing their CEO, with the corporate culture Unity has, it won't take long for them to and start making the same mistakes again. If they really wanted to secure their customers and let the world know they'll never do something like that again, they should've put a clause in their ToS that they won't change runtime fees without prior customer/public knowledge.

[@jeanheonofficial]

@@gamefromscratch The Runtime Fee is now gone but the trust for Unity is already broken and it's already too late. Most game studios have migrated to Unreal or Godot. Of course it's good news that Unity removed it but why would we trust them again when they can do the same thing years later or if it's not Unity it will be Unreal Engine if they put a new incompetent CEO at the head of the company. This is why I turn to free and open source game engines like Godot because we are sure to have a free open source game engine without royalties or runtime fees and if ever Godot for obscure reasons becomes like Unity well there will always be forks.

[@SomeDudeSomewhere]

@@gamefromscratch As long as they don't go back to perpetual licenses, they're dead to me.

[@hopelessdecoy]

​@@SomeDudeSomewhere same for Game Maker, which stole my license from me after going subscription

[@HE360]

This Unity situation goes with my saying: Once you fart, you can't take it back lol (ok, I'm sorry! I just had instill a bit of humor lol 🤣 Forgive me lol)

[@madduckling4436]

your humor is fine literally people still use fart reverbs in their meme videos... your humor is fine... Trust yourself :)

[@ShaolinDave]

It's irrelevant to me. There were about a hundred other reason for me to ditch Unity. The very fact that they even _suggested_ such a plan, much less _actually tried it_ just proves they have absolutely no respect for their customers. They've lost me. _Forever_ I am glad this happened though. It forced me to try out other systems that weren't really on my radar. I should have switched to Godot a long time ago but this made me actually do it. I plan on learning Unreal as well, and maybe ever diversifying more by experimenting with other systems in my spare time. Unity's stupidity freed me from a cage that I didn't even realize I was in.

[@MojosMadness]

What the weird part is developers freaking out over Unity charging fees while forking over 30% of every dollar they make to Steam without a squeal.

[@magnetomage]

yeah, still dont trust them.... cause next year they can just undo the undo... they are going to have to work very hard to get my trust back.

[@wesc6755]

They got rid of the predatory officers that genuinely harmed the company, and they got rid of the licensing that made us uninstall and not consider it for future projects. I can't ask for more, so yay. The engine itself is better than people give it credit for, and I do want the people that make critical tools get paid well for it so they keep doing it. I'm not religious about tools or loyal to a logo. Counting installs, even if to self-report them, was a non-starter. There's just no way we were going to do that. So for me, yes, Unity will be back on the evaluation list in the future. And I'll happily pay for it too.

[@nexovec]

unity developers be like for { it's_so_over() we_are_so_back() }

[@HyBlock]

this code makes absolutely no sense. have you ever coded in C# or anything else in your life? it doesn't even make sense as pseudo code.

[@nexovec]

@@HyBlock this is quite literally valid go code

[@nexovec]

@@HyBlock Didn't know unity can give you this much brain rot that you start explaining to a dude with 10 years of experience that he doesn't know what a for loop is. wtf, even if it was wrong, why the heck is that even something to note...

[@HyBlock]

@@nexovec didn't know unity developers wrote in Go, I'll go ahead and download the latest version to see the newly added support.

[@nexovec]

​@@HyBlock And it doesn't stop. You said it's not even pseudocode. It is literal code. I don't care it's not in your favorite language, never said it was. If I'm gonna choose a runtime for my hopes, it sure as hell won't be unity(or mono, because you'd pull that up next, because that's what you do). But I do like how the original answer kind of hints unity devs don't even know pseudocode.

[@foley2k2]

That's bullish for U stock. Ooh, +10% today!

[@Kohijin]

There is still a huge caveat which applies to a lot of solo devs / small teams with a Unity Plus licenses maintaining apps running on older versions. Yes, we got Pro one year for the same price, but it has come to my attention that Personal will only be able to remove the splash screen once you start using Unity 6. That will not always be possible for every project and increases the yearly overhead. This will probably sour Unity's image further for the non-gaming industry.

[@ItsKorin__]

if they make the engine open-source, i will switch to Unity

[@euden_yt]

The c Sharp side is open source but only for referencing. Now, if they showed some of the C++ side and also made public some APIs, instead of using reflection.

[@ВалерійДейнека-с2ч]

🤣😂😂😂😂

[@monolofiminimal]

Open source with not closed contribution could be interesting

[@kaijuultimax9407]

Unity is made of several proprietary APIs, legally speaking that's impossible without serious contract negotiations and likely billions of dollars that the company no longer has.

[@KrullMaestaren]

@@kaijuultimax9407 They can rewrite those parts of the engine, not really our problem. I am watching their deserts from my green fields while eating popcorn :) No Unity! No popcorn for you! Bad kid!

[@Mempler]

The damage is already done, they can't stop the snowball from rolling now.

[@WeenieWalkerGames]

This is great news but I personally will wait a month or so just to let everything shake out before I accept it as final. As for the changes, the biggest issue for me personally is the removal of the Unity Plus option; that was the cheaper plan for once you made over the free threshold. However, I am willing to accept the higher pricing for a seat if the $200k also applies to the older Unity installs. (Honestly, if they had just wanted to get rid of Plus, a trade-off between the threshold and removal of Plus would have led to few grumbles but nothing major. Instead, they got greedy.) As for the splash screen, my hope is that they realize it should not be a major issue to unlock that optional feature in older versions of Unity since it was simply a greyed out option if you were on personal; the functionality was already built in for Pro and Plus subscribers. At least for current LTS years, it would be great to remove that - more so for Unity's benefit (as Mike has consistently discussed) than ours.

[@Slayerthegreat010]

I left unity, this is great news but I will not be coming back. This is more to do with the fact that Unity can not compare to some of the tools coming from Unreal.

[@reahreic7698]

Unity's UI tools beat the ever-loving s*** out of UMG. The UE renderer however beats the hell out of HDRP/URP.

[@Deadener]

@@reahreic7698 Not to mention the huge amount of third party tools, which often allow you to get support directly from the developer. All the shiny stuff Unreal has shown off in the last couple years has been entirely irrelevant to the fidelity of games I make.

[@mousepotatodoesstuff]

Too late. Already got used to Godot and the scene system alone is an order of magnitude better than Unity's.

[@lx2222x]

Unity really like really needs an overhaul of the whole engine. The current state is just a mess. They should rewrite this thing once and for good

[@ZedDevStuff]

Then at that point they're just gonna lose everyone since it won't be unity anymore, just another engine. Like really, unless they keep the exact same API and behaviors, it would just kill every fucking asset and project

[@nathanfranck5822]

Totally. It really used to be the case that you could open a new project, import a bunch of assets and make a high quality game. Now a days, the whole spirit of "unity" is muddled with tonnes of custom render pipelines, attempts at ECS which creates a whole new layer of insanity in the UI and code. It should just be rebuilt with high-performance and modern graphics rendering from the get-go, and allow users to down-grade features for mobile and web. The overhaul should be communicated with Asset creators to ensure everyone is on the same page and users can expect a happy community of developers ready to sell you high quality assets that work out of the box to make performant and dignified games. Right now it's like Mad Max

[@dksamaritan5200]

@@nathanfranck5822 That's rubbish, there aren't "tonnes" of render pipelines. There are two that you should use, Universal for low graphics games and mobile, HDRP for High fidelity graphic games. the in-built render pipeline is for legacy compatibility and shouldn't be used. It's that simple. As for ECS, that's optional, you don't have to use it.

[@Deadener]

@@dksamaritan5200 Lol I'll be using BRP until it rusts out of the engine. The SRPs are a mess.

[@nathanfranck5822]

@@dksamaritan5200 That's fine, but it fragments the community and the Asset Store who's vibrance is the main selling point of Unity

[@crummymudd8625]

I'm a hobbyist, trying to learn game dev, and I'll finish one of my abandoned projects in Unity. But the fee motivated me to to try Unreal, and it was like "wow! that's how good my game could look out of the box ??"

[@SkilledArrow]

Switched to Godot and absolutely love it.. except I wish it was more performant.

[@igorthelight]

If you are making 2D game - try Compatibility renderer ;-)

[@Summer_and_Rain]

It will most likely come with time :)

[@nathanfranck5822]

Godot has over 10k unaddressed issues on Github (which is insane). Game devs want to consoom Godot and not contribute. If you look at the code, it's a mess, at least for the Editor. This is why we pay companies to make high quality performant code...

[@charlieking7600]

​@@Summer_and_Rainit's been more than decade. And Godot still doesn't have performant 3D.

[@arocomisgamusclademork1603]

It sucks can't make 3d performance game in Godot

[@philippekunzle8233]

I am the solo developer of Control Tower VR on Quest. I am not making much sales, so that change last year didn’t affect me but pissed me off. I was ready to switch to another Engine even though I really enjoy developing on Unity. But they cleaned house and reverted their screw up, so I am giving them another chance. I am actually planning for a 2nd title using Unity right now.

[@Alahmnat]

Seems like somebody saw the GMTK game jam stats...

[@charlieking7600]

If only game jam junk really converted to products.

[@DefaultPotato]

@@charlieking7600 But great ideas and concepts come from the game jams.

[@fjh89]

​@@charlieking7600It's more of a pipeline thing, it creates interest in indie developers that start to learn on an engine, that then go on to become professional developers or to enterprise. If your engine is losing market share on an indie game jam, it may spiral as more people look for other game engines, train on them and they lose that hobby to professional developer pipeline. I think both the game jam and Brackys coming out of retirement to teach Godot probably motivated them, along with losing both market share and developers.

[@Chocolate-wb1bu]

Band-aids don't remove scars. The fact that they tried to nickel and dime their costumer base in a complete overreach just like plenty of other software companies nowadays is not forgotten. Now that many people (myself included) took time to familiarize themselves with free software like Godot, Blender, Krita, Inkscape, Armorpaint, Materialmaker etc. there is little reason to go back. Do i miss some features from pro-software suits? Sure, but open-source has matured enough that it is perfectly usable for anything ranging from Solodev to AA.

[@LonelyAncient]

and yet even with the new revenue split they are unprofitable according to their investor reports (2023 Q2's ones was $193M, 2024 Q2 was $126M definitely better but still not profitable.). I wonder what their next money making scheme would be...

[@Yee-Dev]

They'll probably try to advertise Muse.

[@MMuraseofSandvich]

A bunch of people up and down their org chart told them it was a terrible idea. I'm confident their attorneys told them it was a lawsuit waiting to happen, assuming they ever ran the updated EULA with them. They did it anyway. That, folks, is not leadership, it's "arrogance and stupidity in the same package, how efficient of them." Canceling the fee now (some users are still impacted from what I've seen) is like closing the barn door after the horses have left and the farm burned down. Can they regain trust from developers? Anything's possible, but at a minimum it would require consistent leadership in a different direction, and I don't think their investors will be happy about that.

[@nathanmiguel76]

Some time later: Runtime fee is back with a new look Trust already died

[@FeriFerdinan-i7o]

I've heard that all the executives involved in the runtime fee fiasco have already been replaced. That's why they were able to cancel the runtime fee now.

[@zeroryuk4323]

Pretty late. I think most people they are trying to get back are using a different engine now. The runtime fee just introduced people to trying out another engine like Unreal and help them realize how much better of an engine that one is. Godot is another good one and will never have any issues that unity is having with its monetization.

[@ivanonlyone7160]

Engine swappers will never be satisfied to go back

[@NeverendingRevolution]

As someone who still uses Unity this has no effect on me at all, because I was never going to hit even $100k in revenue, let alone $200k. In the dream that it would affect me, if they kept it, then my revenue would have been such that it wouldn't have really become a problem in all likelihood. Still, I do prefer this new deal in that dream scenario where this somehow matters.

[@headerbidding]

There’s a small error in the part you talked about exec change, you mentioned Applovin, but it’s actually IronSource.

[@gamefromscratch]

Ah yes my bad for sure there

[@imraan_alam]

Brackeys is dead again

[@zionen01]

Their screw up was really hiring ex-EA ceo to run the ship, all mistakes came after. But since then got to give them credit for making all the right moves. They should have a publishing arm to make money and promote their engine.

[@KingThrillgore]

So nice Unity noticed they didnt have any customers.

[@ivanonlyone7160]

I wouldn't say so, the engine swappers are usually beginners who don't have any games made in the engine. Those who made a bunch of games in Unity, stayed with Unity

[@TranquilMarmot]

@@ivanonlyone7160 Yeah, especially established studios who want to reuse assets/code from previous projects.

[@TheMeanArena]

What makes them think they'll get new one's increasing the price of licenses? They're done!

[@firerunnew]

It's too late, many people have become familiar with the Godot engine and fell in love with it

[@harryworner1990]

Even though I work with Unreal Engine in my official role, Unity will always remain my top choice for personal projects. I'm one of those who didn’t switch to Godot, and I still develop my solo projects using Unity during my free time. It was undeniably a massive mistake by Unity's leadership last year, and while it was a blow, there’s a silver lining - their misstep has rapidly propelled Godot toward becoming one of the most popular engines. Now, Unity’s leadership is in a tough spot, and they’ll need to work hard to regain developers’ trust by offering better conditions and services. Otherwise, the consequences could be even worse. They simply can’t afford another serious misstep.

[@czarsquid855]

Unity is fighting a losing battle now. No reasonable person is going to trust a company that was willing to rugpull on their users without consent. It should not have taken a whole year to roll it back.

[@Deadener]

Yep, for a solo developer making 3D games, there really isn't an alternative to Unity, and it's massive selection of third-party tools. Only Unreal comes close, but it's scripting paradigm is murder for a solo dev.

[@charliegnu]

For sure. Godot has its wheels turning now and it won't stop. Several companies have invested/donated to Godot as well so it can only become better over time.

[@TheMeanArena]

Unity is fine for hobbyists and indie devs on Steam using Personal. Everything else just isn't worth the cost. Especially now with the price increase.

[@santiagoacosta3372]

The CEO definitely did this whole charade to manipulate the prices of the stock and get super wealthy

[@BabbyGames17]

Unity Has done a very good thing year ago BCZ it made me to switch to ue5 and that's the best thing i done in my life and now Now i laugh at unity

[@PatGunn]

I had the misfortune of having bought some stock in the company before all this dumb stuff happened; the stock lost basically all value.

[@ritpop]

Jesus christ, has been an year????

[@TanukiDigital]

I know, time is on fast forward.

[@nialltracey2599]

I was away from Unity because I didn't think it was worth my time trying to get my skills back due to the run-time fee. Hadn't started learning Godot or UE though. This is a massive reassurance to me and I might get back into Unity and start practicing again...

[@ezioassassin2028]

The runtime fee prevented me from updating my project to Unity 6. Now that they are dropping it all together, I can finally update and get access to the new features

[@TwilightWolf032]

This former EA Games CEO that took Unity to make this extremely stupid decision and all the executives involved should be blacklisted from the industry and never be allowed in positions of power of anything ever again!

[@EmergentGameDev]

As someone who stuck with Unity but keeping below version 6 to avoid the runtime fee despite some grievances with how this situation was handled, i'm glad the Runtime fee is gone! I can now consider upgrading to a newer version of the engine for my project in the future. The new price increases are reasonable and fair.

[@WeenieWalkerGames]

Yeah, I hadn't taken the plunge yet to leave, but was very clearly sticking with old versions and staying the heck away from the new fees - even if they would never ever apply to me. I'll give it a bit just to make sure there are no hidden "gotchas" but if not, I'll try out Unity 6 and keep an eye on Godot to see how it improves.

[@dadlord689]

As fair as Adobe and as reasonable as Microsoft

[@Astra060]

Game Engines are tools. Learning to use important tools is best approach

[@Vorundor]

I was so into Unity and then took a hiatus and in that time, they ruined it all. Now I'm too involved in Godot to go back, glad they killed the fee though.

[@anonymous_protagonist]

Never trust a for-profit company to not eventually screw you over for profit. Godot for the win.

[@jackie4chan]

Nope. I stay with godot.

[@DAG_42]

I'm solo and chose unreal over unity for my current project because unreal was so much more powerful. After the unity dumpster fire I'm committed to steer clear. Never unity.

[@shacham6]

Unity would've gladly doubled down on the Runtime Fee. They just never in a million years expected developers and studios to actually jump ship. We owe this win to Godot for being as good as it was, and for being open source.

[@xarvh]

The previous CEO still has an overpaid job somewhere in the company. If you did this kind of damage as a normal employee, you'd be fired and would never find a job again.

[@BrianH1988]

Considering making a game, wouldn't touch Unity for life nor limb. Godot and open source for the win!

[@dusknone]

An engine for investors instead of developers. Yikes.

[@DarkDao]

Move to Godot's C# was relatively easy and now I see no reason to return back to Unity. Only thing that really makes me long for it is its asset store, especially advanced things like Chris Thorne's floating origin frameworks.

[@supremefox1018]

i dont know why ppl say i dont want to return to unity , and i unity is losing its developpers... the ppl that left unity are devs that didnt even make anything in unity, the devs that did however stayed in unity and arent even affected by anything

[@Mr76Pontiac]

I don't think any company, small or large, who have put significant effort into moving to another engine is going to walk back a year (or so) worth of work is going to come back at least on existing and currently in development. There's going to be many companies, just ignoring the work effort involved to re-revert, that just won't go back because of trust. This is an absolute fantastic thing. Being a retro enthusiast, having to pay for games out of my pocket when someone buys my game and I have to pay a fee to Unity when I ultimately decide to charge $1.00 for the game at the 10 year mark, just seems idiotic to me. If I were a game developer, and if I did publish anything, I would have walked away. Although I am a software developer, systems administrator, network guru, and absolutely love PC tech new and old, I'm not a game designer. I'm a utility/application designer and developer. If I did tip my toe in Unitys ecosystem, I would have jumped out of the water when the crocodile tried to take my leg.

[@HenryLoenwind]

"Hey guys, remember that perpetual license we had that we cancelled last year even though we had promised that wouldn't be possible? We have a new one and we promise we won't break our promise to never retroactively cancel it again. Trust us." Um. No.

[@justlimeguy]

Yay! It still takes 30 minutea to open a project!!

[@johnolsson2923]

What kind of mega project do you have lol?

[@justlimeguy]

@@johnolsson2923 fluppy birb

[@adarsh_1]

It only takes longer times for creating projects. Opening an existing project shouldn't be taking that long.

[@yeost187]

@@adarsh_1Agreed. I hate it when people exaggerate things to stupid levels, that aren't real. I am no longer a Unity person, but they are basically saying they don't know how to customize what modules that get used, and just kept the default, plus the extra junk they added later, making it a clunky mess.

[@johnolsson2923]

@@justlimeguy thats actually a great title for a game

[@JeremyGardnerVideo]

Aside from an absolute guarantee that nothing like the runtime fee fiasco will never happen again, I'm not sure what more Unity could do to regain trust. I am now seriously considering switching back to Unity, because it was my favorite engine and I loved using C#. I am not sure I will switch back yet, but it is no longer completely out of the question that I would. I am cautiously optimistic that this means Unity is starting a comeback tour!

[@MathyFey]

Good that they did it, just hope people won't switch back to unity only because of comfort tho.

[@nathanfranck5822]

Why not?

[@ivanonlyone7160]

Why do you care if they switch back?