A hot potato: The shocking revelation of Unity’s new “runtime fee” continues to confuse the gaming world. A mix of confusion, anger and uncertainty is spreading across the internet, and the latest update to Unity’s official FAQs could bring even more chaos – and legal threats – to an already chaotic situation.
Unity Technologies unveiled its controversial Unity Runtime Fee a few days ago and the entire gaming market is still trying to understand what to do with it. Game developers usually protest the additional fee and threaten to abandon the engine or remove their game from stores, as Cult of the Lamb studio Massive Monster did threatened. Unity even closed its offices after a “credible” death threat. An investigation revealed that one of her employees was behind the threat.
Now it seems that Unity is even going to war against platform holders. A new FAQ The update apparently suggests that Unity will bill any “entity that distributes the runtime.”
Unity’s vague statement could be explosive since every single copy of a Unity game contains a Unity Runtime. Therefore, companies offering the most popular digital delivery services across all major gaming platforms would be saddled with a flood of Unity term fee micropayments.
The FAQ in question, which is still online at the time of writing, suggests that companies like Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, Valve and Epic will cover the term fee for each game sale on digital stores on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and PC. So Unity has caused even more confusion as the same FAQ page states that the fee is for developers.
Unity further clarified the fee for developers who are afraid of their games being pirated. The company said it would be happy to work with anyone who has fallen victim to piracy, suggesting that game studios and indie developers will have to prove that non-paying customers have downloaded some of their game runs.
Each new “clarification” from Unity seemingly confirms players’ and developers’ worst fears about the new term fee while becoming even more confusing and complicated than necessary. The company is still experiencing many negative comments, statements and threats against the new business model. The involvement of the “Big Three” of the console market and PC giants like Valve has escalated the situation to unprecedented levels.