Unity Is Falling Apart. What Does That Mean for Gamers?

If you keep even a passing eye on the gaming industry, you’ve probably heard about this: Unity did something big, momentous, history-making, and arguably very dumb. (What? I’m not going to sugar-coat it.) Specifically, the company changed its pricing model in a way that especially hurts its largest user base: indie and mobile game developers.

Your favorite games and game developers may well be affected by this, and not for the better. If you want to know what the heck Unity is, why everyone’s mad about it, and what this means for you, read on.

What Is a Game Engine?

If you already know what a game engine is, you can skip to the next section. If you don’t know how games are made but you just like to play them, this is what you need to know: a game engine is basically a bunch of code that makes it easier and faster to develop games. This bunch of code may also come with some graphical apps to make the process even easier.

Here’s an example from an open source engine called Godot:

Engines can streamline the process of creating everything from lighting, to animation, to terrain generation, in-game physics, and more. For that reason, you want a good one with lots of useful features. Some companies make their own, others use an engine created by a third party, like Unreal, Godot, or Unity.

What Happened with Unity

In the Beginning

Let’s be clear: Unity was incredibly popular, right up until September 12th, 2023. In fact, it was just about everywhere. You see, Unity can be used to make both 2D and 3D games, and you can export those games for every platform, including PCs, consoles, and smartphones. You can even play Unity games in a browser, just like the Flash games of yore.

What’s more, Unity started out with a great free plan. Any aspiring game developer could start building their game without paying a dime. Once the game started to make money, Unity would charge a monthly fee per person on the team, depending on how much money the company was making. This made it almost risk-free to experiment with Unity, at least in terms of fees.

As such, Unity’s popularity with independent game developers and small publishers skyrocketed over time. It was used for visual novels, freemium mobile games, in-depth RPGs, and more. 

See also: any other game that starts with a logo that looks like this.

The Fall

On September 12, 2023, Unity announced a change in their monetization strategy. In addition to not-so-cheap fees, Unity intends to charge an additional fee every time a Unity-based game is installed by the end user.

And it’s not just the first installation. The original plan called for this charge to be made every time a user installed the game, reinstalled the game, or installed the same game on a different device.

Here’s the general breakdown of the fees:

The upshot is that developers on the Personal and Plus plans (independent developers, usually), would be required to pay 20 cents every time the game is installed. Developers on more expensive plans would pay less, but even they are not immune.

This presents us with several terrible scenarios. 

Developers listed several more potential issues, including:

• Piracy: would pirated downloads count?
• Games being rediscovered and reinstalled by their own fan base
• Netflix-for-games style services such as Xbox’s Game Pass, and Playstation’s PS Plus: who’s going to eat the cost for those installs?
• Will updates be tracked as reinstalls?

And of course, there was the big question: how is this all being tracked? Does every Unity-based game “phone home?” Exactly how are these numbers going to be calculated? And if they have already been collecting data on existing game installs (yes, those will count towards the “threshold”) without the users’ consent, is that not a violation of the GDPR?

The discussion has been varied and fierce, and most of it cannot be quoted in this article without censoring a significant number of words. That should give you some idea of the sentiment here. What must be noted, however, is that this rage isn’t about a simple, inconvenient price increase.

These changes are essentially guaranteed to put a large number of developers out of business, if they stay with Unity.

Well, game developers risk going out of business. Funny story: Unity-based applications for other industries, including education and gambling (there’s a combo) will not be subject to these fees.

Concessions

It didn’t take long for Unity to “regroup” and make a few concessions. For one, they decided that reinstalls will no longer have charges attached. They also promised that their anti-fraud tools would be on the lookout for pirated copies of games, and that those would not be counted either.

They also said that games on Game Pass and PS+ would not be charged… to the devs. The implication seems to be that Microsoft and Sony will eat the fees. However, I have seen no confirmation from either company that this will actually happen.

The Plan Still Has Flaws

In short, the concessions offered don’t do enough to ease the pain. The fees for initial installs are still enough to cripple some small studios, which often have significant overhead costs. The cost for reinstalling games was more of a salt-in-the-wound thing, and not the whole of the problem.

What’s more, several developers have asked for confirmation about how app installs will be tracked. 

To clear this up, “proprietary data model” means that Unity is, at best, making an educated guess about how many times a specific game gets downloaded and installed. They do not have exact numbers. Game developers might get overcharged or undercharged, but at no point will they be charged correctly, except by happy accident.

It’s a heck of a way to do business, and it’s all set to be implemented on January 1, 2024.

Why Would Unity Do This?

Well, money. That’s the short answer of course. Unity wants to make more money as a company, and I think that’s fair. This is just one of the worst possible ways to make that happen. It’s a known fact that Unity has been hemorrhaging money for years, and this could well be an attempt to repair the financial damage.

There are apparently ways to waive 80-100% of the fees if you use some of Unity’s other services, leading many to believe that this is a way to “force” devs further into the Unity ecosystem.

There is also a small matter that has raised some eyebrows, however. It has been reported in a few places that several members of Unity’s upper management have sold their stocks in the company. Some of these sales happened as recently as September 6th, 2023, only 6 days before the announcement of the installation fees.

What This Means for Developers

Developers risk losing revenue from previously-released Unity-based games. It’s likely that they will delist a number of their older titles to prevent losses. The developers behind Cult of the Lamb said as much in a tweet that reads,

“Buy Cult of the Lamb now, cause we’re deleting it on Jan 1st. 😘”

(Update: The devs have since clarified that this was a joke, but still… they’re not happy.)

Games will be delayed as developers spend many man-hours learning a new engine. Game engines are not made equal, and people with years of Unity experience will have to relearn much. Previously Unity-only studios have officially abandoned the engine, and more will follow.

The pitching process will change too. Devolver Digital, the publisher behind many acclaimed games, has said to specify what engine is being used in any pitch. Other publishers have said they won’t publish Unity games at all.

What This Means for Gamers

So what does this all mean for you? Well, if there are any Unity-based games you’ve been meaning to buy, buy them now. Many of those games will be delisted, and others will simply go unsupported as developers, ironically, attempt to discourage sales.

This will almost certainly be true of freemium games in particular.

Games that you have anticipated will see delays, as mentioned before, and some projects will never see the light of day. 

What This Means for Unity

I wouldn’t be surprised if we see some class action lawsuits coming. There is some buzz, mostly rumor at this point, of exactly that. 

As for the company itself, there have been multiple reports (all anonymous sources for obvious reasons) that the rank and file Unity employees are not happy with this turn of events. It’s likely that morale is low. On the management side of things, the senior management’s stock-dumping doesn’t look like a vote of confidence in the company.

Worst of all is that even if they walked back this whole decision right now, it wouldn’t make a big difference. There has been a near-complete loss of trust in Unity, and many devs will never, ever touch the engine again. After all, they’ve done this once; who’s to say they won’t try it again?

What This Means for the Gaming Industry as a Whole

When massive shifts in the tech world happen, it can sometimes be hard for people to pinpoint the exact cause. In this case, it’s incredibly easy. Unity went and made everybody mad. Developers, publishers, obsessive gamers like myself… we can all see it.

Given the difficulties and time sink involved in creating your own engine, we’ll likely see a mass migration of developers to other existing engines. Unreal is certainly going to see a bump in usage. Additionally, the aforementioned Godot engine is experiencing a surge in interest, and that makes my open-source loving heart happy.

I strongly believe that the industry could benefit from a game engine that does for game development what Blender did for open source 3D graphics. In short, if you’re building a game with Godot and the main Godot developers do something you don’t like, you can just create a fork and boom! You have your very own engine.

I think we’ll see a shift towards using more open source tech in games, and that’s a good thing.

Conclusion

As a gamer and acquaintance to several game developers, this whole thing makes me sad and frustrated because it’s dumb. While Unity has claimed this change will “only affect successful developers” (yeah… their words), it is far more likely to cheat developers of potential success.

Worse, what was once a beloved bit of tech is likely to disappear forever. Unity had its technological issues, but it was the foundation for much innovation and experimentation in the indie space, and that’s all over.

It didn’t have to be over.

But hey, Godot is looking better and better. Seeing where that goes is going to be fun.

Last-minute author’s note: In a recent update, the Unity team has promised that changes will be made to the policy. The precise nature of these changes is unknown, and we’ll update this article if the revised policy significantly alters the conclusions presented herein. We’ll also include any updated information regarding the fees.