Video game developers are up in arms over a price increase announced by Unity Software (U) -) on Sept. 12, which they say will affect the entire industry.
The change in question concerns the pricing model for use of the Unity Engine, the software backbone of a wide array of popular mobile games like "Pokemon Go" and "Crossy Road", as well as independently published video games like "Cuphead."
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Under the plan set to take effect next year, developers who use Unity’s free tier of development services to create games will be charged $0.20 every time someone downloads and installs a game on their device once it reaches a threshold of 200,000 downloads and earns $200,000 in revenue.
Prior to this proposal, video game studios both large and small utilized the Unity Engine, which was offered for free by Unity and supported by subscriptions of higher tier development services and an integrated advertising platform.
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The low cost associated with developing games with Unity is key to the success of popular titles such as "Among Us", a multiplatform party game that enjoyed meteoric success during the Covid with both casual gamers and dedicated gaming streamers.
"Among Us" developer Innersloth said in a tweet dated Sept. 12 that the fee model proposed by Unity “would harm not only us, but fellow game studios of all budgets and sizes.”
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One of the biggest concerns raised by developers: how bad actors targeting a specific game developer or studio can use this new model maliciously in an act similar to “review bombing,” where games featuring progressive elements such as women and queer characters or the ability to choose pronouns are bombarded with negative user reviews on websites like Metacritic.
Game developer Rami Ismail noted the potential development of this phenomenon, tweeting, “I can tell you right now that the folks at risk of this are women devs, queer devs, trans devs, devs of colour, devs pushing for accessibility, devs pushing for inclusion - we've seen countless malicious actors work together to tank their game scores or ratings.”
Unity told Axios that they would “only charge [developers] for an initial installation,” noting that multiple uninstalling and reinstalling of a game would not apply towards their new fee model. In addition, studios who offer games as part of subscription services such as Xbox Game Pass will not be subject to the fees. However, the distributors of such games (in Game Pass's case, Microsoft) will be charged accordingly.
In the same statement, Unity executive Marc Whitten said that “about 10% of Unity's developers will wind up having to pay any fees, given the thresholds games need to hit.”
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