Unity cancels its much-hated Runtime Fee, opting for traditional price increases instead

In a big step by new CEO Matthew Bromberg, Unity is canceling its much-hated Runtime Fee that stirred a developer revolt.

This is a big step toward reconciliation with the company’s base of game developers. On the other hand, it’s a no brainer for the new CEO as the imposition and then dialing back of the Runtime Fee got the former CEO fired last fall.

The company is, however, signaling that it will have price increases that will happen in a more traditional way, rather than with the unpredictable Runtime Fee structure. Unity Pro will cost 8% more for mid-size customers and Unity Enterprise will cost 25% more for the highest-level customers. Those increases will go into effect on January 1, 2025.

In a “message to our community,” Bromberg wrote that the company canceled the fee — which escalated payments to Unity the more successful games were — after “deep consultation with our community, customers, and partners. (Bromberg is a speaker at our GamesBeat Next event happening on October 28-29 in San Francisco; you can use the code gbn24dean for 25% off).

“We are really excited about re-dedicating ourselves to be great partners and getting back to our core mission,” said Bromberg in an exclusive interview with GamesBeat.

He said he spent weeks talking to more than 100 customers and polling more to get their opinions.

“What I what we universally heard from customers, is that they really want Unity to be strong and be able to to invest, but they want us to approach them as partners. And they want simple, predictable pricing, and that’s great. So that’s what we’re doing.”

The cancellation is 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,” Bromberg said in a statement.

He added, “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.”

He said those increases “needn’t come in a novel and controversial new form.”

That was a reference to the announcement of the Runtime Fee in September 2023. Customers with billions of installs — as well as many small devs — revolted and vowed to boycott Unity. The fee Former CEO John Riccitiello had to resign after the firestorm of complaints and Unity modified the fee but did not entirely get rid of it. Bromberg, former COO of Zynga, was named as the replacement, and now he’s taking further action.

After the outcry last fall, Unity rolled back part of the Runtime Fee, but now it’s getting rid of it altogether.

“We wanted to be was a place where everybody could really easily understand and track and predict how they were going to pay us, and how we could do business with them,” he said. “You can’t do you can’t do business when you’re sideways with your customers. And we want to be in a spirit of partnership with them. We want to be aligned with them, and this new model will do that.”

Unity customers reacted negatively because the Runtime Fee was based on how many people played a game, regardless in some ways of how well it monetized. So customers didn’t know how much they would pay Unity for the engine until a game had been in the market for a year. That made the fee total unpredictable.

“It was complicated, and it was it was hard to budget and plan for, and no customer wants that,” Bromberg said.

And while Unity is rolling back the Runtime Fee, it has still concluded that price increases are necessary for its larger customers.

“We will be making some price increases. And what we’ve heard customers tell us is that as long as we hold up our side of the market, which is again delivering well performing stable products and supporting them properly, they understand that that price increases are sometimes a part of landscape.”

The company is planning to launch its Unity 6 game engine shortly, and it will have its Unity developer event next week in Barcelona, Spain. With the timing of price increases going into effect across the board for Unity on January 1 or when a contract needs to be renewed after that, there is now “no disincentive to embrace Unity 6,” Bromberg said.

In the past, he said there was a disincentive to adopt Unity 6.

“We don’t want that. We want everyone to embrace Unity 6. And now they can do that without without any barriers,” he said.

Bromberg said the aim was to deliver value at a fair price in the right way so that developers will continue to feel comfortable building their business over the long term with Unity as a 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,” Bromberg said. “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.”

As noted, the larger developers will bear the cost of the price increase, while Unity is increasing the threshold for small developers, before they have to pay, from $100,000 to $200,000. For the larger enterprise version devs, Bromberg said, “We have effectively individual relationships with each of those customers. They usually buy lots of different products and services from us, so we’ll we will end up having individual conversations with each of us.”

Going forward, Bromberg offered an update on the new pricing structure:

• Unity Personal: As announced last year, Unity Personal will remain free, and Unity will be doubling the current revenue and funding ceiling from $100,000 to $200,000 This means more of devs 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. Bromberg said Unity wants to increase the number of people who could use Unity for free.
• Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: Unity will 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.
• Unity Pro: An 8% subscription price increase to $2,200 annually per seat will apply to Unity Pro. Unity Pro will be required for customers with more than $200,000 of total annual revenue and funding. This is up from $100,000 before, and it has been a couple of years since the last Pro price increase.
• Unity Enterprise: A 25% subscription price increase will apply to Unity Enterprise. Unity Enterprise will be required for customers with more than $25 million of total annual revenue and funding. A minimum subscription requirement may also apply. Because this set of the largest customers have unique needs and use many of our products and services, the company will be contacting everyone in the days ahead to discuss customized packages.

Bromberg said, “From this point forward, it’s our intention to revert to a more traditional cycle of considering any potential price increases only on an annual basis. Our commitment remains that if we change the Editor software terms in ways that impact you, you may continue using your current version of the software under the previously agreed terms as long as you keep using that version.”

The company updated this commitment last year on its GitHub repository and at unity.com/legal. Devleopers can read more about all the details of the 2025 pricing changes here.

“Canceling the Runtime Fee for games and instituting these pricing changes will allow us to continue investing to improve game development for everyone while also being better partners. Thank you all for your trust and continued support. We look forward to many more years of making great games together,” Bromberg said.

In short, the company is canceling the Runtime Fee effective immediately and is announcing price increases for our Pro (8%) and Enterprise (25%) licenses, effective Jan 1, 2025 and the start of an annual price increase cycle.

Unity has 4,700 employees and Bromberg said he does not anticipate major changes to that as a result of this price change.

Bromberg said the new pricing is more simple and predictable and it is “going to be more than sufficient” to enable us to invest in products and grow the company, he said.

Regarding communication, Bromberg said, “We made many calls. We spoke to probably 100 customers in advance to get their thoughts before we solidified these ideas. We really want to be a different company. We want to be a company that listens better, and as I said, is a better partner. And then that begins with with listening, both to our own employees as well as” customers.

“As our customers become more successful and make more games, we’re going to grow with them,” Bromberg said.

Bromberg acknowledged that hypercasual game companies were hit hard in particular by the Runtime Fee, which scaled up in dollars the more users a game got. He spent time talking to those hypercasual game company CEOs to understand their reactions. He noted the boycotts had stopped.

“This is an opportunity for us to be a new Unity and to start fresh. So it is our hope and expectation that it will give us the opportunity to reconnect with customers and do more business with them,” he said.

In conclusion, Bromberg said, “The thing we really wanted to make sure of is, if we want to be a new Unity, we have to behave differently. And so we wanted to make sure that any big change we make that impact our customers, our ecosystem, we do in deep conversation, and that’s what we’re going to do going forward,” he said.