Only occurs after the game reaches a certain amount of revenue within the last year. Not defending it this is a terrible change but there is still a degree of wiggle room for free games or VERY small indie games.
Its weird that the moment my game reached that threshold that my studio suddenly became insolvent and wrrapped up, and a very similar but different studio opened in the same offices.
Hope that new studio comes with a whole new set of IP because: “Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated…” and "Each game or app’s cumulative install amount cannot be reset or reduced even if it has been sold, transferred to a new party, changed its name, been republished as a new version… Additionally, a change in publisher or distributor does not reset the cumulative install amount. https://unity.com/runtime-fee
In practice it mostly affect studio making over 1M in sales per year. The download fee only occur on pro users past that threshold. The fee is so ridiculous that they’re basically forcing devs to get pro, but that was kinda already a thing anyway. For studios malong over 1M a year, well they gotta pay up unfortunately. Unfortunately 1M per year ins’t that much for a middle-sized studio, but small studio are barely affected by this change.
True, but then compare it to terraria. Everyone can agree it’s been a massive success. But games like it and stardew valley have an interesting quirk here. People are likely to download them again when they get a new computer. That doesn’t get the dev more money, you bought it once. But many people will redownload to try the newest free final expansion.
Didnt unity already take a bit of the sales? This sounds fucking stupid. Guess im learning Godot now
Not unreal engine?
(I honestly have no clue, they’re the only two I’ve used)
Unity used to take a royalty if you earned over a certain amount, I think it was 100k USD/yr. I couldn’t tell you the exact percentage, but I seem to recall it was significant, similar to your platform fees which on Steam is like 30%
They discontinued that years ago though. Now it’s free if you’re under the $100k threshold, but once you go over you have to upgrade your license at a cost of a couple grand per seat per year.
The per-install fee is taking effect Jan 1, 2024, but I believe you’re still going to have to get an upgraded license after you hit the threshold. This is a fee on top of fees.
