Unity’s leaked install fee concessions include a fee cap, self-reporting, and end to retroactivity

September 19, 2023 9:30 AM

As we’ve been reporting, Unity upended the entire gaming industry last week by announcing crushing new per-game-install fees for developers, a decision that not only threatened to incapacitate small-to-midsize dev houses but also demolished studio trust for Unity, given that the fees were imposed in defiance of the existing licensing agreements and terms of service (which Unity tried to memoryhole).

By Sunday evening, the company was making half-apologies on social media, telling developers it “will be making changes to the policy” – to be disclosed “in a couple of days.” While a formal announcement is still forthcoming, we’re already catching glimpses of what it will entail thanks to leaks of an all-hands meeting at Unity published by Bloomberg.

Apparently, Unity execs are considering capping fees at 4%, abandoning its attempt to leverage supposed “proprietary technology” to determine the install count (it’ll rely on user reporting instead), and agreeing not to make these fees retroactive (which probably wasn’t going to hold up in court anyway).

The proposals are minimal and seem unlikely to shift public opinion on the move; it’s possible only a full reversal would do that, and it’s clearly not coming, as Unity boss John Riccitiello told workers there isn’t “any version of this that would have gone down a whole lot differently than what happened” as it’s a “massively transformational change to [its] business model.” Oh, it’s massively transformational all right.