If you, like me are an indie game developer, and you use the Unity engine, you may have heard of their plans to charge money to game developers every time one of their games is downloaded. This is called the Unity Runtime Fee.

We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that applies to certain Unity subscription plans based on per-game installs across any Unity-supported game platform. Creators only pay once per download.

The above is an excerpt from Unity's FAQ pages, under "What is the Unity Runtime Fee?"

My understanding of these changes is limited, as I only found out about them today, but from what I know from looking at the FAQ, these changes do apply to users of the Unity personal licence, which includes me.

These changes are occuring on the 1st of January, 2024, and will apply only to games that have made $200, 000 USD (£161, 188 GBP, $310, 775 AUD) in the last year (2023), and have had at least 200, 000 installs throughout its lifetime (Time since it was published).

I am considering switching over to using Unreal Engine to create my games, however:

THIS DOES NOT MEAN I AM CANCELLING FIVE NIGHTS AT CARROT'S!

This game will continue to be made in Unity, as it is a Five Nights at Freddy's fan game and will not be sold for any cost, therefore it is not eligible for the Unity Runtime Fee's terms.

Right. I'm done talking about this for now but if you have any questions, just leave a comment and i'll try to reply.

Fingers crossed on behalf of all indie Unity developers that they do not end up fully implementing this.