Unity reportedly considering cap on hugely controversial per-install fees
A week after Unity announced dramatic changes to its Unity Engine business model - drawing immediate and widespread con…
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Now though, Bloomberg reports that Unity is looking to calm development criticism by capping fees at 4% of a game's revenue for customers making over $1m. It's also now saying installs will be calculated based on a developer's self-reported data rather than Unity's own nebulous estimate methodology. Whether that'll be enough to assuage concerns and prevent a mass exodus to other game engines such as Unreal and Godot remains to be seen; a cap is far from the fee reversal many developers have been calling for since last week, and it's unclear if Unity plans to offer concessions and introduce similar caps for developers making less than $1m.
Presumably at least some of those lingering questions will be answered when Unity makes its planned changes public - although there's currently no indication of how long that might take. Executives reportedly told employees at today's meeting that the company wasn't yet ready to make a public announcement as it was still running the changes by partners and didn't want a repeat of last week's communications disaster.
Elsewhere in today's meeting, several employees reporteldy asked Unity leadership how the company could regain trust among developers following last week's catastrophic announcement - trust that was further eroded when it was discovered Unity had quietly altered its Terms of Service in April to remove a clause that would let developers stick with previous versions of the document if updates adversely impacted their rights - to which executives said Unity must "show, not tell" and handle future communications more carefully.
