The Unity update (Patreon)

Thanks to tireless campaigning from across the game development scene, Unity has massively backpedaled on its controversial new pricing model.

The new version (read it here) fixes the main issues with the original announcement:

The threshold has been increased to only impact games that see at least one million downloads and $1 million revenue (from the last 12 months), so truly only the most successful games will be affected.

You can pick whether to be charged by either revenue or initial installs - whichever is lower. And this data is now self-reported, meaning that developers are in charge of tracking sales / installs rather than Unity. This removes the worry of getting surprise charges from Unity.

And most importantly, the changes are no longer retroactive. Games already on sale won't be affected, and neither will games made on versions of the Unity editor released before this fee update. 

It's a much more palatable system, and I thank Unity for listening to the community and making these changes.

But I am certainly still wary. The fact that Unity ever felt it had a right to retroactively change its payment model is an unbelievable worry for game developers. There have long been signs that Unity cares more about appeasing its shareholders than supporting game makers - and this sorry, embarrassing affair is the loudest signal yet.

So I'm glad that I'll still be able to use Unity for projects going forward. It would have been awful to have to give up on such a useful and powerful game engine. But I'm also looking forward to learning other engines too. 

For now, though, I'll be finally getting back into game development in October after a long time away. I've got some other videos up my sleeve so the channel isn't completely dead while I work on the game - and I'll have some progress to share on the development in early November.

Cheers!

Mark