Popular game engine provider Unity made some tweaks to its recent pricing model after a furious backlash from hundreds of game developers who rely on the engine for their video games.
Unity provides a game engine that offers a flexible platform that is simple enough for new game developers, but robust enough for professional teams.
The game engine can be used to compile games for multiple operating systems including Apple’s iOS, and Android, as well as PCs and console gaming systems.
It is estimated that 40% of games use the Unity game engine in some way.
But that hasn’t translated to dollars for Unity, that is until early September when the company said it would begin to charge a per-install fee for popular games that met certain thresholds.
This announcement was met with an outcry from hundreds of major game developers calling themselves “The Collective” who are already paying a fee to Unity to use the game engine and saw this revenue-sharing move as a cash grab that would threaten their companies.
This prompted an open letter from Marc Whitten, President of Unity, directed back at the game developers who apologized for not including them earlier in the decision.
The letter also offered some changes to the earlier model including the promise to keep the Personal version of Unity free, and a change to the Pro and Enterprise versions at a flat 2.5% of revenue once a game earns $1 million in a calendar year, or based on number of new players each month.
This did not pacify “The Collective” who are now stating they will start their search for a new game engine on which to base their new games.
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