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Freeman [soylentnews.org] writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/09/unity-makes-major-changes-to-controversial-install-fee-program/ [arstechnica.com]

Unity has made major changes to the per-install Runtime Fee program it announced last week and made apologies for a policy that united large swathes of the game development community in anger [arstechnica.com].

In a new blog post [unity.com], Unity now says that projects made on current and earlier versions of Unity will not be subject to the new runtime fee structure. Only projects that upgrade to a new "Long Term Support" (LTS) version of Unity starting in 2024 and beyond will have to pay the charges, the company says.

This change should eliminate at least some of the legal confusion [arstechnica.com] over projects started under one set of terms being moved to a new set unilaterally. Unity has also restored a GitHub page [github.com] that was set up in 2019 to help developers track Terms of Service changes and reinstated its commitment that "you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity editor you are using – as long as you keep using that version."
[...]
Under the newly announced plan, runtime fees will not apply to any projects made on the Unity Personal tier, which will remain completely free. In addition, Unity Personal projects will now be able to stay on that free tier until the developer behind them makes $200,000 in annual revenue, an increase from the previous $100,000 revenue cap. And Personal tier projects will no longer be required to put a "Made with Unity" splash screen at the start of play.

In addition, Unity now says the new runtime fees will only be incurred for projects that have reached $1 million in revenue in the last 12 months and 1 million "initial engagements" in their lifetime.
[...]
"Unity did well here," 3D Realms co-founder and current indie developer [georgebroussard.itch.io] George Broussard added [twitter.com]. "Sort of nailed it. This is more of a walk back than anyone could have expected."

"Unity fixed all the major issues (except trust), so it's a possibility to use again in the future," indie developer Radiangames wrote [twitter.com]. "Uninstalling Godot and Unreal and getting back to work on Instruments [steampowered.com]."

Others were less forgiving. "Unity's updated policy can be classified as the textbook definition of, 'We didn't actually hear you, and we don't care what you wanted,'" Cerulean and Drunk Robot Games engineer RedVonix wrote on social media [twitter.com]. "We'll never ship a Unity game of our own again..." they added [twitter.com].

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