"I'm not sure Unity's really learnt their lesson" - Veteran 3D Developer Adam Frisby on Unity's Pricing Changes

Above: Adam Frisby in the Unity-based Breakroom (with Philip Rosedale)

In case you missed it, after a couple weeks of volcanic pushback against a price increase announcement, Unity on Friday published details amending that quite a bit:

Now, users on the Unity Personal subscription plan will not be charged the new fee, and Unity will increase the revenue cap on games made with that plan to $200,000. Furthermore, any game made with Unity that makes less than $1 million in 12 months will not be subject to the fee. The company is also changing what games can be assessed with the new fee. Previously, the fee would have applied to all games that met the specific download and revenue thresholds. This applied to games both in development and released.

Now Unity is saying that the fee will only apply to games made with the next version of Unity that is expected to launch sometime in 2024.

Emphasis mine. So for example, the much-anticipated, already-in-closed Alpha Second Life mobile app will not be impacted by this new fee.

As for what Unity's new price policy means for developers in general, and metaverse platforms in particular, I reached out to Adam Frisby, CEO of metaverse platform developer Sine Wave Entertainment. Adam's been developing in Unity pretty much since the engine existed, so is the ideal person to analyze the new situation:

"It's the way they should have done this in the beginning," Adam tells me. "No retroactive amendment to terms, that was the element that got everyone up in arms." (Unity's CEO had previously promised not to raise fees.)

But Adam goes on to suggest Unity's walk back doesn't instantly put the company back in the good graces with developers who've come to rely on the 3D engine:

"Obviously no one likes a price rise; but if it means that Unity focuses on the engine as a profit center, they'll stop abandoning it against all the various other side ventures they've tried over the past few years.

"My big concern still however is this is the second time they've tried to amend terms retroactively in 5 years; and the way they went about it this time was especially sneaky.

"I think they've got a lot of work to do to rebuild trust with developers, and I'm not sure they've really learnt their lesson.

"The same people who made this decision, are still making decisions. They're the same people who tried this five years ago.

"It may be the only lesson they've learnt is that there's a boundary on how far their bad behavior can go before people complain, and they're going to be like a cat — constantly testing the limits."

As for metaverse platforms which sell user-generated content: They're already paying Apple, Google, and other platforms a 30% cut — with the new pricing, "the platform might only get 20-30% in which case the fee is 5%-7.5% of their net revenue, that's noticeable. Other platforms take a lot more [revenue] though, so it'll hurt less."

Seems to me this means metaverse platforms now have a strong incentive not to upgrade to Unity 2024 — or start seriously thinking of moving away from Unity in general.

Disclosure: Sine Wave was previously a sponsoring media partner to this blog up until 2021.