“August 18, 2024 Recap” : Unity plan pricing and packaging updates & Unity blog changes

6 min readAug 18, 2024

I am Samuel Asher Rivello, a professional game developer with 25 years of game development experience including 10+ years with the Unity game engine. Unity is a powerful and popular suite of tools (Project IDE, Code IDE, and run-time).

Between June and August 2024, Unity has changed the visibility of its blog and removed blog articles including its widely-criticized “Unity plan pricing” announcement.

In June 2024, I taught a few game development seminars at the “Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú” (PUCP University) in Lima, Peru in June. The topics included “¿Por qué Unity sigue siendo el mejor motor?” (Why Unity Is Still The Best Game Engine) & “IA Generativa en el desarrollo de juegos” (Generative AI for Video Games)

My research and planning for the events included polling the student interest. Among the most requested topics to cover was Unity’s controversial pricing changes, originally announced on Sep 12, 2023.

Recap: Unity Pricing Changes

Unity’s pricing changes shocked and disappointed the game development community. The story has been covered by major media outlets including New York Times in the US, The Guardian and BBC in the UK, ABC News in Australia, media wires like Reuters, game industry insiders like PocketGamer, and many others.

By end of September 2023, the company’s stock price (NYSE: U) lost 18% of its value within days of announcing the new pricing policy.

Among the criticisms of Unity’s September 2023 policy change are its retroactive implementation, its lack of transparency, and its perceived outsized impact on independent developers.

In an industry where customers are slow to trust and quick to criticize, a new fee from Unity infuriated studios that use its platform.
- New York Times

Criticism: Unity Pricing Changes

Retroactive Implementation: Unity’s announced pricing model, retroactively applied to existing games. Many developers questioned how Unity would differentiate between legitimate installs and scenarios like reinstallations, piracy, or multiple installations on the same device. The vague and inconsistent responses from Unity further fueled fears that developers could be unfairly charged for scenarios outside of their control.
Lack of Transparency: The community felt that Unity did not adequately communicate or consult with developers before announcing the changes. The sudden nature of the announcement left many developers feeling blindsided and uncertain about the future.

Devs realised that the company had removed the terms of service (ToS) from its website [in 2019], amid accusations that the implementation of the fee went against them. Developers are of the opinion that Unity had hidden the terms in an effort to avoid scrutiny.
- PocketGamer

Unpredictable Costs: The new pricing model, which charges per installation, was seen as unpredictable and potentially detrimental to developers of free-to-play games with high download rates but low revenue per user. Developers feared they could face significant fees without a corresponding increase in revenue.
Impact on Indie Developers: Smaller indie developers, who often operate on tight budgets, were particularly concerned. The new fees were seen as disproportionately affecting their success, potentially making Unity financially unviable for smaller projects and driving developers to alternative engines.

[Unity] completely abandoned the community that was a big part of their ongoing success.
- Tomas Sala, Dutch game developer

Erosion of Trust: Many developers expressed concerns that this pricing change eroded their trust in Unity as a company. They worried that future changes could further impact their financial stability.

Timeline: Unity’s Changes

Following the pricing change announcement and the tremendous negative reaction from consumers, Unity made further changes in response.

1. September, 2023: Forbes.com reports Unity had deleted its Terms of Service (TOS) ahead of the release of the new fee structure.
2. September 12, 2023: Unity announces the pricing change. The community reacts with controversy
3. September 22, 2023: Unity announces a revised pricing model that is more transparent and is no longer retroactive.
4. September 22, 2023: The (TOS) has been added back
5. Late 2023: Public thread on discussions.unity.com/threads/unity-plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates shows “Oops! That page doesn’t exist or is private.”
6. October, 2023: CEO John Riccitiello leaves Unity
7. June-August, 2024: Unity changes visibility of and content of its blog

1. What happened to the Unity blog?

My game development portfolio includes Html5 gaming, the Godot game engine, and shipping profitable Unity titles too. I continue to see promise in Unity as a platform.

Unity’s poor pricing changes, the manner how it announced the changes, the community reaction, and the resulting corporate fallout were largely behind me.

Then I saw something new…

The “Removed” Blog Content

The Unity game engine was released in 2005. The Unity blog was launched and grew starting 2007/2008. For nearly 20 years, the Unity blog has been a leading tool for communicating to and from the community.

On August 18th, while researching to create a new development course I noticed changes to the visibility and content of Unity’s blog.