Questions about Unity Industry Runtime Fee

News & General Discussion
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*new IDAO questions in the later messages

*** Old questions about runtime fee, that unity never replied..
Many questions about this hidden update to the terms (no announcements, no emails to industry customers).

(1) There is no threshold for revenue, so even if you make 50usd from the application, that means you have to do the whole process of applying permissions, reporting revenue, book keeping, transactions etc..?

(2) What does this mean “distribution of the Unity runtime for commercial purposes by Industry Customers requires explicit authorization from Unity” ? If it means you need permission to distribute your build every time for every new project and customer, that seems very slow and complicated process.

(3) if your build is free to use, but you sell separate services on top (like optional cloud that can be used with the build), i would except that to not be included in the revenue calculation.

(4) is webgl build included as a runtime distribution?

(5) is remote rendering included in runtime distribution? (since runtime files is not distributed to the customer, if its on your servers)

(6) Why no announcements or early warnings to existing industry customers, this would need 1-2 year warning ahead of time, so can finish existing projects and move to other engines in new projects - if there is no budged/profit margin for additional extra tax in those projects.

(7) Is demo or prototype build a commercial distribution? (i mean it is for commercial purposes, but not making any revenue yet, but sounds like it still needs permission to distribute?)

(8) who pays for the fee? the company who build and sold the app OR the company who is using the application? (since the company who build it, cannot know if they generate revenue with the app, but also, the company who ordered the app has nothing to do with unity, they dont want to start gathering reports and payments, they already paid for the company who made the app)

(9) Now that i read it again, “revenue generated by the software product”.. sounds like the fee is NOT applied to a company who creates apps for the client company? But instead, if client company sells & distributes the application, they have to pay unity tax for revenue generated from that income?

(10) Does the build call home in industry builds?

(11) If you sell something made in Unity in Fiverr, and customer is large company.. how does that work?

(12) if you are subcontractor for another freelancer or small company (that is below 1m), is it your job to find out who is their actual customer? (and then who pays for the fees here)

(13) “revenue generated by the software product”. what if the software product doesn’t generate revenue directly. (its just 3d viewer for marketing or showcase?)

and many more..

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I also got problem understanding what this mean.
Lets say there is industrial company making 100M they use unity for something in their company. Do they have to pay 4% of this 100M ?

3

ping?

*someone in unity discord said they will get answers.. but its been 1.5 months since that reply : /

4

I am also interested about those elements.
Especially the 4% fee. Just like @koirat asked.
Like, when big structures like national transport companies, oil companies or any other enormous companies; Do they pay 4% of their global revenue ? Or is it a way to bleed small companies ?
What about schools ? They are not profit centers, but still, might use Unity to make Industrial stuff…

It’s confusing..

5

Adding another concrete case to this thread, since it’s still unanswered five months on.

I’m a solo developer — no company, no funding, no clients, under $200K total annual finances — planning to release a non-game consumer application directly to consumers on Windows, macOS, iOS and Android.

Reading the current Editor Software Terms, the “Industry Customer” definition covers “any individual… for any use that is not solely for games or entertainment purposes,” with no revenue floor in the definition itself. On a plain reading that seems to include me, which would mean Section 2.2.1’s “express authorization” and the Distribution License fee apply to me from the first sale.

So my version of the questions already asked here:

  • Is there in fact no revenue threshold for the Distribution License / authorization requirement — does it apply to a solo dev making a few hundred dollars, exactly as mgear’s Q1 asks?
  • Does “explicit authorization to distribute the runtime” apply to an ordinary consumer app sold on app stores, and if so is it granted once per product or per release?
  • Does distributing free demos or beta/TestFlight builds count as “commercial distribution” before any revenue exists?

I’ve also contacted Sales directly, but given these exact questions have gone unanswered on this forum since November, it would help everyone here to get clear written answers in one place. Thanks.

6

It’s crazy how quiet this stays here.
@Unity - get your sh*t together and answer these questions! They are super important, when it comes to advising (or by my current understanding - WARNING) potential clients of using Unity for any kind of B2B stuff.

I do not get, how your management thinks, business works - but you can’t just quietly change terms like that and then “go with the flow”

7

A brief update: Unity did contact me after I submitted the form about three weeks ago, but I still have not received an answer to any of my licensing questions.

Their email said that an Account Executive would contact me. I clarified that I was not requesting customized pricing, but simply a written answer about which of Unity’s published terms apply to my situation. I have received no response since then.

So the central question remains unanswered: does Unity classify a solo developer selling a non-game consumer application directly to consumers as an “Industry Customer” and, if so, do the authorization requirement and Distribution License fee apply from the first sale?

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I have found new information about this. Seemingly Unity changed the approach a bit and is now introducing a “Monthly active user runtime fee”

They want Industry users to ship their applications with an Internal Deployment Add-On
See: Introducing the Internal Deployment Add-On – Unity Support Help Center

The sheer amount of bureaucracy that will now come, when developing Unity applications for corporate use is astonishing. I have no idea, who sat in those meetings when they developed the idea - but they clearly lack any fundamental understanding of how modern business processes work.
If you are a small studio working for a larger b2b customer, you’ll now trigger severe permission processes with those changes - which is hugely prohibitive when it comes to acquiring business and scaling it.

Also, seemingly Unity asks YOU to track the monthly active users. They know, providing a tool that “phones home” would be considered a deal breaker by basically every IT department - but that still leaves me to wonder, how they plan on verifying those tiers.

Honestly? The whole idea seems like a haphazard cash-grab. I cannot see any scenario where this is not more damaging to Unity usage in enterprises in the long run than the short-term benefits this might create for Unity’s revenue.

I totally see, why bigger OEMs are shifting their in-house development over to Godot, even though it still lacks behind in certain areas severely. This is not a healthy trajectory

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huh! thats partially even worse than the previous one..
seems like like they only ever heard about some large US based companies, who might be able to afford these kind of taxes..

*for us even the industry licenses alone are too expensive, so some new projects are being tested in UE and Godot, even though we would prefer using Unity.

so some new questions that comes up:
(1) “IDAO covers applications you deploy to users within your organization” so what about external / b2b customers?
(2) what if your application is one off build (customer only pays fixed sum to create the application, there is no subscription or other usage fees), it is totally impossible to pay extra taxes later
(3) what is a user? if your application runs on a shared pc (no assigned or unique users and no tracking of actions)
(4) what if your app runs in library/museum? is everyone passing by a user? (if they trigger the motion sensor)
(5) what if you sell your unity exe build online, there is no way of knowing who uses it
(6) what is a separate build? if you build new separate application, that uses 1-99% of the same code base, when does it count as unique application with its own 100 user limit?
(7) register past applications: this would take weeks if not months to do! and how would we even know if those apps are still used from 5-10 years ago? (some are used randomly, so then there is risk that unity automation blocks your account)
(8) what about google play and app store? (if your app is used by some large corp)
(9) how is self hosted webgl builds counted? (if your app runs on a website that users might or might not interact with it, but it runs/loads)
(10) what if the app is used for an event or fairs, and one day has +5000 visitors. (and the app is never used again) ?
(11) if we have multiple industry licenses, surely we should get bigger quota for those limits? (or is industry license free now, since those fees are so expensive)
(12) how would this ever work for an fixed price offline application? (customer only pays once and uses it as they wish, it will never be possible to charge them tens of thousands later)
(13) what if you attend hackathon/gamejam (inside and/or outside company), and get +500 viewers in your app → Pay 40k USD for that ??
(14) any regional pricing? 75k usd can be impossible in some countries
(15) does the app call home always or only if developer selects it?
(16) if the app is free to download? (for example propriety viewer for some format)

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Yes - I really wonder, how those meetings about these changes went down. Was there anyone in the room who remotely cares for practical decision making?
This shifts so much work, bureaucracy and risk over to Unity’s own customers - it’s ridiculous.

Also - to add to your questions:
(10) Does Unity assume, I register NDA protected apps and thus generate a conflict between client-NDA and Unity ToS?
(11) What happens with streamed content? Is that being counted towards active users?
(12) How is this even checked? Against what? Is there any kind of runtime tracking active inside Unity packages made with industry license now? If so, that would violate most enterprise IT environment policies…

I could continue for a long time - but it does not matter, as long as no one at Unity cares to explain what the whole idea behind this is, aside from an attempted extra cash grab

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People think Unity learned from the Install fee debacle. It’s still the same scummy company it was under Riccitiello. They just learned they have to be smarter with gaming, and how they go about squeezing that segment. For industry they have no such reservations, and are as scummy as ever!

If you are doing B2B, do yourself a big favour and stay FAR away from Unity!

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What if you are creating a web tool that is part of a bigger offering?
Can’t even see how it would technically work.
Unity would fail any tests for platform selection by a company/CTO.

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[Sorry for the copy paste, if you’ve seen this response in other places it’s just so I catch everyone who is feeding back!]

We really appreciate the responses and questions and we’ve passed this on to the relevant teams. We’re currently working on additional FAQs which will hopefully address the majority of the concerns here.

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@AuroreUnity Thanks for the updates in these threads. Do you happen to know when the additional FAQs are expected to be published?

I’m particularly hoping they will address the situation of small independent developers creating and publishing their own B2C non-game applications.

As I understand the current Editor Software Terms, I would be considered an Industry Customer because the definition includes any individual developing projects “for any use that is not solely for games or entertainment purposes.” Since my application is a non-game B2C application, I don’t see how I could fall outside that definition under the current wording.

My main concern is Section 2.2.1, which says that an Industry Customer may distribute the Unity Runtime only subject to applicable fees and Unity’s express authorization. The Unity Industry page also refers to a Distribution License generally equivalent to 4% of product revenue.

I contacted Unity on July 13 and was told that someone from Sales would get back to me, but unfortunately I never heard back. I followed up again on August 7 and haven’t received a response so far.

The 4% fee is obviously relevant, but my bigger concern is the requirement to obtain Unity’s permission before I can publish an application. That makes it very difficult to choose Unity as the foundation of a commercial product without knowing in advance that I will have the right to distribute it.

If small self-publishing B2C developers are not actually intended to be covered by this requirement, will the binding terms also be updated to make that clear, rather than only the FAQ?

Thanks for any clarification you can provide.

15

Any update from Unity team?

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Finally got answer to few of those questions from industry support,
so hopefully they will update here also..

at least one positive answer was:

No, IDAo is not applicable for Demos and/or prototypes.

That is a big relief.. since we build lots of quick demos and protos and show them around internally.

but for rest of the questions and in general, still seems like a really bad idea.

17

This was their reply:

Applications delivered through WebGL, browser-based experiences, pixel streaming, or third-party streaming services are all subject to the same MAU mode, regardless of how the application is delivered (IDAO), if this is an application for the external usage - iCLA is applicable.

I’m still trying to get answers on how unique users are calculated..
if there is no login or other tracking.

for this i got reply:

Per Unity’s stated policy, it’s the company using the application (the end customer), not the company that built and sold it. -The responsibility is determined by who consumes the application, not who built it.

very very bad..
why would the customer have to worry about book keeping and reporting and paying unity taxes, they already paid for the app they purchased. (and we already paid unity the expensive industry licenses).
it literally makes it impossible to sell unity build applications to other companies. (unless they are multi billion dollar companies, where 75k fee is nothing) and even then, nobody would buy that app, knowing that they have to pay extra % later..

So far best idea around this seems like, after you have build your application in Unity,
convert it to UE or Godot with AI and release from there. (until learn those other engines to build there natively)

18

Yea,
I agree that all of this sounds terrible.
Meanwhile, someone from the Industry team reached out and I had a good conversation with them, albeit nothing concrete resulting from this other than “that they hear and understand the issues”.
I am left with a feeling, that the actual people at Unity with any kind of contact to their customers, to their issues, actually see, that this is another disaster train about to hit a wall - but the execs seemingly don’t.

They want their numbers to go up, but they don’t see, that by forcing this down peoples throats without actually offering any kind of increased value against it - this just makes people switch.
There’s barely any industry client “married” to Unity - they use it, because C# is easy to pick up and connect to for standard software developers in enterprise environments. Unreal has a lot harder learning curve for non-gaming people.
If Godot would put more love into their C# interface and offer better cross-plattform-capabilities, there’d be even less incentive for enterprise clients to stick with Unity.

In this kind of environment, with the looming danger of having AI-agents cross-port your existing applications to another engine or web-based toolset - they should incentivize the use of unity, instead they put huge, prohibitive risks onto using it for anything enterprise related.

If there are no fundamental changes to those decisions, it will only leave me with the option to consult and advise all future enterprise clients towards using other technologies than Unity. The attached risk is just way too high and even though the current technical direction of Unity itself is finally starting to look better after some really dire years, the business direction is still a shit show.

19

This again leaves a big question for me:
What qualifies as a demo? Who judges that based on which criteria? Who reports that? Who verifies those reports and how?

I think, most of the decision makers at Unity don’t comprehend, that this is a process issue even more than anything else. How on earth is any of that supposed to work without creating either a data collection disaster, if Unity now phones home about each and everything you do with their tooling, or an administrative nightmare, if you have to manually write down every bit of detail about every project with the fear of being audited about it at some point…
Like seriously - what’s their idea on execution?

20

+1 to the above sentiments. It really does not sound like these changes will make it particularly attractive for either developers or their customers to make use of Unity in general. If customers are the ones paying and having to deal with the runtime fee, then the already challenging barrier of entry for many companies will likely just become insurmountable instead