I have now updated the link in my comment. Thanks for letting me know. 
They have since updated it again, you’ll see updates as (Updated 13th Sept) and (Updated 14th Sept).
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Personally if I were you, I would continue learning Unity as it’s a good solution in many regards and to give yourself a backup, learn Unreal OR Godot just in case. From a job perspective there seems to be much more popularity with Unreal than Godot, however in time that may change.
However it is only you that can make the decision on whether you wish to continue on with Unity or not, if you feel you cannot, or it’s a waste of your time, plus do not have any ties to the Game Engine, by all means feel free to learn another Engine primarily.
To give you comfort, I (and I’m sure others too), will be staying with Unity, at least for the time being. The amount of money, time and effort I’ve poured into the Engine, it would be silly to change currently, however I am also planning on learning Unreal or Godot (currently favouring Unreal, mainly because of the job market, not for any other reason) on the side so I have something to fall back on.
I wouldn’t be too concerned with the update unless you have reached the threshold and have a ton of games out, by which point I would advise you to look at Unity Pro license in order to minimise the ‘tax’ they have stated.
Further I read something this morning that they will waive the ‘tax’ on each install if you use LevelPlay, may be worth reading into that more too.
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…from me, breaking up with Unity is hard to do 
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Personally, I am happy that I have a day job, so that I don’t depent too much on unity.
However, I have to say that nothing stops Unreal to follow a similar path. On the other hand Godot might be a good alternative, but from what I read the entire project is not solid enough…
Yes, the Unity CEO wants to make us dependant customers now that he knows we have invested so much, and the problem is who knows what will follow…
He knows that there are no real alternatives to unity.
And last year they also updated their pricing. So, we have to think something to not find ourselves in a similar situation next year.
Remember that I said about the being happy with the day job? I work for a big bank (my background is economics) and the scenery is the same: please the stockholders, the CEOs and their selected few are super rich, while we strive to survive.
It’s sad to know that all the time we spend to learn and work others spend to make us customers.
I’m treating it as a sort of a holding pattern. Imma keep focusing on making assets in blender for my game and keeping it easy on the coding. I may check out Godot, but Unity is such a good engine for 3D. Cooler heads prevail ^.^
Morning e1,
Just to share a story, in my past experience about using cross platform development products like Embarcadero C++Builder ( formerly known as Borland C++Builder since 1997 after Windows95 is introduced ). I would say, maintaining a cross platform development toolchain like Unity is unlike maintaining an open source application even it is funded somehow.
Here is my first published 2D freeware space game in 1998 using Borland C++Builder with DirectX.
Believe me, many said switch to other 3D engines, how many of them are actually completed a game and published right 
?
I paid about USD300 yearly to Embarcadero C++Builder for its Android and iOS platform toolchain, the company always emphasize Delphi ( Pascal ) as its first primary cross platform updates for Android and iOS, and C++Builder is just like second grade citizen, receiving the updates late and buggy. Worst still, all my feedback with facts posted in the community forum were removed due to database crashed, can you believe that.
I have been suffering such treatment for 2-3 years then Embarcadero abandoned the Android platform just like that, without considering its C++Builder subscribers ( me ), I am extremely angry about what Embarcadero had done to C++Builder developers, no way I am going back to any product from that company, Embarcadero.
Therefore, I made a decision to switch to Unity.
Honestly, I really wish Microsoft will purchase Unity, to my experience of using cross platform software development tools, only a huge software giant able to maintain a cross platform tool chain safely and last long.
For this, after seeing Unity still active and alive while loosing money yearly, I will continue to support Unity in this case for the moment as promotional or demo game merely until runtime install situation is clearly defined and mature.
Thank you for reading, have a nice day.
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Thinking about it some more, it’s actually not that bad. While there are some definite problems, the basis is in some ways an improvement over the previous plans. Previously a developer needed to buy a Pro license if passing $200K sales. With the new plan the developer can choose to buy Pro (and thereby up the minimum to $1M and 1M installs and pay lower fees) or can choose to use the personal license and at some point pay per-install, which for high priced games (say, $20) could save the devs quite a bit.
Thanks for sharing this, I’m interested to see their updated policy.
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I can’t imagine they’re doing it to get less profit. Something can’t be right there. No business would go down on profit on purpose. That’s not what a business does. They’d have to be charging others more at the very least. Still, I seriously doubt they’re thinking about charging x amount of projects less here unless they reaped more profit out of it.
Personally, I wouldn’t stick around Unity if there’s a choice. To consider charging for installs with games is nuts whatever way one looks at it.
If you stick with it then I hope the boat keeps floating fine for you. Its not looking like a boat worth taking anymore. The captain of that ship is not in the greatest mind. Even its crew is going crazy.
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Actually, today the news arrived that Unity will be turning around. They apologized to the developers and said that an official announcement will come in the next few days.
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@rickygai Please remove the first image from this post. It is highly offensive.
Edit: Now has been removed
@beegeedee, thanks for informing, just a notice that due to different time zone, I woke up in the mid of sleeping at 3am morning from my phone email tone to respond this post, do give some time for me to edit the post in this case.
As you can see, I am not against Unity, and Rick from GameDev.tv also mentioned, the more he talks about Unity now, the more he felt something is not right.
I have invested total of USD751 Unity Assets purchase in this case, and the efforts, time, money on GameDev.tv courses invested as well, this is the reason that I created this channel, and put the baby face on it, is careful enough for me to consider not to put bad words in this forum.
Take a look at Unity Assets I documented for every single purchase of Unity Asset purchased below, the total amount is in MYR currency.
I am not investing time and money for fun, in fact I am on retirement to plan ahead my personal future career and business using Unity, and to be honest, the runtime fees per game install definitely will prohibit me from using Unity if in the next couple of days, the new policy comes up bad, is a real serious decision to make.
If you read Twitter comments, there are developers with family and children have to stop using Unity and cannot afford the runtime fees policy, this is how serious this runtime fees charging can cause.
Thanks again.
QueueButton, of course they’re doing it to get more money, but you have to try to understand the details and what they mean if you want to understand where that money will come from.
According to the plan, that money would have come from people who have earned more than $1M and have more than 1M installs. For people with less, the plan could have been better than before.
I don’t think that the intent was to screw all developers. I think it’s reasonable to charge developers money if they earn quite a bit from their game ($1M a year and up).
I think that Unity just didn’t think this through. There are enough problems with the idea of charging per install, how to understand how many installs, how to get that money, how to make sure the installs are real, that Unity had obviously not thought through. This still makes this a bad plan. However, as I said, just looking at what Unity wanted, for developers over $100K in sales but significantly under $1M this could have actually been better, in terms of how much they’d have to pay and the features they got.
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There are teams out there who could easily have invested 10 to 100x that amount developing their ideas, and possibly more. I’ve probably spent as much on unity and I stopped using it a long time ago.
The runtime fees could be expensive, but…if you charge just 10usd for your game, that’s 2m usd before you have to pay fees, more if you invest in a pro license which would be 10m usd.
It is not ideal and I am not justifying the way they’ve approached this but until now, Unity has been royalty free which is amazing. They need capital and the model they’ve chosen is awful but they could easily expect developers to pay 10% of everything they make.
20c on a 10 usd title is about 2%.
So, given that 200k installs (assume each is a sale) at 10usd nets you 2m usd, then you sell another 200k netting another 2m usd, suddenly having to pay 2% of 2m or in fact, 1% of your total sales is a tiny amount, around 40k usd leaving you with a profit of 3.96m usd.
The unreal model is easier to understand but you actually pay more. It is 5% of everything above 1m, paid if you exceed 20k sales in a month. So, for the same 4m in sales you’d end up paying 150k usd.
So, is unity all that bad? Not really. Did the approach it badly? Yes. Is their model stupid? Absolutely.
It hurts free to play, reinstalls and potentially cause issues with piracy and abuse from malicious actors (something Unity claims they have a solution for) so from that respect, UE or Godot for 2D might be a better solution.
It is up to each person to decide what is best for them. The other option is Unity ceases to exist and then 1000s of jobs would actually vanish. Most teams will be impacted by having to pay a small share of their profits but it is up to them how to deal with it.
What is largely happening is a knee jerk reaction to a crap announcement. It’ll settle down over the coming weeks. Be patient and wait it out.
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Its going to be interesting whatever happens in the near future. We shall see.
hi beegeedee,
Allow me to clarify this, please do not compare me with others, what I have shown are facts and true story of a retired person, only with some funding and time to continue with his dream to be indie developer .
I think the real problem developers ( for those met threshold or not ) concerned and scared of, is the runtime fee that held regardless of whether the game is being purchased or not but as long as the game is installed, runtime fee apply. This including developer’s previous published games starting Jan, 2024 ( assuming the runtime fee policy persists ).
Eventually, the runtime fee becomes monthly fee, especially to F2P gaming model where many said this will cause bankruptcy.
Even if I am publishing commercial games, this business model is very risky to take.
Hopes, this help.
hi QueueButton, thanks for you sharing here.
First of all I am not a financial advisor, what mentioned below are merely for knowledge sharing and does not represents any company.
For technology companies, heavy losses is normal, company is loosing money each year but still able to operate, you may wonder how this company still can survives ?
Such company normally go through fundraising several rounds to get investment funding, investors via this fundraising process sometime we called it as “angel round”. If not mistaken, Godot also adopted fundraising.
Although such company may loose money for years, but as long as there are investors pumping in money via fundraising, the company continues to operate.
The process of fundraising may be loosing money to gain the current market share ( such as Unity owned 70% of market shares of mobile games platform in the world ) and this is one of the portfolio to attract more investors via the fundraising approach until the company hits its threshold to decide the next move.
Hopes, this help.
Based on Unity pricing updates dated on 22nd September 2023.
From the requirements above to meet the Runtime fee, personally I am fine with it, as long as still using Unity Personal version 2022.x
I believed after qualifying USD200,000 gross revenue per year, the Unity Pro cost about USD2040.00 per year which definitely not a problem.
Dream BIG, assuming a single developer’s games hit USD1,000,000 gross revenue per year, this is a lot of money after converted to my local currency, then if choose the 2.5% gross revenue share, remains USD975,000 minus business operating cost, tax per year which is enough to buy 1-2 luxury landed houses and a new SUV car with extra left in my country, Malaysia 
Meanwhile, I will continue with Unity as I am about to publish my assets after working for 1.5 years using Unity Personal and definitely will learn up Godot as to be safe, just in case.
Thank you for reading, have a nice day and all the best in your game development journey.
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