Could Unity's hugely unpopular Runtime Fee be dead in the water?

That's the hope of tens of thousands of Unity-based developers this morning as the company took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to announce a climbdown of its new pricing structure which was set to kick in on January 1 2024. 

We have heard you. We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused. We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of…

— Unity (@unity) September 17, 2023

Their post reads:

"We have heard you. We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused. We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of days. Thank you for your honest and critical feedback."

It's a fairly open-ended statement that leaves precisely what Unity will be changing, withdrawing or scrapping still up for grabs but at least, at this stage it's something… It's most likely that having listened and fretted all week that Unity have - at top level - decided that they can't press ahead and - most likely after arguing about what the WILL do all weekend - have failed to come up with a comprehensive solution.

In lieu of that, we've got this morning's statement.

Many of the development community will view such a move as at least a start… But are already probing for what exactly Unity mean in this morning's offer, with many protesting for and only happy with a complete scrapping of the controversial $0.20 per-install fee.

And, after showing their hand and readiness to change terms on users effectively too commiteed to their software to make a switch away, will the development community ever trust them again?

Perhaps the damage is already done.

More on this story as it happens. And get up to date with all of last week's Unity bombshells here.