Unity, the maker of the game engine, announced this week that it will charge developers a percentage of the cost of the engine, causing many developers to reconsider whether they want to go with its main competitor, Epic Games’ Unreal Engine.
Epic Games has also taken the opportunity to respond and has begun providing native Unreal Engine support for Apple’s Vision Pro, a mixed-reality headset due to ship in early 2024. Victor Lerp, XR Product Specialist at Epic Games, says the company is “exploring native Unreal Engine support for the Apple Vision Pro,” but noted that it’s “too early to share the scope or timeline of that support.”
At the Vision Pro launch event at WWDC in June, Apple highlighted native support for Unity in its upcoming XR operating system, VisionOS. Shortly afterward, Unity began offering beta versions of its VisionOS-supported engine.
The Unity Engine’s new program will require subscribers to its free development service to pay Unity $0.20 per installation after their game reaches a threshold of 200,000 downloads and $200,000 (currently around RMB 1,456,000) in revenue. Those who subscribe to Unity Pro, which costs $2,000 per year, have a different fee structure that decreases with the number of installs. This change will take effect on January 1, 2024.
The price increase for the Unity engine has caused many small and medium-sized teams to consider whether to move to the more complex Unreal Engine or another game engine.
