Interactive Ontario’s Open Letter to Unity Regarding Their Recent Policy Changes
September 21, 2023
To the Unity leadership team,
As the not-for-profit trade association representing over 100 video game and interactive digital media companies in Ontario, Canada, Interactive Ontario stands in support of our game development community regarding Unity’s recent announcement to begin charging Unity developers a fee per copy installed of their games.
We have been in constant communication with our membership, gathering feedback and concerns regarding these changes. The key issues that have been voiced include the significant negative impact this will have on their company finances, the flawed and unclear methodology for tracking installations, the unfair retroactive nature of the policy changes, and the overall lack of transparency and clarity from Unity on this matter.
Furthermore, the current industry standard does not factor in the number of installations per unit purchased. This information is not available to most game developers across all major platforms. In order for Unity to gather this data, developers may be forced to alter their privacy policy practices to get players’ authorization to allow Unity to collect their data on installations. Additionally, privacy policies held by the major platform holders may make gathering this information difficult, if not impossible, adding additional hurdles for all parties involved – including players. These changes also do not take into account titles that require more than one installation across multiple devices, potentially requiring a developer to pay multiple times per single unit sold.
These examples are merely a fraction of the concerns we have received from our members, and they speak directly to the ambiguity found in Unity’s current language, and the damaging impact it will have on our industry.
Interactive Ontario urges Unity to reconsider these harmful policy changes, work with their client base on a fair and transparent solution, and begin working to rebuild trust within the game development community.
Therefore, Interactive Ontario invites Unity’s decision makers on that matter, to participate in an online town hall meeting that we would organize with our members to engage in discussions about your policy changes.
We are looking forward to hearing from you.
Sincerely,
Lucie Lalumière
President & CEO
Interactive Ontario
