Unity’s Runtime Fee Is Gone. Its Consequences Aren’t.

What Happened

On September 12, 2023, Unity announced a Runtime Fee: a charge per install, on top of revenue, once a game crossed a threshold. Not a normal license. A bill that could grow after a game shipped and its price was already set.

Backlash was instant. Ten days later, Unity’s Marc Whitten published an apology and walked the policy back.

A year later, on September 12, 2024, new CEO Matt Bromberg canceled the fee completely. Unity went back to normal subscriptions, just pricier ones.

What the Evidence Shows

Godot’s Steam numbers kept climbing anyway:

• 618 → 1,500 → 2,864 Godot games released on Steam, three years running
• ~7% of all Steam games now run on Godot, up from under 1% in 2020
• 8-10% of brand-new 2026 releases, up from ~3% in early 2024
• 47% of entries at the GMTK Game Jam in 2026, beating Unity (34%) for the first time ever

One number worth a correction: a “roughly 12%” figure circulating online seems to come from a GDC survey of indie developers specifically, where Godot’s share was 11%, not from the wider market.

The stronger evidence is who’s still paying for Godot. It’s built by a Dutch non-profit that no company can ever own, now pulling in about €30,500 a month in donations, up from €23,000 in 2023. Slay the Spire studio Mega Crit sponsored Godot right after dropping Unity in 2023, and upgraded to the top sponsor tier in 2026 while shipping Slay the Spire 2 on it. Buckshot Roulette dev Mike Klubnika and Road to Vostok dev Antti Leinonen both made the same move. None of them reversed course when Unity did.

Why It Matters

Unity’s fix was real: the fee is fully gone, and it came with a genuine apology. That should have brought developers back. It mostly hasn’t.

Once a company shows it can raise your costs on work you’ve already shipped, canceling that one fee doesn’t erase the memory. Godot solves this differently: it’s free, and no single company owns it, so no CEO can ever add a fee like Unity’s again.

Who Is Affected

Solo developers had the most to lose from a per-install fee, and they’re leading the move to Godot now. Bigger studios are asking a new question before picking an engine: not just “does it work,” but “can this company change the price on me later.” Unreal, not Godot, actually picked up the biggest piece of Unity’s lost business — it now out-earns Unity on Steam for the first time since 2018.

The Counter-Case

Godot still isn’t the safe default. Unity shipped more Steam games than anyone else in 2024, at 51%. Its tools and talent pool are still bigger. And Godot can’t yet get a game certified for PlayStation or Xbox as easily as Unity or Unreal can, which caps how far it can go for big-budget games.

What Happens Next

Godot runs on donations, not investors, so it only grows as fast as people keep giving. Slay the Spire 2‘s full launch will be the biggest test yet of whether Godot can carry a hit game long-term.