The new CEO of Unity, Matthew Bromberg, has explained why the company decided to ditch its unpopular runtime fee policy. 

Speaking at the GamesBeat Next 2024 event, the chief exec said that early on in his tenure at the head of the firm was to figure out what to do about the policy that had been introduced under the governance of his predecessor, John Riccitiello. Bromberg says that he entered into extensive discussions with developers, discovering that its partners were big fans of Unity as an engine, but did not like the fact they weren't consulted about the seismic changes that runtime fee represented.  
"They didn’t like the way we were planning to charge them. They were very open-minded about paying us more. They understood we were delivering a lot of value. They just didn’t like the way we were doing it," Bromberg said. 

"We went into a deep consultation with them. Many people were surprised by how long it took us to announce the reversion of the runtime fee back to a more traditional subscription model, but how we did it was at least as important to me, if not more so, than what we were going to do. Making sure that everybody knew in advance, that there were no surprises, that we fully grasped all the issues, that was a very important piece. To your question, it’s not just about the runtime fee, which is just one decision. It’s our intention to make all the decisions about the company in that same way." 

Unity announced the runtime fee in 2023; it was ditched in September 2024.