Unity has spoken up after a developers swiftly decried an upcoming payment model which would charge developers per installation.

As previously reported, Unity’s new installation fees would charge developers when a user installed a game once a certain revenue and installation threshold was reached. This created concern among developers for a handful of reasons. Among them:

• The fee is a flat rate, meaning developers who make cheaper games would hypothetically be charged a greater % of their revenue per installation.
• It was unclear how this would affect games on Xbox Game Pass and similar programs.
• It was unclear if developers will be charged on future reinstalls or for pirated copies.

On that last note, the answer appears to be yes.

Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs?
A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data.

You can read the full Q&A here.

Unity claims that these changes will only affect developers “who have successful games and are generating revenue way above the thresholds we outlined in our blog”. Developers however, remain skeptical.