Will Genshin Impact be affected by Unity's controversial pay-per-installation pricing move?

Unity (which Genshin Impact uses as its game engine) will be introducing a controversial pay-per-installation price for game developers on January 1, 2024. Basically, whenever a player downloads and installs a game, that will cost the developer a few cents if that developer has reached a few thresholds. Naturally, miHoYo's most popular title would qualify.

The required thresholds are a little different depending on which Unity tier the game developer has. If miHoYo subscribes to the Enterprise edition, the company just needs to make over $1,000,000 within the last year and have Genshin Impact installed over 1,000,000 times. Both are easily achieved due to this game's overwhelming popularity.

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How Genshin Impact will be affected by Unity's new pricing change

Here is what Unity officially announced in their news post:

"Effective January 1, 2024, we will introduce a new Unity Runtime Fee that's based on game installs. We will also add cloud-based asset storage, Unity DevOps tools, and AI at runtime at no extra cost to Unity subscription plans this November."

Here are the rates that game developers will pay if they are successful enough to qualify, based on their membership and how many people have installed their title:

• Personal and Plus: $0.20 per new install
• Pro (1-100K installs a month): $0.15 per new install
• Pro (100K-500K installs a month): $0.075 per new install
• Pro (500K-1M installs a month): $0.03 per new install
• Pro (Over 1M installs a month): $0.02 per new install
• Enterprise (1-100K installs a month): $0.125 per new install
• Enterprise (100K-500K installs a month): $0.06 per new install
• Enterprise (500K-1M installs a month): $0.02 per new install
• Enterprise (Over 1M installs a month): $0.01 per new install

An important point to be noted is that deleting the game and re-installing it counts as a "new install," according to Unity's new rules. For example, an Enterprise subscriber who got 1,000,001 new installations in a month would pay $10,000.01 under this change if all those installations came from countries where standard fees apply. If that trend continued for a year, it would cost that developer $120,000.12.

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This change should only be a drop in the puddle for Genshin Impact's profits

Any gamer should know how popular Genshin Impact is (Image via HoYoverse)

That kind of money is ultimately pocket change to Genshin Impact's developers, miHoYo. Remember, banners often make several million dollars every 21 days. Paying a few thousand dollars on top of an Enterprise membership won't cause any significant dents in the company's overall cash flow.

If that small cost is still more affordable than switching to a new game engine, then miHoYo will likely stick with Unity. Changing to something else like Unreal Engine would take up a lot of development time and resources, which would ultimately eat into their short-term profits.

It is worth noting that miHoYo has yet to comment on this price change. All the new Unity prices will come into effect on January 1, 2024. It is worth mentioning that there will be some differences based on the region, as Unity stated:

"Finally, we structured our fees so that they take into account the variability of game monetization between more established regions like North America and Europe versus emerging gaming regions such as India."

All the aforementioned numbers will be applicable to the following countries:

• USA
• Australia
• Austria
• Belgium
• Canada
• Denmark
• Finland
• France
• Germany
• Ireland
• Japan
• Netherlands
• New Zealand
• Norway
• Sweden
• Switzerland
• South Korea
• United Kingdom

Additionally, developers pay less for people downloading and installing their games from countries not mentioned in this list. For example, Personal and Plus members pay $0.02 per install, Pro members pay $0.01 per install, and Enterprise subscribers pay $0.005 in those cases.