Miniclip boss Saad Choudri called then-Unity boss John Riccitiello to explain how the firm’s “insane” Runtime Fee policy could impact the mobile business, it has emerged.
A report from The Information states that Choudri and a group of other mobile game leaders had reacted furiously to the proposed Runtime Fee policy, which was announced back in September 2023.
As we reported at the time, Unity’s plan to charge developers per install had the mobile games business reeling, with many studios and publishers concerned that it would put them out of business.
“You hear about something like that, and you think, ‘Wait, hang on. You’ve just changed the unit economics of our business in one fell swoop,’” Choudri told The Information. “Without talking to us, without any consultation, without anything at all…we generate near a billion installs a year. And now we had to pay per install? It was just insane.”
Choudri set up a call with Riccitiello two days after the announcement to talk it through, says the report, after a group of mobile game leaders including Choudri had agreed to confront Unity over the issue.
“We determined that we couldn’t stand for this,” said Choudri. As we reported back in October 2023, at around the same time, another major game company boss had set up a similar call with Riccitiello and said: “Fuck you, we’re not paying.”.
Choudri said that in his call with Riccitiello, the then-Unity boss was concerned that Unity was not getting a cut from hypercasual games, and that “In his mind, they were trying to fix a problem: to get more value out of the engine.”
But once Choudri had explained the wide-ranging repercussions of the Runtime Fee on the mobile business, including potentially stopping games being released in emerging markets entirely, Riccitiello seemed to take it on board.
“That sunk in, I think,” Choudri said. “I could feel the energy shift in John’s tone.”
Choudri said later: “He didn’t really understand how the mobile ecosystem worked…that’s what forced him to have to fall on his sword.”
The Information also reiterates our report from September 2023, in which we revealed Unity representatives offered clients a waiver on the Runtime Fee if they moved UA spend over to Unity’s LevelPlay service. The proposal was initiated by IronSource leadership and was designed to “kill AppLovin”, we were told.
Riccitiello left Unity a month after the Runtime Fee policy was announced, and Unity started to reverse course while also replacing most of its senior leadership. It finally killed the idea in September 2024, not long after new boss Matthew Bromberg took over as president and CEO in May.
The Information says Miniclip’s Choudri was “quite emotional” when the policy was finally declared dead. “It felt like for once, a major company could be brave enough to step back from a disastrous situation,” he added.
The Information’s report concludes with indie game developer and consultant Rami Ismail’s thoughts on the fiasco: “On the scale of historical games industry fuck-ups, Unity’s 2023 monetisation proposal sits near the top.”
