background: they wanted to charge game devs 20 cents per install, with a "trust us" policy regarding pirated installs. reinstalls would have counted as installs and web games made with Unity will count installs for every play (every reload effectively)

their stock dropped expectedly after this and it was revealed that the CEO sold a bunch of stock the week before he made this announcement (which is pretty sus)

you should also see the CEO's comments calling game devs who don't monetize with in-app purchases "f---ing idiots" and the recent merger between Unity and a known malware company

there was a big backlash from game devs across the internet, petitions from large game dev groups, and developers of games such as Cult of the Lamb and Among Us have mentioned privating their games on Steam to get around paying the extortionate fees

now that they’ve also backtracked on their comments and removed the changes, but to bring back customers who don’t trust them anymore, they’ve removed the splash screen requirement for free engine users, which has long been criticized.

i just think it’s a really interesting topic with a lot of sides (especially because so many high-profile games/developers have gotten involved and Unity has since tried to smooth over their relationship with game devs, for many of whom trust has been broken and who have decided to move on to FOSS engines.

in the long run, i think this whole saga will prove to have been catastrophic to their company and the relationship