With the new enhancement, developers will be able to use different payment providers across mobile app stores, the web and PCs, the company said in a statement on Wednesday. The move was made possible after recent court decisions forced Apple and Alphabet Inc.’s Google to allow other payment options in their app stores, enabling game makers to circumvent the tech companies’ 30% fee for in-app transactions.
“Being able to sell outside of the app store is a significant opportunity for our customers,” Unity Chief Executive Officer Matt Bromberg said in an interview. “It’s created more profitability, more control. It’s allowed developers to invest more in better content and more marketing to create more growth.”
San Francisco-based Unity is the most popular engine for making mobile games. The company stands to gain from a portion of the $120 billion in global in-app purchases projected to be made in mobile games this year, most of which are built on Unity’s platform, according to the company.
Mobile-game developers are on track to earn billions of dollars more in revenue this year as a result of the court decisions. As much as $4.1 billion in revenue could shift from Apple and Google to developers, according to estimates from Joost Van Dreunen at Aldora Intelligence.
Unity joins several companies — including Epic Games — now offering so-called “web stores,” where players can buy in-game content through the game’s own site, outside of Apple or Google’s billing system. Unity will receive a portion of revenue from the merchant.
Bromberg said Unity downloads were up 50% in the second quarter of this year from the first, following the 2024 release of Unity 6.