Unity is coming out with a new pricing model for 2024, where game developers will have to fork over money every time someone installs their game. this includes redownloads of already bought games, and downloads of games from places like game pass. it also applies to game demos and free games. it even applies if someone transfers a game from one device to another.
the policy applies if your company makes over $200,000 in yearly revenue and the game has been downloaded over a certain number of times in its entire lifetime.
there are rumors that gambling games and gotcha games are exempt.
https://blog.unity.com/news/plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates
If the engine has to phone home, does that mean they're going to inject an "always online" requirement into every game?
Optimistically, they just need to get the install data eventually so they might just have it phone home periodically and then charge based on total unique fingerprints they get back, because 99.9% of players are bound to connect to the internet at some time.
Pessimistically, yeah probably. Or an online requirement the 1st time you play.