Introducing the MIT Runtime Fee (April 1st Parody)

Thank you for the laughs from our April 1st announcement. The below was a parody based on the Unity runtime fee announcement.

We did receive some well-intentioned concern, so to clear any confusion, The Mirror remains committed to open-source via being MIT-licensed, giving you the freedom to own what you build. You can see the license on our Github here.

It's been great building with you all and we have many exciting things in store.

We also have a solid, growing community on Discord - we'd love for you to hop in!

Stay tuned for more content coming this week and our weekly planning is at 8am PT on our #weekly-planning channel.

Cheers and have a great week!

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Effective immediately, we are introducing a new MIT Runtime Fee (MITRF) license that’s based on game installs. We will also add cloud-based asset storage, Mirror DevOps tools, and AI at runtime at no extra cost to Mirror subscription plans.

As many of you know, the Mirror Engine is in fact two substantial software components – The Mirror Editor and The Mirror Runtime. The Mirror Runtime is code that executes on player devices and makes Made with Mirror games work at scale, with billions of monthly downloads.

We are introducing a Mirror Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user. We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Mirror Runtime is also installed.

Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.

Thresholds for revenue and installs

Games qualify for the Mirror Runtime Fee after two criteria have been met: 1) the game has passed a minimum revenue threshold in the last 12 months, and 2) the game has passed a minimum lifetime install count. We set high revenue and game install thresholds to avoid impacting those who have yet to find scale, meaning they don’t need to pay the fee until they have reached significant success.

Only games that meet the following thresholds qualify for the Mirror Runtime Fee:

Mirror Personal and Mirror Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs.
Mirror Pro and Mirror Enterprise: Those that have made $1,000,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 1,000,000 lifetime game installs.

MITRF: MIT Runtime Fee License

This is only possible with the cutting-edge, novel, newly-introduced MIT Runtime Fee license.

Once a game passes the revenue and install thresholds, the studio would pay a small flat fee for each install.

To adjust for scale, Mirror Pro and Mirror Enterprise subscribers will be eligible for volume discounts that rapidly reduce the per-install cost of the Mirror Runtime Fee.

This means that in addition to other benefits, the cost of Mirror Pro and Mirror Enterprise licenses can be offset by the savings as the game grows.