The 2023 Unity Runtime Fee episode pushed thousands of indie developers to reconsider their engine choice. Three years later, the question is more nuanced than the headlines suggested. Unity walked back the changes, Godot took advantage of the moment to grow significantly, and Unreal continued to dominate high-fidelity work. Indie studios in 2026 have a real choice for the first time in a decade.
I have spent 12 years in game development, including a tenure as Mobile Team on RuneScape Mobile at Jagex. We are a Unity-specialist studio that works with indie clients on contracts from £20k upwards: solo developers building first commercial titles, two- and three-person teams shipping their second or third game, and small teams with seed funding building toward a Steam launch. We picked Unity deliberately and we will say upfront where that lens does and does not serve you. The advice below is what I tell indie clients during scoping calls when they ask whether they have made the right engine choice.
This is not a feature checklist. It is the engine question viewed through the constraints that actually matter for indies: cost, scope risk, hiring at small scale, asset ecosystems, and the licence terms that survive the next downturn.
The 30-Second Answer
If you skim nothing else, take this:
- Pick Unity if you are a one- to five-person team building a commercial 2D or mobile game on a budget. Largest contractor pool at indie-friendly rates, deepest asset ecosystem, mature monetisation tooling. The pragmatic indie default.
- Pick Godot if licence freedom is non-negotiable, your project is 2D-first, your team already knows Godot, or you are building toward an open-source distribution model. The cleanest licensing position of any major engine.
- Pick Unreal if your indie team has C++ depth and visual fidelity is your core marketing hook. The right call for small teams chasing AAA visuals on a tight budget, the wrong call for almost everyone else.
The rest of this article explains why each is true, which scenarios reverse the recommendation, and the cost realities of running an indie team on each engine.
What Indies Actually Need from a Game Engine
Indie constraints differ from studio constraints. A 200-person studio cares about pipeline scaling, custom tool integration, and engine source access. A solo or three-person team cares about something narrower:
Low or zero engine cost. Indie margins are thin. An extra £2,000 per year on tooling subscriptions matters when your runway is six months.
Fast iteration. When you are wearing multiple hats, the time between "have an idea" and "see it on screen" is the most expensive variable in your day.
The ability to hire help if the project takes off. Most indie projects either fail or grow beyond what one or two people can finish. Engine choice determines how easy it is to bring in a contractor for a sprint.
A pre-built asset and plugin ecosystem. A solo dev cannot build a save system, an inventory UI, a dialogue system, a settings menu, an analytics SDK, an IAP integration, and a localisation pipeline from scratch. Buying or downloading these is the difference between shipping and quietly abandoning the project.
Licence terms that will not change. The 2023 Unity Runtime Fee episode showed that engine licensing can change without warning. For indies, that risk is concrete: a fee structure shift can wipe out projected margins on a game that has already been written.
Marketability. Engine choice has a small but real effect on Steam reviews, press coverage, and player perception. Mostly minor, occasionally relevant.
We will look at each engine through these constraints.
Unity for Indies
Unity remains the pragmatic indie choice for most commercial projects. Here is why.
Cost reality. Unity Personal is free for studios earning under $200,000 per year. Most indie projects, including most that ship to Steam or mobile stores, never cross that threshold. For studios that do, Unity Pro is roughly £1,800 per seat per year. There is no per-install fee. Predictable, and almost always free for indie scale.
The Asset Store advantage. This is genuinely Unity's largest indie-specific strength. A solo dev buying a £40 character controller, a £30 dialogue system, and a £25 save manager has saved themselves four to six weeks of development time. The asset store has hundreds of options at every price point including free. For indie teams without dedicated tooling engineers, this is huge.
Contractor pool. Unity contractors are everywhere. Indie-friendly day rates exist (we see £300 to £700 typical for Unity mobile contractors, with the lower end aimed at indie projects). When you need a sprint of additional help to ship a feature or fix a stubborn bug, Unity has the deepest pool.
Mature monetisation tooling. Unity LevelPlay, AdMob, IronSource, Unity IAP, GameAnalytics. All have first-party or vendor-maintained Unity packages. For free-to-play indie mobile, this is a months-of-work saving over assembling the same stack in another engine.
Console export. Unity has direct first-party support for PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. Indies still need a publisher relationship to actually ship to consoles, but the engine side is straightforward.
The 2023 Runtime Fee aftermath. Unity walked back the worst of the changes, but trust took a hit. Three years on, the per-seat subscription is back to being predictable. Some indies still moved to Godot during the episode and have not come back, but for new projects, Unity's licensing is again rational.
Limitations to know about. "Another Unity game" reviewer fatigue is real but minor. Some Steam reviewers flag Unity-built games as low-effort, but this is rarely the dealbreaker some claim and it can be neutralised with strong art direction and polish. Unity Pro per-seat costs add up if your team grows past the revenue threshold. The engine has a history of "multiple ways to do the same thing" (Built-in vs URP vs HDRP, old Input vs new Input System), which can frustrate indie teams using older tutorials.
Godot for Indies
Godot is the right call for a specific subset of indie scenarios. Here is when.
The cleanest licensing position of any engine. Godot is MIT-licensed: no fees, no royalties, no usage tracking, no terms that can change later. You can fork the engine source, ship commercial games, and owe nothing. For indies who got burned by the 2023 Unity episode (and for indies generally allergic to platform risk), this matters.
2D pipeline strength. Godot's 2D engine is purpose-built rather than retrofitted on a 3D renderer. For 2D indie games, the workflow feels native: dedicated 2D physics, 2D lighting, sprite tools, tilemaps. If your project is 2D-first, Godot is often more efficient to work in than Unity.
Small editor footprint and fast iteration. Godot is around 120 MB. The editor opens in seconds. GDScript has no compile step. For indie teams iterating rapidly during pre-production, this matters more than feature parity with larger engines.
Growing community and ecosystem. Since 2023, Godot's contributor base, plugin ecosystem (AssetLib), and tutorial volume have grown significantly. It is no longer a hobbyist-only tool, though it has not yet caught Unity in commercial mobile.
Limitations to know about. Contractor pool is small (we estimate roughly 1/5 the Unity contractor pool, though it varies by region). The AssetLib equivalent of the Unity Asset Store is smaller and less actively curated. Console support requires a third-party publisher (W4 Games and Lone Wolf Technology are the names indies typically work with), which adds cost and complexity. Monetisation SDK gaps for mobile (AdMob, IronSource, AppLovin) require either a community plugin or manual native integration. For free-to-play mobile, this is real friction.
When Godot is the right indie call. A solo developer or two-person team shipping a paid 2D game to Steam or a premium mobile audience. A team that already knows Godot and would lose time switching. A team with strong licence-freedom convictions. A project where the engine will need to be modified or extended at the source level.
Unreal for Indies
Unreal is rarely the right indie call. Here is when it is.
5% royalty above $1M is rarely an indie concern. Most indie projects do not hit $1M in lifetime gross revenue. For those that do, the royalty is a tax on success, which is a problem to be glad you have. Effectively free for indie scale.
MetaHuman, Megascans, and Quixel Bridge are included free. Epic bundles assets that would individually cost thousands of pounds elsewhere. For an indie chasing AAA-looking visuals, this is a meaningful subsidy.
AAA visual fidelity is genuinely Unreal's strength. If your indie game's marketing hook is "this looks AAA on a small budget", Unreal gives you more visual quality per artist-hour than Unity or Godot.
Limitations to know about. Editor weight is the biggest issue. Unreal assumes a powerful PC. Indie teams on older laptops will struggle. C++ compile times are long, often 15 to 60 seconds for incremental changes. Blueprints get unwieldy at scale, and serious indie work eventually requires C++. Contractor day rates are roughly 30 to 50% higher than Unity equivalents (£500 to £900 typical), which matters for indie budgets. Build sizes are large (150 to 300 MB minimum for mobile), which hurts mobile install rates. The 5% royalty, while rarely triggered, is administratively annoying when it does kick in.
When Unreal is the right indie call. A small team with existing C++ depth and a project specifically focused on photorealistic 3D PC or console release. A team migrating from a previous Unreal project where the engine knowledge is sunk cost. A solo or two-person team where the lead has shipped Unreal commercially before.
For everyone else, Unreal is overkill.
Cost Reality Comparison
Indie cost realities, side by side. All figures in GBP for typical UK and EU contractor rates, USD for Unity revenue threshold and Unreal royalty (set in those currencies):
Scope Risk: Which Engine Forgives a Small Team's Mistakes?
Indie projects rarely fail because the engine was wrong. They fail because scope grew past what a small team could finish. Engine choice still affects how badly scope errors hurt.
Unity has the deepest community for unblocking. When an indie team hits a problem they cannot solve, Unity has the largest pool of StackOverflow answers, YouTube tutorials, and Discord communities. The probability that someone has hit your exact bug and solved it is highest in Unity. For indies without senior engineering depth, this matters enormously.
Godot has the cleanest scaling story. No fee triggers, no licence renegotiation, no per-install costs. If your indie game becomes a hit, Godot's licensing does not change shape under you. The trade-off is that you are responsible for more of the infrastructure (especially monetisation and analytics) yourself.
Unreal punishes scope errors hardest. Long compile times, heavy editor, and the C++ overhead mean that "I will refactor this later" costs more in Unreal than in the others. For indie teams who change direction mid-project (most indie teams), this is a real cost.
For most indies, the right answer is to keep scope small enough that the engine's forgiveness does not matter. But when scope inevitably grows, Unity's community depth saves the most projects.
The Marketability Question
Players largely do not check what engine you used. Reviewers and journalists occasionally do. Here is the actual impact.
Steam review fatigue around Unity is real but minor. Some Steam reviewers flag Unity-built games as "another Unity game" or assume low effort. This effect is small and can be neutralised with strong art direction, polished UX, and a distinctive visual style. We have not seen evidence that engine choice meaningfully affects Steam review scores or revenue.
The "hand-crafted in Godot" indie marketing angle exists. A small but visible subset of indie marketing leans into "we built this in Godot because we believe in open source". This works for specific audiences (FOSS-aligned communities, certain Twitch and YouTube circles) but is irrelevant to most commercial markets.
Unreal's visual selling power. "Built in Unreal Engine 5" is a marketing signal that can move pre-orders if your trailer looks AAA. For indies whose pitch is visual fidelity, this is genuinely valuable. For indies whose pitch is gameplay or story, it is invisible.
For most indie projects, engine choice should not be driven by marketing. Pick the engine that lets you ship; the marketing follows from the game itself.
Three Indie Scenarios with Specific Recommendations
Generalisations only get you so far. Here are three specific indie scenarios with the recommendation.
Scenario 1: Solo dev shipping a 2D game in 12 months
You are one person. You have a 2D game in mind. You want to ship to Steam or itch.io within a year. You may release a mobile companion build later.
Recommendation: Godot is often the better call. Faster iteration, cleaner licensing, purpose-built 2D pipeline, smaller editor footprint. The contractor pool size matters less because you are not planning to hire. The asset ecosystem gap matters less because solo devs typically build their own systems anyway. If you already know Unity well, stick with Unity. Otherwise, Godot.
Scenario 2: Two- to five-person team shipping a commercial mobile or hybrid title
You are a small team with seed funding or self-funded runway. You are building a free-to-play or hybrid mobile title with ad mediation, IAP, and analytics. You may need a contractor for a few sprints to hit your launch window.
Recommendation: Unity is almost always the right call. Mature monetisation tooling, large contractor pool, deep asset ecosystem, and the highest probability of finding affordable specialised help when you need it. The licensing predictability is now back to where it was pre-2023. For commercial mobile work specifically, Unity is the pragmatic indie default.
Scenario 3: Indie team chasing AAA visuals on a small budget
You are a small team with at least one engineer comfortable in C++. Your pitch is visual fidelity: a 3D PC or console game that looks like a much bigger studio made it. Your marketing hook is the trailer.
Recommendation: Unreal, but only if visual fidelity is your top marketing hook. The free MetaHumans, Megascans, and Lumen rendering are real subsidies for the look you are chasing. Be honest with yourself about whether the team has the C++ depth to ship in Unreal without burning the timeline. If the answer is no, build in Unity with strong art direction instead. For a single project, Unreal can deliver visuals that punch above your weight. For a sustained indie career, Unity has lower per-project overhead.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which engine is best for indie game development in 2026?
Unity for most commercial indie projects, especially mobile. Godot for licence-sensitive teams, 2D-first projects, and developers who already know it. Unreal only when visual fidelity is the core marketing hook and the team has C++ depth.
Is Godot good enough for commercial indie games?
Yes for 2D and mid-tier 3D, particularly for paid releases on Steam and itch.io. Several commercial indie titles have shipped on Godot. The main commercial gaps are console support (third-party publisher required) and mobile monetisation tooling (community plugins rather than first-party SDKs).
Is Unreal too expensive for indie developers?
Engine licence cost is not the issue. Unreal is free until $1M lifetime gross revenue, then 5% royalty above that. For most indies, this is effectively free. The real costs are hardware (Unreal needs a powerful PC), iteration time (long compile cycles), and contractor rates (30 to 50% higher than Unity equivalents).
What is Unity's Runtime Fee and is it still a concern?
The 2023 Runtime Fee proposed a per-install charge above certain revenue thresholds. Unity walked back the changes after significant industry backlash. As of 2026, Unity's pricing is per-seat subscription only, with no per-install fee. The episode damaged trust but the current pricing is predictable and back to its pre-2023 model.
How much does it cost to make an indie game in Unity?
It depends on scope. A focused 2D indie title built by one or two developers might cost £20,000 to £80,000 in actual cash spending (including contracted art, audio, and engineering help). A more ambitious 3D indie title with a small team might cost £80,000 to £300,000. Unity engine cost is rarely the dominant factor; team time is.
Can I publish a Godot game on consoles?
Yes, but you need a third-party publisher. Godot itself does not have first-party PlayStation, Xbox, or Nintendo Switch support. Companies like W4 Games and Lone Wolf Technology offer console porting services for Godot games. This adds cost and a relationship to manage that Unity and Unreal do not require.
Should I switch from Unity to Godot for my next indie project?
Probably not, unless your next project is specifically 2D-first or licence freedom is genuinely critical to you. Engine switching costs three to six months of learning curve plus the loss of your accumulated Unity workflow knowledge. For a new indie project where you have no engine bias, Godot for 2D and Unity for everything else is a reasonable starting point.
Closing CTA
If you are still weighing the choice, our 3-engine comparison hub covers the full picture across all use cases, not just indie scenarios. If you specifically want the mobile-focused breakdown, our Unity vs Godot vs Unreal for mobile post covers that in depth. For beginners just starting out, our beginner-focused engine comparison is the right place to begin.
If you have decided on Unity and want a senior team to embed alongside your indie squad for a sprint, our co-development service is designed for exactly that. We work with indie studios on contracts from £20k upwards.
The engine matters less than shipping. Whichever you pick, the discipline is the same: keep scope small, iterate fast, and ship the smallest viable version of your idea.
