Adobe Reveals Flash Tax For Popular Developers

Adobe has announced new premium features have been added to Flash Player 11.2 and has announced a collaboration at the same time with Unity Technologies. There is a catch to the new premium features for some developers, which I'll get to in a bit. The new premium features in 11.2 promise to allow developers to build games with console quality experience that run on the Flash Player.

The collaboration with Unity Technologies will allow games developed using Unity technology to be published to Flash Player using premium features directly within Unity tools. Adobe notes that it will also be working with Unity to integrate the future Adobe Digital marketing services and developers into Unity tools to help developers make money off the games. That integration will also help Adobe make money off developers' games since there are now fees associated with these premium features. The premium features will give developers access to hardware accelerated graphics in combination with the domain memory used by C/C++ cross compilers.

Adobe will now be charging some developers 9% of game revenues when the premium features are used. Adobe notes that the first $50,000 of application revenues are not taxed. The premium features are also offered free for content published prior to August 1, after that day charges will start. Adobe does note that the use of premium features within Adobe AIR for mobile applications on iOS or Android will be royalty-free.