With a screenshot that only gets more terrifying the longer you look at it, one Old School RuneScape player has lured in and subsequently flabbergasted the MMO's community.
20.09.2023 - 19:23 / pcgamer.com / Trent Kusters
The irony has been pointed out many times: When game engine Unity revealed its new per-install fee last week, game developers were possibly the most united they've ever been—in disgust. Even developers who don't use Unity expressed anger or criticized the unprecedented change of terms.
Perhaps the best example of this game dev rallying occurred this week when Terraria developer Re-Logic announced that it's giving away $200,000 to open-source game engines as a Unity counteroffensive, despite barely using Unity itself.
pic.twitter.com/ZqzGMTui0fSeptember 19, 2023
«The loss of a formerly-leading and user-friendly game engine to the darker forces that negatively impact so much of the gaming industry has left us dismayed to put it mildly,» wrote the studio. «While we do not personally use Unity (outside of a few elements on our console/mobile platforms), we feel like we cannot sit idly by as these predatory moves are made against studios everywhere.»
Re-Logic goes on to say that, beyond just expressing condemnation, it feels a responsibility to «get behind some other up-and-coming open source game engines,» and to that end it has promised to make $100,000 donations to Godot and FNA, two free, publicly-licenced engines, the former of which has particularly gained attention as a Unity alternative in the wake of its new terms. Re-Logic has also committed to donating $1,000 a month to each project, with the only stipulation being that they stay their developer-friendly course.
«All we ask in return is that [the open source engine developers] remain good people and keep doing all that they can to make these engines powerful and approachable for developers everywhere,» the developer said.
Unity apologized this week for the «confusion and angst» caused by its new install fee, and says it will be «making changes to the policy.» The statement has not remotely pacified the game development community. The issue has not been «confusion,» responded League of Geeks studio director Trent Kusters in a post on X, but the opposite: that game developers clearly «understood the devastating impact and anti-developer sentiment» of the new fee model.
We explained Unity's proposal, which is supposed to take effect January 1, in more detail in our overview of the announcement and backlash from last week. The gist is that, after certain thresholds are met, Unity wants to start charging game developers each time their Unity-based game is installed—tracked via its own «proprietary data model»—even if their game was published before this policy was introduced. Unity has since walked back aspects of the policy, saying last week for instance that developers won't be charged for reinstalls of their games, after initially saying they
With a screenshot that only gets more terrifying the longer you look at it, one Old School RuneScape player has lured in and subsequently flabbergasted the MMO's community.
Just last month, indie roguelike hit Vampire Survivors swapped to a whole new game engine in Unity. Now, with the whole game industry crying foul over Unity's half-retracted fee changes, the game's creator has a simple answer for whether he'd ever use the engine again: "lol no thank you!"
The president of Unity Create, Marc Whitten, has published an open letter responding to the backlash over the recent Unity Runtime Fee announcement, and has outlined a number of changes that are going to be made to the policy before it’s enforced in 2024.
Unity might be facing the ire that comes with a near-universal condemnation of a new policy change, but at least things are looking up for two open-source game engines.
Developers received a nasty surprise when Unity announced that those who use its game engine will be subject to a runtime fee, beginning next year. This runtime fee will be charged monthly on a per-installation basis.
Terraria developer Re-Logic has responded to Unity's install-fee debacle by condemning the move and donating $100,000 to both Godot and FNA.
Re-Logic, the indie game developer and publisher behind the 2D sandbox title Terraria, has condemned the newly announced Unity Runtime Fee, and has announced that it is donating a substantial sum of money to two different open-source game engines, to help keep them “powerful and approachable for developers everywhere”.
Terraria developer Re-Logic is donating $100k to two open source engines in the wake of Unity's recent policy changes.
Even though Terraria developer Re-Logic mostly doesn’t use Unity, it’s made a strong statement of condemnation in regards to the engine’s recently announced, controversial install fee policy – and it’s putting its money where its mouth is.
In protest of controversial changes to the fees associated with the Unity game engine, Terraria developer Re-Logic plans to donate $100,000 each to two open source alternatives, with further monthly donations to follow "going forward."
More companies and developers have joined a protest against Unity by switching off ads and monetisation.
Mobile game developers and publishers, with hundreds of games and millions of installs, are protesting Unity’s new controversial install-based pricing model by turning off ad monetization services for their games. In an open letter published on Azur Games’ and other company’s blogs, the companies are turning off all ironSource and Unity Ads features, two services Unity offers to developers to monetize their games. They’ll turn these services back on when Unity reviews and reverses its new policy, which has developers across the entire industry upset.