The town hall was canceled because of reported death threats

A Dangerous Turn in the Unity Pricing Debattle: After the Bloomberg News Breakout, Unity’s CEO John Riccitiello Disturbed

The situation with the Unity pricing debacle has taken a dangerous turn. According to a new report, the company has canceled a town hall meeting because of death threats. According to Bloomberg, Unity CEO John Riccitiello was set to address employees Thursday morning, but the companywide meeting was canceled and two of Unity’s offices were closed because of the alleged threats.

Earlier this week, Unity, the company that makes the Unity video game engine popular with indie developers, announced that it was changing its pricing model. The changes included a pricing scheme that sought to charge developers on a per-install basis for games that met specific download and revenue thresholds.

Other game makers wondered how Unity could put forth such a statement without considering all the ways it could negatively impact its users. According to a post on the Unity forums from someone who claimed to be an employee, objections were raised internally.

Riccitiello himself became a central figure of the controversy as some see him as the driving force behind the new model. He was the CEO when loot box monetization was added to the game. He called the developers “f—ing idiots” because they were unwilling to put monetization schemes in the development process. Riccitiello is the man who talked during a shareholder call about charging players a dollar to reload their guns. The Unity CEO also raised eyebrows this week when it was reported that he sold off 2,000 Unity shares right before the company announced this news — with the stock price seeing a significant drop thereafter.

Some developers are considering not using Unity as a game engine. Other game developers, like Massive Monster, were more drastic, which, via the official account for its game Cult of the Lamb, threatened to delist the game entirely.

Comment on Unity Developers Respond to Unity’s New Pricing Scheme”, by M. E. Weiss [Am. J. Math. Phys. Rev. B524 (2002) 389]

“Know also that all of the concerns that are understandably blowing up at the moment have been raised internally by many weeks before this announcement,” the alleged employee wrote. “Why it was decided to rush this out anyway in this way I can only speculate about.”

Source: Developers respond to Unity’s new pricing scheme

The Engine Is Yours to Get? When is Yours? And When Will You Migrate? Explaining Some Misconceptions about Unity Game Development

Let me be clear. The founder of Facepunch Studios wrote that the cost is not a big issue for them. “If everything worked out, the tracking was flawless and it was 10p per sale, no biggy really. That is what it costs. That’s not why we’re angry. It hurts because we didn’t agree to this. We used the engine because you pay up front and then ship your product. We were not told this was going to happen. We weren’t warned. We were not consulted. We have been making Rust on the engine for 10 years. We’ve paid them every year. They have changed the rules.

Developers weren’t the only ones to weigh in on this. Other game engine companies and publishers expressed their dissatisfaction, some more creatively than others.

Devolver Digital, notable for being both an indie developer powerhouse and for its unorthodox communication style, posted, “Definitely include what engine you’re using in game pitches. It’s important information,” which seems to suggest that it would look less favorably on future games developed in Unity for the unknown costs they could incur.

One of the things about the engine is that once you buy it, you can sell your game as often as you want, and never owe us another dime.

David is hoping this Unity thing will be similar to the previous ones, and he has been through this before. Butcher’s Creek will be my last game on Unity.

Others thought it was bluntly, rather than casually. “Despite the immense amount of time and effort our team has already poured into our new title, we will be migrating to a new game engine unless the changes are completely reverted,” posted Mega Crit, developers of Slay the Spire. “We have never made a public statement before. That is how badly you fucked up.”