The developers responded to the new pricing scheme

The Unity Debacle: What’s Happening after Unity Comes to an End? A New Report on Bloomberg and the Case against Unity

The debacle of unity pricing has taken a dangerous turn. In a new report from Bloomberg, the company has reportedly canceled a town hall meeting due to what the publication called credible death threats. The company wide meeting was canceled, and two of the offices were shut down because of threats, when John Riccitiello was scheduled to address employees Thursday morning.

The news that Unity will change its pricing structure after the download and revenue thresholds are met is at the center of the controversy. Though Unity asserts that only 10 percent of its users will be affected, it is still unclear how Unity intends to track installs and how it intends to differentiate a “valid” install from an “invalid” one.

The deletion of its terms of service, as well as the recent action by mobile developers, have been asked of Unity by the Verge. Though it has not responded yet, the company responds to boycotting developers.

Riccitiello himself became a central figure of the controversy as some see him as the driving force behind the new model. The CEO of ElectronicArts was responsible for adding loot box monetization to the game. He made news when he called developers “fucking idiots” over some developers’ reluctance to introduce monetization schemes earlier in the development process. Riccitiello talked during a shareholder call about charging Battlefield 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.

Many developers shared a similar sentiment, explaining they were considering abandoning 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.

Source: [Developers respond to Unity’s new pricing scheme] “Weighing the naive and intelligent invariants of the square root of unity”

All of the concerns that are understandably blowing up have been raised internally by many weeks before this announcement, according to an alleged employee. It was decided to rush this out so I don’t know why.

Source: Developers respond to Unity’s new pricing scheme

What is the Cost of Using a Game Engine? A Reply to Devolver Digital CEO David Szymanski, AGM Mega Crit, Slay The Spire, and Others

Let me make clear what’s happening. “The cost isn’t a big issue to us” is what the founder of Rust wrote. “If everything worked out, the tracking was flawless and it was 10p per sale, no biggy really. If that’s what it costs, then that’s what it costs. But that’s not why we’re furious. It hurts because we didn’t agree to this. We used the engine because you pay up front and then ship your product. We weren’t told this was going to happen. We were not warned. We were not consulted. We have been making Rust for 10 years. We’ve paid them every year. And now they 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 seems like it would be less positive if there were unknown costs to be incurred in the future of games that are developed in Unity.

“One of the cool things about RPG Maker is that once you buy the engine, you can sell your game as many times as you want and never owe us another dime,” RPG Maker, the engine for games including Yume Nikki, Corpse Party, and Always Sometimes Monsters, posted.

“I’ve been through ‘this will destroy indies’ policy changes before, and none of them were as bad as they looked […] so I’m hoping this Unity thing will be similar,” posted David Szymanski, developer of Dusk. Butcher’s Creek will be my last game on the platform, regardless of what happens.

Others put it more bluntly. “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.”

GitHub Terms of Service and Unity Ads Decrees After the 2019 Unity Commuters Run-Insider Event (Extended Version)

In a blog post in 2019, Unity wrote, “When you obtain a version of Unity, and don’t upgrade your project, we think you should be able to stick to that version of the TOS.”

Unity stated in that 2019) that it would track changes to the terms of service on GitHub to give developers full transparency.

The letter said the collective of game development companies was forced to turn off all Iron Source and Unity Ads monetization until the changes were reconsidered.