Terraria dev pledges $200,000 to Unity rivals amid fees controversy

pcgamesn.com:

Terraria developer Re-Logic makes a show of support for open source engines Godot and FNA in response to the recent Unity runtime fee announcement. The team behind Terraria, one of the biggest and best indie games on Steam, slams Unity for its “destruction of trust” with the announcement of new fees that would see the most successful games using its service charged per individual download past a certain milestone, and commits $100,000 donations to two rival development engines with ongoing sponsorships.

Unity, the team behind the hugely popular Unity Engine used by many game developers, announced last week that it was introducing new policies that would see developers charged additional fees that could reach as high as 20 cents per install once games reach a certain revenue and lifetime install milestone. The engine is used for many big games, including Cities Skylines, Among Us, Hollow Knight, Cuphead, and Genshin Impact.

Since the announcement, many developers have come out publicly against the change, including the Metal Hellsinger developer telling players to get the game “while you can” as it considers its future, and the Slay the Spire developer making its first ever public statement to say it was considering changing the engine used for its next game, which is currently over two years into its development.

Terraria is not built on Unity, instead using a proprietary engine built in Microsoft’s XNA framework, although it uses some elements in its console and mobile versions. However, in a public statement shared via social media, the team says, “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