The Great Unity Meltdown

gamesreviews.com:

Game engines aren’t supposed to cause major problems for their users. Usually when they do, it’s accidental. This week Unity bucked that trend.

And while there is no shortage of column space around this very issue, it’s worth another look. It could very easily impact on the way we all play our games old and new.

So as a quick recap: Unity decided to change their deal with developers. They would charge a set fee of $0.20 for every download of a game made in Unity. That was so long as it hit the cap of £200,000 each year and if it had been downloaded 200,000 times.

The changes come into effect from January 1 and will impact on both future games and games previously made in unity. In other words, if you’ve had a successful game made with that engine you’re suddenly going to get a big old bill.

Developers have no control over this. They don’t know how much their bill is going to come to until they get it. Unity won’t even share how they’re tracking these things. That means there’s no accountability. You can’t argue it if you don’t know how the maths was done.

And while the engine creator claims otherwise, developers are worried about things like piracy counting towards their bill. Or organised downloads by groups looking to make a point. For instance, far right groups downloading LGBT+ games en masse. As far as we know – because Unity won’t tell us – there’s no protection over this.

This has resulted – and rightly so – in a grand exodus of developers. Many are converting their in-development game to other engines. There is genuine concern about this. If you own Ori, Disco Elysium, Cuphead, Fall Guys or many others, you’ll cost the developer money when you download.

There’s no ifs and buts here. Unity need to back down and