Unity has started walking back some of its controversial wording in regards to charging developers who work on its engine, but that isn’t enough for some influential games.
Re-Logic, the studio behind mega-hit Terraria, “unequivocally condemn and reject” Unity’s changes and is donating $200,000 to rival open-source engines.
The Terraria team doesn’t even use Unity for much, other than a few parts here or there, but the changes Unity previously announced have already caused irreparable damage to game development as a whole that the team “cannot sit idly by” and observe the “predatory moves” being made against studios.
“We unequivocally condemn and reject the recent TOS/fee changes proposed by Unity and the underhanded way they were rolled out,” Re-Logic said. “The flippant manner with which years of trust cultivated by Unity were cast aside for yet another way to squeeze publishers, studios, and gamers is the saddest part. That this move was wholly unnecessary pushes things into the tragedy category—a cautionary tale the industry will not soon forget.”
Now, along with a number of devs threatening to pull popular games such as Among Us from store shelves or pause development in order to potentially swap engines, Unity has lit a fire under the need to support up-and-coming engines too.
Re-Logic noted just making a statement wasn’t “sufficient” and that, even if Unity were to retract every element of its policies and statements, it would not repair the lost trust. So the team is using its own success to help support two open-source engines as a way of “accelerating and strengthening competing” options.
In total, Re-Logic is donating $100,000 to the Godot Game Engine and FNA respectively, following that up with $1,000 a month for each team.
The only thing they are asking for in return is that those teams continue to “remain good people” while making powerful and approachable tools for developers everywhere.
Since Unity first announced these changes to its runtime policy on Sept. 12, the company has faced universal backlash from teams big and small that use its product, including those behind Rust, Among Us, and many others.
While the company has now said it will be “making changes to the policy,” Re-Logic is right in stating this move, widely viewed as greedy, has destroyed trust in Unity and sparked interest in other engines.
It also doesn’t help that the current chief executive, John Riccitiello sold shares of the company very recently and has a negative history regarding monetization in the industry.
