You might have heard the recent news about Unity, the game engine software used to make all my games (excluding Uncleft, that was Gamemaker). It is incredibly infuriating to see this happen, although to be honest the signs were there for a long time. Ever since the company went public back in 2018, they've grown fat, lazy, and greedy, and every decision they've made has gotten worse and worse since then.

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For those of you unaware, 2 days ago Unity, the company, announced that they would be charging a fee of $0.20 USD for every single install of any game made using Unity. That means that, starting 2024, any time you download either Tôtem, Type to Continue, or Bittersweet, I will be charged $0.20 USD. Mind you that the latter two are both free, so that means I would literally be losing money just because I used Unity. HOWEVER: there is a catch. There is a threshold that games have to reach to get to that point. As of writing this, in order to be charged a fee you have to either have 200,000 total lifetime installs (yes including installs made ANYTIME before 2024), or have made $200,000 USD in revenue from it in the last 12 months. (EDIT: I just realised the threshold is actually the 200,000 installs AND $200,000 USD in the last 12 months, meaning COMPLETELY free games should be okay I think, but I’m not sure how Itch donations or in-game ads would factor into this, I’m guessing they would factor it in. The worst hit by this would be those who price the game very low, like 1 buck, because that means after 200,000 downloads they would be giving 20% of the game’s revenue to Unity, and that’s on top of the 30% that Itch takes for each sale, which is very standard. But because it’s a flat fee, the lower you go the higher the percentage is, and if you get less than $0.20 USD per sale on average, you will literally be losing money on every sale. Look up Upper Echelon’s video on YouTube it shows some really shady stuff and how this is connected with Twitter and Reddit too: https://youtu.be/ZOCTSp_U-KI?si=2Ijts7OhVPb9LmFv). Now thankfully for me because my games are very small I don't get anywhere near those numbers. Tôtem currently has almost 21k downloads (which doesn't mean unique downloads, just any time someone presses the download button, including repetitions, and purchases while I've made it free) and almost 2k paid purchases, which means that I'm not even anywhere near the limit for that. For Type to Continue, I'm at 16.1K downloads and less than 500 in super super generous donations (<3), so all good on that front, too. Let it be known that this only accounts for the downloads from Itch directly, and not for any other one of those websites that just take the game and host it for free, as in the piracy kind which obviously you can't fight, or the kind that just hosts the game, like softonic, that get crazy amount of downloads that I can't account for. But with what I am aware of, it looks like I am completely unaffected... right now. But, if I do decide to release something else for free and it blows up by accident then I would literally be paying for it... hard. If I make a free game that just reaches 200,000 downloads, I would have to pay them for that whole amount, which is $40,000 USD. Just for having a free game blow up from popularity. Absolute fucking bullshit.

Now there have been some initial theories and discussions and updates and whatnot, but as of writing they have said that reinstalls will not count, only the first unique install. Allegedly. They've also said a bunch of stuff regarding piracy and that they had ways to fight it but, let's be honest, you can't fight piracy. They also said that games that are played in-browser will not be charged as an install.

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With that being said, this only happens if the policy is maintained until its launch. Maybe the insane backlash online will change things and we'll all go on with out lives like nothing happened, but no. This is a deep, deeeeeep issue. The CEO of unity has a proven history of greed and stopping this won't change anything in the future. He's already called game developers who don't put money first "fucking idiots", and he's already been president and COO of EA, so that should be the end of it. He even sold 2000 of his shares right before the install fee announcement so we know it's just a platform's suicide at this point.

So, there have been a lot of reactions to this news, and they're all the same. Unity as we know it is dead. Very dead. The future is dead, because there is none. Every major Unity-based game developer has been public with this. Either they would delete their games to not get charged or they would switch engines to something else. and that's what I'm doing too. I will no longer be using Unity.

I've already been interested in Godot for a while but only first downloaded it yesterday and found it to be more than capable of doing everything I do now, including the crazy amount of volumetric lights lol. I've toyed with some other engines, like Unreal and Gamemaker, but they aren't the right fit for me. Unreal is the worst to code in, just the worst. Just for that, I'm out. Gamemaker is my dearly beloved and my origin story since I was 11 in the good old days of 8.1, and as much love as I have for it, my current game style isn't compatible with it, and that's ok. I've looked at a bunch of others but I think Godot is my best best. I know they have issues with leadership lately as well, where the project is being taken in so many directions because they don't know what they want it to be exactly. However, I'm satisfied with what they have and with their business model as a free and open-source engine for 2D and 3D, with 2D being their usual focus, hence it being first.

I've also considered taking down all of my Unity games in protest, but I think for your sake I'll keep them up for now and keep that option as a last resort.

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The final thing I want to say is that, although I'm super quiet on here for years on end, behind the scenes I've made a tonne of unfinished games, all of which you guys would find cool as hell, like 2 Ultrakill-style shooters/fighters, and some tower-defence stuff with a bell-tower based language, a fast-paced parkour-runner, and a claustrophobic horror game with mech guns, but now that I'm switching engines, all that will go goodbye. That's probably like 10 or so games or something. But you know what fuck it, Unity is desecrated ground. As much love as I have for Unity, and as much as I wish it didn't have to be this way, unless something changes I think it's better that they aren't associated with it anymore. I'm considering this a full reset for now. Unity is dead, let it rest with at least some dignity left.

Cheers,

Shakles

Godot Testing stuff I'm messing around with right now: