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After leaving developers furious for nearly a whole week after the recent announcement of making developers pay for game installs, Unity put up a fresh statement. I really do suggest you read that previous link for context, where I went over various issues.

The statement from Unity posted on X is as follows: "We have heard you. We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused. We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of days. Thank you for your honest and critical feedback."

So right now game developers have to wait and see what changes Unity come up with. For some, nothing short of entirely reversing it will do. Plenty of developers are already quite unhappy with the latest statement since it has nothing of actual substance after waiting nearly a week.

The problem is, as said by many developers, the trust has been broken. They've shown a total disregard for game developers since they're willing to change the terms on them at any point. Even if they put in protections against that, as shown before, they could just remove them again. How can a company rebuild trust when it has been so badly broken? It certainly will be interesting to see what they actually do.

Looks like we're in for an interesting week ahead for the industry…

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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Beaky 18 Sep 2023
The only way they are likely to rebuild trust is by publicly executing John Rikitikitaco and all the other wretches who thought this was a good idea. Or at the very least, the next best thing to execution.

Death threats are never OK.
It's just a Game Engine, no one deserves to die just because they did a (admittedly very stupid and bad) business decision.

2 Unity offices have already shut down because of that, and if you think that people should die because they're changing the financiation of a game engine I think you should be reported to the authorities.


Last edited by Beaky on 18 Sep 2023 at 3:02 pm UTC
junibegood 18 Sep 2023
The non-apology, take-no-responsibility apology is taught in PR/corporatelawyercritter 101. Say what you did was actually wrong and it could be the basis for a lawsuit, goes the reasoning. Some of the more up-to-date corporate flacks who took recent PR 201 have actually been told "The non-apology apology is so cliched that everybody notices what you're doing; they just annoy the public. Genuine apologies are much more effective." Apparently the Unity folks don't have any of the more recent PR graduates.

Or maybe they went to PR 301 and are ahead of their time. At some point, the public will start noticing that every company does the fake genuine apologies taught in PR 201 and they will have to try something else again.
slembcke 18 Sep 2023
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I've been working with on Unity projects as a contractor since 2009. (The editor was Mac only back then!) I don't plan on holding my breath. >_<

I really hope that this convinces a lot of people to try Godot even if it's not the "most powerful" or whatever. It's going to be just fine for a lot of projects. I also hope people start considering that a lot of games (particularly 2D) don't even need an engine... There's so many great tools and libraries out there that aren't all unified up into an engine. Heck, even my nephew made a little game from scratch in Pico8 because nobody told him it was "hard". It doesn't have to be rocket surgery if you aren't shooting for the stars.


Last edited by slembcke on 18 Sep 2023 at 3:15 pm UTC
elmapul 18 Sep 2023
i will forgive then if they accept to pay me 20 cents every time my game get installed.
oh, by the way, my game got installed 10 million times this week!
source: trust me!
Cryve 18 Sep 2023
RIP Unity
Lib-Inst 18 Sep 2023
isnt this bad news for linux? from what i understand that engine supports linux.
hell0 18 Sep 2023
isnt this bad news for linux? from what i understand that engine supports linux.

Unity's linux support is really hit-or-miss see Heart of the Machine dropping Native Linux for example.

Also, most public game engines do support linux nowadays. What tends to be the problem are third party libraries/plugins (like the kind used to play videos or make hairs look hairy). Or the devs lack of competence with the OS.

Overall since Unity's closest competitor is arguably Godot and since Godot has better linux support, I'd say this is a slightly positive news from a strictly linux point of view.
Lofty 18 Sep 2023
Is it that once you join a corporation you become a gas lighting narcissist or do you only get employed if you are a gas lighting narcissist.

There is a theory, that says that to become a successful manager in a very big corporation you essentially have to be a low level sociopath to succeed. I mean for society at large that's the equivalent of flushing the toilet and all the turds float to the top instead of being left with a basin of clean water.

Like others have said here i don't think calls to violence are ever appropriate.


Last edited by Lofty on 18 Sep 2023 at 9:17 pm UTC
CatKiller 18 Sep 2023
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Is it that once you join a corporation you become a gas lighting narcissist or do you only get employed if you are a gas lighting narcissist.

The people at the top have been to gas lighting narcissism school. Some - like former EA CEO now Unity CEO John Riccitiello - have spent additional years honing their craft subsequently.

People that aren't at or near the top that are employed by a corporation have no special powers in that regard.
Lofty 18 Sep 2023
Is it that once you join a corporation you become a gas lighting narcissist or do you only get employed if you are a gas lighting narcissist.

The people at the top have been to gas lighting narcissism school. Some - like former EA CEO now Unity CEO John Riccitiello - have spent additional years honing their craft subsequently.

People that aren't at or near the top that are employed by a corporation have no special powers in that regard.

Sadly i don't think it's just a upbringing or education thing. Sure it plays a big part but Nature vs Nurture. Some people are just wired that way.
nlborlcl 19 Sep 2023
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Diss Unity.
Eike 19 Sep 2023
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isnt this bad news for linux? from what i understand that engine supports linux.

I share this sentiment. I played many good games made with Unity, and it's sad to follow this development.
scaine 19 Sep 2023
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I also hope that the studios that complained start donating to Godot, at least a token amount.
!link

Huh, so I didn't realise that they'd started their own funding platform, which explains why the patreon contributions are in decline. They're still making $10K/month on Patreon too, but it's on the way down, definitely. I was contributing there and must have missed their announcement that they were setting up on their own. Link is here if you're interested: https://fund.godotengine.org.

I've cancelled that Patreon now and set a donation up on their own "platform", which is actually just a front-end to a recurring Paypal payment. But doing so gave me the opportunity to double my contribution, so that's something!

That stat above though? It doesn't appear to be changing very regularly as it hasn't moved today at all. Hopefully they'll update it again in a day or so.
CatKiller 19 Sep 2023
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Huh, so I didn't realise that they'd started their own funding platform, which explains why the patreon contributions are in decline. They're still making $10K/month on Patreon too, but it's on the way down, definitely. I was contributing there and must have missed their announcement that they were setting up on their own. Link is here if you're interested: https://fund.godotengine.org.

There's this site where I find out about this stuff 😉

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/07/godot-engine-has-a-new-funding-platform-and-theyre-calling-for-help/
Eike 20 Sep 2023
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Huh, so I didn't realise that they'd started their own funding platform, which explains why the patreon contributions are in decline. They're still making $10K/month on Patreon too, but it's on the way down, definitely. I was contributing there and must have missed their announcement that they were setting up on their own. Link is here if you're interested: https://fund.godotengine.org.

There's this site where I find out about this stuff 😉

https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2023/07/godot-engine-has-a-new-funding-platform-and-theyre-calling-for-help/

Don't you link such obscure websites here please! Gaming? On Linux?!? What a joke!


Last edited by Eike on 20 Sep 2023 at 6:03 am UTC
scaine 20 Sep 2023
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Well, it did indeed update. The Godot fund is now sitting at £47881/month, with 1343 contributors. And another $10K/month from the old Patreon fund.

Incredible. Beautiful.
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