Last week, Unity announced its new runtime fee, which has stirred significant discussion within the game development community. Essentially, Unity intends to charge developers and publishers per install, and the controversial decision has been continually evolving since the initial reveal. Unity hasn’t fully reversed its decision on this matter, and even if it does, much of the development community believes they can no longer trust Unity. Since the announcement, hundreds of developers have released statements, and a developer took out his weekend seeing how difficult it would be to port his game to Godot, an open source engine.
Earlier today, Terraria’s developers, Re-Logic, announced they would be donating $100,000 each to Godot and FNA. In addition, Re-Logic is sponsoring each of these projects with $1,000 per month moving forward. All the company asks in return is that “they remain good people and keep doing all that they can to make these engines powerful and approachable for developers everywhere.”
This is a pretty big deal for both Godot and FNA, and it’s all thanks to Unity’s ridiculous runtime fee. Here’s the full statement from Re-Logic:
The team at Re-Logic has been watching the recent events surrounding Unity with both interest and sadness. 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 mildly. While we do not personally use Unity (outside of a few elements on our console/mobile platforms), we feel like we cannot sit idly by as these predatory moves are made against studios everywhere.
We unequivocally condemn and reject the recent TOS/fee changes proposed by Unity and the underhanded way they were rolled out. 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.
We do not feel that a simple public statement is sufficient. Even if Unity were to recant their policies and statements, the destruction of trust is not so easily repaired. We strongly feel that it is now equally important to get behind some of the other up-and-coming open source game engines. Lighting some candles in an otherwise dark moment.
To that end, we are donating $100,000 to each of the open source engines listed below. Additionally, we are sponsoring each of these projects with $1,000/month each moving forward. All we ask in return is that they remain good people and keep doing all that they can to make these engines powerful and approachable for developers everywhere.
Re-Logic has always been supportive of game developers and indie studios that do things the right way. We feel that our actions in this moment are the best way to carry that mission forward – by accelerating and strengthening competing open source game engines, we hope to empower and assist studios that are struggling with how best to proceed given these recent events.
