[News] TLDR G**DBYE UNITY~!!!

Hey y’all,

So, we’ve been writing a post for a while because there have been a lot of things going on lately that are delaying development. It’s been a rough break unfortunately, and in the last few days it’s only gotten rougher.

But let’s just cut to the chase.

If you’re not aware, Unity, the underlying game engine we use to make games, is intending to start charging developers a small fee for their Unity runtime.

What is the Unity runtime and what does this mean?

The Unity runtime is the code that runs Unity based games, and allows game developers like us to build onto, and create the games you all get to play.

For every person who installs a Unity based game, Unity will charge the developer a fee of up to $0.20 per unique install (not per sale) upon hitting a threshold.

Why is this a problem when we’re probably never going to hit that threshold?

You’re right, we’re probably never going to hit it.

But if at some random and arbitrary point in the future we do, we will be hit with a bill and required to pay it. We have no control over it and there is literally no clear way to anticipate it, let alone be able to afford to pay for it when it does happen.

And it’s retroactive, it applies to all games released in the future, and in the past (which is utter insanity).

You just can’t run a business this way.

It could literally be 10 years from now that any one of our games tick over into some magic threshold, and Unity would kick our door in and say hand over the money.

This doesn’t even go into how this can be exploited, or the disregard for privacy laws they claim they’ll be respecting, or the cost of development (and the overhead to deal with this problem), or even the implications of distribution and monetization through various forms that are out there (like Patreon), or the legal ramifications of strong arm tactics like this!

Their decisions don’t fit with how the real world works.

Is there any good news?

Yes, there is.

Goodbye Unity, we’re done with you.

As part of our development strategy we’ve spent a lot of time re-writing our code and designing our workflows to not only make it easier, but to one day move away from Unity, and create what would be our own independent game engine.

Starting this week, we’re going to do that.

We’ve spent the last year defining what we want out of our games, so many of the technical requirements are already clearly defined.

We’ll be looking into solutions to handle things like physics, animation, and refreshing old skill sets we can leverage to hopefully spin up some of our own solutions.

We won’t be able to do everything that we’re working on, like the roleplay games (yet), but we’ll be focusing on the Visual Novel systems from Memento which are well defined and we know very well.

If we hit hard limits outside of a known scope, we’ll turn to using an alternative like Unreal, Godot, or similar to give us the extra freedom to keep us moving. (We’ll probably learn one of them anyway).

Regardless, it’s going to take a while.

How long?

We’re not too sure, but we’ll be keeping everyone updated with progress as we move forwards.

It’s going to be hard and we don’t know how long it’s going to take. But we do know we’re going to get past all this.

And that’s it

No matter what Unity says to fix this and make it go away (or what spin they put on their reasoning), we no longer trust Unity’s development and business practices.

They’ve made it clear that anything they say is temporary and can be changed on a whim, and done so retroactively.

Many of the decisions they’ve made in the last few years we feel are not in the spirit of indie game development, whilst showing a severe lack of integrity in their decision making and communication.

If we knew it was going to be this way, we would never have used them.

They are putting their bottomline over the people and the creativity that got them there. Taking advantage of those game creators who have trusted, loved and supported them through even the worst decisions.

It would be only a matter of time before they come up with some other scheme to screw people again anyway.

It’s a toxic relationship and they can get lost.

Best of luck to all the devs impacted by this, and take care of yourselves everyone.

Expect better news in the future.

~ Zuri Sama & the Zurpai Team ~