In the aftermath of the ill-advised Unity run-time fee, Unity faced massive backlash from their developers including an organized protest turning off IronSource/Unity Ads. Ultimately Unity admitted they messed up and announced a vastly pared back price increase, which most importantly would only apply to new Unity versions, starting with the next LTS release.
While this change took the pressure off many existing Unity developers and will lead developers to have to make tough decisions on using Unity in the future, the game development world mostly calmed down. That said, there is still ongoing fallout from the Unity announcement, including:
Stock Price
The entire runtime fee was an attempt to make more money for shareholders and shareholders are ultimately who Unity are beholden to. As you can see from the 30 day trend, the stock certainly did not benefit from this ordeal.
Boston Unity Group – BUG – Dissolved
The Boston Unity Group, the oldest official Unity user community in the world, announced they are dissolving, with their last meeting on Wednesday the 27th of September. They will instead transition to a more generalized support group focusing on all game engines, including Unity, Unreal and Godot.
Vampire Survivor On Using Unity in the Future
“lol no thank you!”
When asked in a recent AMA if they will use Unity in any future projects, the answer was simple and succinct. “lol no thank you!”.
Road to Vostok Porting to Godot
In development survival game Road to Vostok posting an incredibly interesting video about their reaction to the Unity pricing changes and reputational damage. They have ultimately decided to port their game over to the Godot game engine. It is a very interesting watch, in they show the costs and initial progress in moving to the Godot game engine. The early results are very impressive.
Brackeys Statement on Unity
This one legit shocked me. Brackeys was the biggest Unity creator on YouTube and is probably the single biggest learning source for many active Unity developers. They stopped creating new content around the time that Unity went public. Brackeys just released this statement on Twitter, which outlines how public companies do not have the same priorities as the developers they serve. Perhaps most importantly, Brackeys has stated that he is currently learning the Godot game engine and hints that tutorials may be in the future.
Godot Foundation Success
Speaking of Godot, on the same day Unity proposed it’s new Run-Time Fee, Godot launched the new Godot Foundation development fund. Godot certainly benefited from Unity’s misstep, as Godot has nearly doubled their monthly funding, from € 25,500 on September 12th, to € 49,860 on September 29th.
You can learn more about the ongoing fallout to the Unity Runtime Fee in the video below.