Slay the Spire developer Mega Crit publishes its first ever public statement after game engine creator Unity outlined changes to its fees and pricing structure. The developer of the roguelike deckbuilder says that its next project is being developed using Unity and has been in production for over two years. Nevertheless, the Slay the Spire developer says it will change game engines unless Unity reverses the planned restructuring of how it charges users.
As previously reported, Unity says that, from the start of 2024, developers that use its free tier of services will pay a fee of $0.20 whenever a new player installs their games. This will apply after a game has reached over 200,000 downloads and generated $200,000 in revenue. For developers using the premium version of Unity, the fees will be lower and won’t be paid until a larger number of downloads and a higher revenue threshold has been reached.
A range of developers have issued statements against Unity’s proposed changes, including Among Us creator Innersloth and Cult of the Lamb maker Massive Monster, which says it will “delete” Cult of the Lamb on Monday, January 1. Mega Crit, which develops Slay the Spire and is working on a new game, says that Unity’s proposed changes are a “violation of trust” and that unless the policy regarding the new runtime fees is reversed, it will migrate to using a different game engine.
“The Mega Crit team has been hard at work these past two-plus years on a new game,” Mega Crit says. “But unlike with Slay the Spire, the engine we have been developing it in is Unity.”
Mega Crit makes reference to the Unity terms of service reportedly being removed from Github, in the wake of the software developer announcing its pricing changes. Mega Crit says that this is the first time it has made a public statement, and offers some strong words for Unity.
“The retroactive pricing structure of runtime fees is not only harmful in a myriad of ways to developers – especially indies – it is also a violation of trust,” Mega Crit continues. “We believe Unity is fully aware of this, seeing as they have gone so far as to remove their TOS from GitHub.
“Despite the immense amount of time and effort our team has already poured into development on our new title, we will be migrating to a new engine unless the changes are completely reverted and TOS protections are put in place. We have never made a public statement before. That is how badly you f****** up.”
Unity says that the charges will only apply for the first time a user installs a developer’s game, meaning that, should players uninstall then reinstall a game, the developer will not be charged multiple times. The changes are scheduled to arrive at the start of 2024.
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