All my homies hate unity
hey. so. i need the Ultrakill community to understand something, in case Hakita doesn't say anything about it.
Unity, the company, has decided to begin charging developers that made games with their software, once they meet a certain threshold. if a game earns $200,000 within 12 months, and 200,000 installs of said game happen total, the devs will be billed a flat rate of 20 cents per install. RETROACTIVELY. which is already a major blow to everyone who's ever found success with Unity (hint: Ultrakill is made in Unity).
to make this worse, the company is not planning to use tracking software to figure out how many installs have happened, like we THOUGHT they might, and aren't doing a good job of clarifying what an "install" even means. instead, they have stated that they'll be using a "proprietary data model" to determine this number per game. translation: they're making up numbers with AI. they don't even care. it's basically robbery and we're pretty sure this is mad illegal.
these changes are being finalized by January 1st of 2024.
game developers have the following options:
1) pay the bullshit fee.
2) port their entire game into another engine and re-release it in said engine.
3) cancel their Unity subscription and remove their game from all stores.
i don't know what this means for Ultrakill. maybe Hakita can pay the fee. maybe he'll try to port into Godot or Unreal. or maybe he will just decide it's not worth it to keep going. i don't know. i don't know what sort of person he is.
no matter what happens, PLEASE try to enjoy the game while you can. if development continues, expect delays. lots of them. above all, DO NOT GET ANGRY AT HAKITA IF THE GAME NEEDS TO BE DELAYED OR SHUT DOWN. THE BLAME FOR ANY PROBLEMS GOING FORWARD LIES SOLELY ON UNITY'S CORPORATE GREED.
Hakita, if you're reading this, please just do whatever you think is best. it's your game, your life. we enjoyed everything you've done so far, and for me, that's good enough.