Oldest Unity game developer group breaks up over lack of trust in the company (original) (raw)

Developers remain wary

BUG's feelings are being echoed across large swaths of the game development community, where many prominent developers are saying Unity's public reversal has done little to nothing to restore their trust in the company.

Vampire Survivors developer Poncle, for instance, gave a succinct "lol no thank you" when asked during a Reddit AMA over the weekend if their next game/sequel would again use the Unity Engine. "Even if Unity were to walk back entirely on their decisions, I don't think it would be wise to trust them while they are under the current leadership," Poncle added later in the AMA.

Basically, nothing has changed to stop Unity from doing this again in the future.

The ghouls are still in charge, and they're thinking up ways to make up for this hit on projected revenue as we speak. https://t.co/n5BMedvxeZ

— Tony Coculuzzi (@tonycoculuzzi) September 22, 2023

"Basically, nothing has changed to stop Unity from doing this again in the future," InnerSloth (Among Us) developer Tony Coculuzzi wrote on social media Friday afternoon. "The ghouls are still in charge, and they're thinking up ways to make up for this hit on projected revenue as we speak... Unity leadership still can't be trusted to not fuck us harder in the future."

Some developers are now also suggesting that Unity ignored advice from the development community before announcing its initial plans earlier this month. Brandon Sheffield of Necrosoft Games (Demonschool) told Wired that his company was "privy to these [initial] install-fee changes well before they went live and pushed back against them. We knew the reaction would be resoundingly negative, but we weren’t listened to."

In part because of that intentional ignorance on Unity's part, Sheffield says he will stick with an earlier pledge to never use Unity in a future project despite the later fee structure changes. "We simply don’t trust them to stick to their word," he told Wired. “We don’t trust them to update their engine in ways that affect us, as PC/console developers, in a positive way. I think they have done irreparable damage to their brand for game developers in general, and the walkback isn’t going to fix it."

In an interview with Ars Technica last week, Unity executive Marc Whitten said he would be "out there talking much more in a two-way conversation with our creators" to try to earn back trust with the community. "I know deeply that trust is hard to earn and easy to lose," Whitten said. "I know the only way you actually earn it is through actions, not words... That's all I can do: Say what we're going to do and then do what we say."