Unity has lost the trust of so many people that Re-Logic is donating to open source game engines now.
There’s a term used on the internet: FAFO. Since we’re family-friendly here at GameCrate, it essentially equates to “What goes around, comes around”. For those keeping track, Unity is currently knee-deep in the FO part of the acronym.
We reported last week about Unity’s “fantastic” idea to rug-pull the majority of game developers out there with a new fee and a full TOS change, right under everyone’s noses. People did the math and realized that in a lot of cases, this could bankrupt entire studios, needlessly, and ruin small devs that don’t have good backing or support.
Well, Unity is learning the hard way now that trust is easy to lose and not so easy to earn back.
The game developers are scared. They know Unity. But, learning a new game engine isn’t exactly a cakewalk.
While Unreal Engine 5 has been a possibility for many developers to start learning, open-source engines have been getting a spotlight this past week. Things like indie or mobile games don’t generally need the power that comes from Unreal and that’s why Unity was always better suited for them.
Re-Logic makes Terraria, a game not made in Unity. But, with the success of their 2D, procedurally generated survival game, they have some walking around money to spare. So, they decided to use that money for good.
On Monday, they announced that they’re donating $100,000 to open-source game engines, Godot and FNA, each. Then, they plan to continue donating $1,000 each month to both just for the sake of showing their support.
Re-Logic doesn’t even use either of them. But, the one caveat is that they “remain good people” and continue to build the engines to be better and approachable.
The entire game developer community has been dealing with how to handle the future of their games. With such a sudden change, games that have been in development for years are now having to make difficult decisions of canceling projects or starting the slow transition to other engines.
We will continue to watch this situation as it progresses.