Azur Games, Voodoo, Homa, Century Games, SayGames, CrazyLabs, Original Games, Playgendary and more are turning off all Unity ad monetisation to force a u-turn.
Mobile game developers are now boycotting Unity by switching off its ad products, mobilegamer.biz can reveal.
The group is trying to force Unity into cancelling its proposed Runtime Fee policy.
At the time of publication, 16 different studios have pulled their Unity and IronSource ads: Azur Games, Voodoo, Homa, Century Games, SayGames, CrazyLabs, Original Games, Ducky, Burny Games, Inspired Square, Geisha Tokyo, tatsumaki games, KAYAC, New Story, Playgendary and Supercent.
Collective letter from game development companies: Turning off all IronSource and Unity Ads monetization until new conditions are reviewed
We are the collective voice of the game development industry—developers, game designers, artists, and business minds. Passionate about our craft, we’ve invested years in shaping an industry that touches the lives of millions worldwide. As stakeholders, we cannot remain silent when a decision threatens to destabilize this ecosystem.
Unity has been an instrumental force in this industry. In many ways, it has inspired us to create new immersive worlds and empowered a plethora of dynamic and independent developers to bring their visions to life. We’ve played our part in this journey, moving the industry forward and creating specialists that use Unity as the primary game engine for their projects.
We’ve hosted Unity-centered events, shared our knowledge, and crafted educational content that’s inspired an international community. Thanks to this symbiosis, Unity has evolved into a cornerstone of game development and is now established as an indispensable asset in game creation.
That’s why the September 12 announcement hits us hard. Effective January 1, 2024, Unity plans to introduce installation-dependent fees, a decision that jeopardizes small and large game developers alike, made without any industry consultation. To claim, as Unity has, that this new ‘Runtime Fee’ will impact only 10% of the industry is not just misleading, it’s patently false.
We strongly oppose this move, which disregards the unique challenges and complexities of our industry.
While we’ve always viewed our work as a collaborative effort, this decision blindsided us. With one stroke of the pen, you’ve put hundreds of studios at risk, all without consultation or dialogue.
To put it in relatable terms—what if automakers suddenly decided to charge us for every mile driven on the car that you bought a year ago? The impact on consumers and the industry at large would be seismic.
This comes at a time when the industry is already grappling with tightening profit margins, heightened competition, and escalating costs in both development and marketing. This isn’t just about developers. This impacts artists, designers, marketers, and producers. It’s a cascade that could lead to the shuttering of companies that have given their all to this industry.
Unity, we’ve stood by and celebrated your every innovation. Why, then, were we left out of the conversation on a decision so monumental?
As a course of immediate action, our collective of game development companies is forced to turn off all IronSource and Unity Ads monetization across our projects until these changes are reconsidered.
We urge others who share this stance to do the same. The rules have changed, and the stakes are simply too high. The Runtime Fee is an unacceptable shift in our partnership with Unity that needs to be immediately canceled.
We entered this industry for the love of game development, but what makes it truly special is the community—a community built on openness, shared expertise, and collective progress.
If you share our sentiment, we call on you to join us. Turn off all IronSource and Unity Ads monetization until a fair and equitable resolution is found.
You can also back the movement by signing our open letter. Check out the link to add your voice to the cause.
Sincerely,
Azur Games, Voodoo, Homa, Century Games, SayGames, CrazyLabs, Original Games, Ducky, Burny Games, Inspired Square, Geisha Tokyo, tatsumaki games, KAYAC, New Story, Playgendary, Supercent
…and all who sign this letter, engage in other forms of protest, or simply stand in solidarity with the gaming industry
If the heat dies down then devs will have time to finish their current projects and switch to new engines for the next ones. Even a temporary walk-back would be enough to prevent disaster for a lot of studios.
You can’t just cut ties in this scenario. These games are already built on the unity engine, it’s not feasible to rebuild it again on a totally different engine, and now unity is going to apply new fees to all these already existing games.
They’re going to try this bullshit again, or in another manner. Maybe having everything centralized onto a proprietary single point of failure isn’t a great idea.
No one wants this situation, but the reality is that you can not switch from one engine to another engine without rebuilding the product. This is true for every game development company on the planet, this is how the industry is.
we can sit and laugh at that and call them stupid for building an entire multi-billion dollar industry on this, or we can understand the realities of the whole thing.
The fact that it’s impossible to change game on an ongoing/completed game is exactly the reason why everyone is angry. This is distortion, simple, just like the example of car being charged for miles mentioned in the article. It’s no coincidence that games are advertised as “built on …” since game engine decides how the game is built.
The thing is that switching engines isn’t impossible, it is just an extreme amount of work.
The sad reality is that sometimes projects aren’t meant to last, most don’t even reach fruition. And I know it can be a hard pill to swallow, but it is sometimes necessary to rebuild an entire project, or drop it completely.
Whether that necessity is valid depends entirely on the developer.
Why anyone would continue to do business with them is insane to me.
you have a mature stack built entirely on the engine, that stacks the only thing that powers your companies revenue, if that stack did not exist then you would fold quickly
you probably have an entire company of experts in this engine, an deep knowledge-base that you are throwing away if you move away, your ability to have speed and agility is likely crippled until you get up to speed anywhere else. good luck affording to pay for that monumental shift in your company.
3, almost all the talent in the industry (at your level) is on unity engine, good luck hiring for $obscure_engine
basically, it’s incredibly naive to just say “just switch, obviously they are bad, they will be bad in the future too so switch”. it shows deep ignorance. it’s worth trying to understand the situation before saying any of this stuff.
I’m saying that whole production concept is flawed. You’re at the mercy of a single company. You don’t need to explain it further than that. You’ve centralized and specialized too much. It’s naive to assume they aren’t going to squeeze developers again.
Good luck to those who stay on Unity, you’re going to have a similar issue later down the line until they wear you out.
That is just reductionism. The post above yours went above and beyond to explain why they can’t just change the engine. For a lot of business it would mean bankruptcy now. So you understand that given the choice between bankruptcy now or maybe being squeezed again by Unity later, the latter is still more an attractive option, right?
Lose your business now or lose it later, what’s the difference? Unity is basically behaving like the mafia. The installation fee is protection money. Fuck 'em.
This isn’t a normal scenario/ situation. This is an all hands on deck emergency, worst case situation. You cannot continue with unity under any circumstances. This is a pivot moment with unity endangering your whole existence, as well as showing their obsolescence. Anybody that sticks with unity now is setting themselves up for failure. This installation charge isn’t just bad for developers/ businesses, but consumers as well and consumers will need to avoid unity games. Unless you’re a dev or really into gaming, most people probably couldn’t even tell you what a game engine is or what their favorite games’ are built in. This will now force them to be conscience of unity games and to avoid them.
The companies will if they choose to, it’ll be a massive hit it’ll stop them coming to subscription services, it’ll stop them coming to cloud services, it’ll stop demos and free weekends, it’ll probably hinder experimentation and early access. But the companies can eak out a way of surviving.
Which they can’t without revenue because they downed tools for a few years to retool on something entirely new
Being fully under the whims of a service is how companies die. And unity is going to put a financial stranglehold on so many businesses. So really if they aren’t planning to cut ties, they won’t survive in a few years.
I’ve felt this same way about content creators complaining about YouTube. It’s far too risky to develop your life plan around a particular company continuing their service.
Most channels have a patreon because of that reason. Better to have the fans support you than whatever new monetization model YouTube comes up with. (No bad words in the first minute, reviewers have to play movies flipped so they won’t be copyright struck, ads can do whatever they want but if you make a video talking about said ads only using those ads you guessed it demonetized). Google (alphabet)is an empire at this point and we need the government to create a new branch of government to handle online businesses because our 80+ year old representatives came understand that Mark Zuckerberg has nothing to do with iPhones.
You are not logged in. However you can subscribe from another Fediverse account, for example Lemmy or Mastodon. To do this, paste the following into the search field of your instance: [email protected]
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Rules
1. Submissions have to be related to games
Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.
This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.
2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil
No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.
We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.
3. No excessive self-promotion
Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.
This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.
4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you’re submitting before posting to see if it’s already been posted.
We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.
5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW
Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.
No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.
6. No linking to piracy
Don’t share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.
We don’t want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.
Better off just cutting ties and moving on, true colors don’t really change
Seriously this.
Once the heat dies down, they’ll ramp up again.
If the heat dies down then devs will have time to finish their current projects and switch to new engines for the next ones. Even a temporary walk-back would be enough to prevent disaster for a lot of studios.
You can’t just cut ties in this scenario. These games are already built on the unity engine, it’s not feasible to rebuild it again on a totally different engine, and now unity is going to apply new fees to all these already existing games.
Can’t just pay these ridiculous fees either, I have no belief that Unity will back track in any way here unfortunately
‘cutting ties and moving on’ would require a total rebuild of their games in a new engine. it doesn’t really work that way.
They’re going to try this bullshit again, or in another manner. Maybe having everything centralized onto a proprietary single point of failure isn’t a great idea.
Cutting ties and moving on is the right answer.
“Oops, we ratcheted up the heat too fast. We’ll need to do it again slower so the frogs don’t notice.”
No one wants this situation, but the reality is that you can not switch from one engine to another engine without rebuilding the product. This is true for every game development company on the planet, this is how the industry is.
we can sit and laugh at that and call them stupid for building an entire multi-billion dollar industry on this, or we can understand the realities of the whole thing.
The fact that it’s impossible to change game on an ongoing/completed game is exactly the reason why everyone is angry. This is distortion, simple, just like the example of car being charged for miles mentioned in the article. It’s no coincidence that games are advertised as “built on …” since game engine decides how the game is built.
The thing is that switching engines isn’t impossible, it is just an extreme amount of work.
The sad reality is that sometimes projects aren’t meant to last, most don’t even reach fruition. And I know it can be a hard pill to swallow, but it is sometimes necessary to rebuild an entire project, or drop it completely.
Whether that necessity is valid depends entirely on the developer.
I think the word you’re looking for is “extortion”.
I’m not calling anyone stupid or laughing.
The reality is they’ve shown their hand.
Why anyone would continue to do business with them is insane to me. You’re setting yourself up for future failure.
Sure, it’s not easy to switch engines; is this going to change in the future? I doubt it, so this is only delaying the inevitable.
basically, it’s incredibly naive to just say “just switch, obviously they are bad, they will be bad in the future too so switch”. it shows deep ignorance. it’s worth trying to understand the situation before saying any of this stuff.
I’m saying that whole production concept is flawed. You’re at the mercy of a single company. You don’t need to explain it further than that. You’ve centralized and specialized too much. It’s naive to assume they aren’t going to squeeze developers again.
Good luck to those who stay on Unity, you’re going to have a similar issue later down the line until they wear you out.
That is just reductionism. The post above yours went above and beyond to explain why they can’t just change the engine. For a lot of business it would mean bankruptcy now. So you understand that given the choice between bankruptcy now or maybe being squeezed again by Unity later, the latter is still more an attractive option, right?
Lose your business now or lose it later, what’s the difference? Unity is basically behaving like the mafia. The installation fee is protection money. Fuck 'em.
They’ve got you perfectly situated for exploitation. You’re rationalizing sticking with an abusive partner.
This isn’t a normal scenario/ situation. This is an all hands on deck emergency, worst case situation. You cannot continue with unity under any circumstances. This is a pivot moment with unity endangering your whole existence, as well as showing their obsolescence. Anybody that sticks with unity now is setting themselves up for failure. This installation charge isn’t just bad for developers/ businesses, but consumers as well and consumers will need to avoid unity games. Unless you’re a dev or really into gaming, most people probably couldn’t even tell you what a game engine is or what their favorite games’ are built in. This will now force them to be conscience of unity games and to avoid them.
Rip the band aid now. Stop all development in unity. Unity has shown that it’s obsolete.
Who’s going to pay salary for the year plus of retooling and retraining? You?
Who’s going to pay the new fees imposed by unity?
The company making enough money to trigger said fees?
I dont support this new structure, but its not like these fees are attacking game companies which have no profits
The companies will if they choose to, it’ll be a massive hit it’ll stop them coming to subscription services, it’ll stop them coming to cloud services, it’ll stop demos and free weekends, it’ll probably hinder experimentation and early access. But the companies can eak out a way of surviving.
Which they can’t without revenue because they downed tools for a few years to retool on something entirely new
And that’s why tools to migrate to another engine are now a must, like this one! https://github.com/barcoderdev/unitypackage_godot
Every company I worked in always had a plan B.
Being fully under the whims of a service is how companies die. And unity is going to put a financial stranglehold on so many businesses. So really if they aren’t planning to cut ties, they won’t survive in a few years.
I’ve felt this same way about content creators complaining about YouTube. It’s far too risky to develop your life plan around a particular company continuing their service.
Most channels have a patreon because of that reason. Better to have the fans support you than whatever new monetization model YouTube comes up with. (No bad words in the first minute, reviewers have to play movies flipped so they won’t be copyright struck, ads can do whatever they want but if you make a video talking about said ads only using those ads you guessed it demonetized). Google (alphabet)is an empire at this point and we need the government to create a new branch of government to handle online businesses because our 80+ year old representatives came understand that Mark Zuckerberg has nothing to do with iPhones.