The fallout from Unity’s new plans to charge developers has continued a day after. If gamers are unhappy seeing what developers are saying now, this little tidbit of news just might blow things over.
A Twitter user with the handle Theswweet made a joke about the Unity situation, that is tinged with more than a little bit of dark comedy. He wrote:
“Hollow Knight Silksong delayed another 5 years to remake the game on a game engine that’s not Unity.”
Obviously, Theswweet doesn’t work for Team Cherry, and he wasn’t actually making an announcement. This tweet was meant to evince a strong reaction from Hollow Knight fans who are already stretching their patience in the wait for Hollow Knight: Siksong.
But then, this happened:
Jack Vine is Team Cherry’s programmer, and one of the three co-founders. He had been liking tweets about the Unity situation since it started, but liking this one seemed to suggest that Team Cherry might actually do it!
That would be devastating, for the fans who were already committed to waiting a long time, but may have to wait considerably longer. It would of course be devastating for Team Cherry to have to start over.
Jack liked another tweet from another Twitter user named mossbag. mossbag wrote: “Team Cherry’s going to make Jack write them a whole new game engine, aren’t they?”
Now, of course, Jack was just liking tweets. He’s also not the only person who threatened to leave Unity, meaning starting over on their projects, and having to learn new game engines along the way. If Unity manages to smooth communication and relations with devs, none of this may have to come to pass.
But this likes seem to indicate Jack would be ready to switch game engines, and apparently, build one himself, if needed.
For their part, Unity have once again tried to clarify the details of their new fee policy. The key points in their statement being that:
- More than 90 percent of Unity users (AKA the developers making games) won’t be affected
- The fees are not perpetual, the devs only pay for each new install once
- They clarify what installs count to pay the fees and what don’t
For many devs, this is not enough. While many devs feel that Unity are backpedaling, or insincere, we hold to our opinion that the company truly failed to communicate these terms properly. There are objectionable provisions in the company’s new plans, but they would still have not garnered this huge a reaction if Unity had worked on explaining it better the first time.
It may be the case that it’s too late for Unity to get this deal accepted, and they’ll have to just drop it completely. That raises questions about the reasons Unity is looking for new fees in the first place: where will they find more money to invest into the Unity engine, and is Unity’s business sustainable if they can’t improve it fast enough.
As for the rest of us, we will have to wait and see how this continues to play out. We can only hope the mass exit that could lead to many anticipated games like Hollow Knight: Silksong doesn’t actually come to pass.
