Gaming Industry Rocked As Unity Bosses Dump Stock Before Licensing Announcement

Video Games

Sep 15

Unity is a cross-platform game engine, popular with indie developers. It’s helpful in producing software that can be used across more than one platform, for example mobile phone games being compatible with Android and Apple. It also has an easy and intuitive interface for developers that don’t have masses of experience with programming. Pokémon Go, Cuphead and Pillars of Eternity all use Unity.

Unity has got itself into hot water. From January 2024, they have announced a new runtime fee that charges developers for every installation of their products. The decision was made unilaterally, without consulting or informing the users who subscribe to Unity, some for many years. Not every download equals gameplay and developers will still be charged even if they’ve not had a chance to reap the benefits from advertising or microtransactions.

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Unsurprisingly, the reaction to the news has not been positive. There has been an outcry on social media, David Szymanski, creator of Dusk said, ‘regardless of what happens, Butcher’s Creek will be my last game on Unity’ and Massive Monster threatened to delist its game Cult of Monster via X.

But it’s got even worse for Unity. Before the announcement several executives (including CEO John Riccitiello) sold off large chunks of the company’s stock, in excess of 155 thousand shares sold by the board of directors alone.. It’s almost like they saw it coming. Well according to a post on their employee forums, they did.

“Know also that all of the concerns that are understandably blowing up at the moment have been raised internally by many weeks before this announcement.”

With trust between Unity and its customers at an all time low, it’s path forward might be fraught. There’s still several months until the charges come into force. It will be interesting to see if Unity holds firm or if it looks for a different way of increasing profits to calm the storm.

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