#new york accent: i'm' tryna make a livin' here!!

[tricitymonsters]

Now that I've had some time to simmer in my impotent gamer rage I want to say that this thread of (big name!) indie developers and creators standing in solidarity against Unity's slapdash, stupid policies makes me feel better. I feel seen and heard, at least, even if I'm not directly in the blast zone. https://x.com/TheIndieDiarist/status/1701744275136872892?s=20 Also, Ren'Py Tom (the developer behind the Ren'Py engine) was ever the voice of reason as well, pointing out that charging for an engine isn't the problem or why people are rightfully freaking out about this. Programmers are creators too and they deserve to get paid for their hard work and paving the way for small timers to access games as a medium. And I definitely agree, charging for an engine, a tool, a service is the creator's call. What we as indie devs do NOT agree with is huge blanket statement fines retroactively applied with literally NO recourse for edge case or bad faith actors past Unity's empty and backless promises of "Our Fraud Department Can Tell :)))" (No you fucking can't).

If you didn't already know the basic pay structure for Unity, it was free until you crossed a certain threshold of money made with games using it, then at that point you had to pay I THINK like 10k for a professional license (it seems steep and it... kinda is but also breaking that initial threshold is a serious marker of fiscal success and in theory, should be an acceptable business expense, plus Unity professional accounts come with commercial tools and stuff so it was def an upgrade but it was much more reasonable).

Anyway, tldr this might actually be worse than Adobe's idiot policy changes in terms of sheer brass balls-level greedy idk its hard to say. Yall should spend a couple minutes checking in on some of your favorite indies, however, as I am seeing in this thread more than one of them will be deleting their games from Steam to avoid fines/fees. (Cult of the Lamb is probably the biggest?)