SoylentNews

Freeman [soylentnews.org] writes:

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/09/oldest-unity-game-developer-group-breaks-up-over-lack-of-trust-in-the-company/ [arstechnica.com]

The "first official Unity user group in the world" has announced that it is dissolving after 13 years because "the trust we used to have in the company has been completely eroded." The move comes as many developers are saying they will continue to stay away from the company's products even after last week's partial rollback [arstechnica.com] of some of the most controversial parts of its fee structure plans.

Since its founding in 2010, the Boston Unity Group (BUG) has attracted thousands of members [meetup.com] to regular gatherings, talks, and networking events, including many technical lectures archived on YouTube [youtube.com]. But the group says it will be hosting its last meeting Wednesday evening via Zoom [meetup.com] because the Unity of today is very different from the Dave Helgason-led company [arstechnica.com] that BUG says "enthusiastically sanctioned and supported" the group at its founding.
[...]
BUG's feelings are being echoed across large swaths of the game development community [twitter.com], where many prominent developers are saying Unity's public reversal has done little to nothing to restore their trust in the company.

Vampire Survivors developer Poncle, for instance, gave a succinct "lol no thank you" when asked during a Reddit AMA over the weekend [reddit.com] if their next game/sequel would again use the Unity Engine. "Even if Unity were to walk back entirely on their decisions, I don't think it would be wise to trust them while they are under the current leadership," Poncle added later in the AMA [reddit.com].
[...]
Some developers are now also suggesting that Unity ignored advice from the development community before announcing their initial plans earlier this month. Brandon Sheffield of Necrosoft Games (Demonschool) told Wired [wired.com] that his company was "privy to these [initial] install-fee changes well before they went live and pushed back against them. We knew the reaction would be resoundingly negative, but we weren’t listened to."

In part because of that intentional ignorance on Unity's part, Sheffield says he will stick with an earlier pledge [insertcredit.com] to never use Unity in a future project despite the later fee structure changes.

Original Submission