the tire fire of Unitys decision to impose runtime fees for studios that use the engine continues to burn a bit. Game developers, which are already concerned about the scheme, are now taking action rather than simply writing a downpour of post-congrats; some are going to cut Unity off from ad revenue.

A group of 16 mobile game studios, including Azur Games, Voodoo, Homa, and Century Games, have removed all of the Unity and IronSource ad SDKs in protest of the cost of the fees and are urging others to take part in the boycott. The Runtime Fee is an unacceptable shift in our partnership with Unity that should be canceled immediately, reads some of the studio’s open letter. The rules have changed and the stakes are very high.

Developers have now begun to announce their displeasure and wholesale drop of the Unity engine over the runtime fees, this includes Mega, which is the latest of the popular card-based roguelike Slay the Spire, who did not yet develop a new title. Even if the changes are completely reverted, our team will get invested on our new title, and even if not in the development, the new model will change. We have never made a public statement before. It’s how bad you’ve fucked up.

Unity employees also get frustrated with the company’s decision, according to a report from a former software engineer who has recently resigned and claims that workers who tried to defend the decision have already left. I assure you that we fought against this, raised all the points every one has, came to the conclusion that some of the answers were all coming, and the announcement went out without warning, the author writes. We have more resignations coming end of week.

The cause of the credible death threat that Unity cited as a reason to shut multiple offices and cancel a town hall meeting yesterday was updated with a statement from the San Francisco police, which says that officers responded to the call and met with a report party who informed them that an employee posted a threat to his employer using social media. In the threat, the person who called was advised to contact the jurisdiction in which the incident occurred, and officers received a courtesy report.

The reddit thread tracked alleged malfeasance claim by using Unitys’ “Right and I” for a minute to track how much development they have to do and how to install them. After this behavior, should we trust that they won’t increase this cost or add new value? so the post is read. I do not for one.

In Unity’s runtime fee scheme, game devs shut the doors of Unity ads and workers leave resignations. Unity asks game studios to trust its download estimates, closes their offices over death threat. Unity started to backlog new runtime fees, but hasn’t addressed indies. Unity is adding excessive new fees. The developer aren’t getting that kind of new per-install fees. (sources: mobilegamer.biz via GamesIndustry.biz, Twitter 1:2, via Game World Observer, Polygon, Twitter, Reddit, etc.