- cross-posted to:
- gaming@lemmy.ml
- gaming
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/5555641
Developers of indie puzzle game Orgynizer have claimed that Unity said organisations like Planned Parenthood are “not valid charities” and are instead “political groups.”
In a blog post, the EU-based developer LizardFactory said the plans to charge developers up to $0.20 per install if they reach certain thresholds would cost them “around 30% of the funds we have gathered and already sent to charity.”
As Unity clarified the runtime fee will not apply to charity games, LizardFactory reached out to the company to clarify their game would be exempt from the plan.
However, Unity reportedly said their partners were not “valid charities” and were viewed as “political groups.”
Profits made from the game go directly to non-profit organisation Planned Parenthood and C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, Michigan.
“We did this to raise money for a good cause, not to line the coffers of greedy scumbags,” the developers wrote in a blog post. “We have been solid Unity fanboys for over ten years, but the trust is scattered all over the floor.”
The developers are considering a move to open-source game engine Godot, “but we will have to recode our entire game because we refuse to give you a dime,” they wrote. “This is a mafia-style shakedown, nothing more, nothing less.”
Today, Unity responded to the ongoing backlash and apologised, acknowledging the “confusion and angst” surrounding the runtime fee policy.
The company has promised that changes to the policy will be shared in “a couple of days.”
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“Charity” should be a question answered by “do they have a registered charity number?”
What’s considered a charity will differ country by country.
That would require them to care enough to figure out how to verify if something is a registered charity and what they are called in each country. Some countries don’t even have the concept of registered charity in any form.
Coincidentally if Unity stays course and gets sued this will be what the courts say, too.
Right wing groups in the US made Planned Parenthood a political issue. It doesn’t make it a political organization.
I feel sorry for Unity because I want them to be profitable and all that. However, they have a greedy prick for a CEO and one of the dumbest change rollouts I’ve seen (Twitter has been crazy bad lately too) at this scale. It wipes away any empathy for them and makes you yearn for their collapse.
I feel sorry for the employees, but ultimately the company chose the CEO it’s not like he turned up and forced himself on them or anything. They were really pleased when they announced him as well, as if he was going to be some kind of asset.
It’s the investors fault for having no business savvy. Sod em.
Oh, the investors have business savvy. They’re the ones driving these changes, and making a killing on the stock market as a result.
When they’re done, Unity will be a pile of rubble and they’ll move on to their next victim.
It’s absolutely not a charity.
That’s an associated PAC, not Planned Parenthood proper that’s a 501©(3).
Devs may as well bite the bullet & switch engines mid development now, because I’m not buying any new games made in Unity.
Yup. I’m not either.
This (Unity change not your statement) will be a shank at the back of most indie devs.
Right–the AAA studios will just consider if they should use Unreal or an in-house engine. They’ll put it all in a big spreadsheet and come to a conclusion.
Indie devs that are on Unity are going to get hurt by this scheme. They’ll also get hurt if you don’t buy their games because they’re in Unity. The choices here aren’t great.
The one thing is Unreal seems to have been preferred for a while now, anyway. Unity was already losing market share, and is now only going to accelerate that.
If you’re doing 2D, some devs have been actively documenting the migration from Unity to Godot to make things easier for others to follow suit.
So we’re currently at the ‘apology that actually makes things worse’ phase, which means just a few more days until ‘unconditional surrender but even so nobody will ever trust you again’
People still buy Lenovo laptops, Sony music, use Microsoft products and Google services.
No matter how loathsome and evil a company has acted towards their oysters, there will always be people who lined up to get shucked.
It’s slightly different when you show consumers you’re willing to screw them out of nowhere than when you show businesses that you’ll do so. People shake that stuff off as an annoyance because they aren’t dependant on those businesses behaving decently in order for them to keep the lights on. When a partner shows it could randomly kill your business at any moment for no good reason, you tend to realise the importance of disengaging from them.
This is their downfall hiring that CEO and the leadership should be ashamed. I feel sorry for the employees who had no say in this and are being affected by their myopic choices.
Well as if it wasn’t already obvious they were headed by conservatives…
Starting to think unity doesn’t have a pr team
I think this is their PR team.
it’s a Profit Relations division
It’s like he heard that there was no such thing as bad publicity and took that is literally as he possibly could
He worked for EA. He has no idea how the industry works.
Didn’t EA during a partnership with Nintendo, suggest to them crippling Mario’s Jump Height in order to sell “High Jump Boots” as DLC?
That genuinely reads like satire. What an awful corporate model, extracting every penny out of the workers and consumers to force that line to keep going up.
Lol could Unity have bungled this any harder??
The unity CEO is an arsonist as he’s set ablaze the whole company. Guy should be investigated for fraud and malfeasance.
And yet when he is inevitably asked to resign, after years of this shit-show, he’ll get yet another golden parachute. Stupidity fails upwards in the United States. And half of this country applaud it.
I can understand Planned Parenthood maybe, heavily disagree, but whatever.
But a children’s hospital? How could that ever be classed as a “political group”?
What a joke.
Depends what Childrens Hospital it is. Shriners? Sure, that’s a charity. Mayo Clinic - Children’s Wing? Definitely not a charity.
Calling PP a political org is too obtuse a message to view this response as a simple mistake or miscommunication. Unity is apparently run by conservative hacks and I hope they collapse.
Christian nationalists will never be content unless they have complete domination
By responding with judgment (e.g. your charitable donations are invalid ) Unity is showing how other devs can expect to be treated when they try to negotiate with Unity on a case-by-case basis.
This shows Unity is looking for bad faith reasons by which to justify rejecting exceptions to the fees. It’s a bad idea to expect exception to the new fees, even in the face of bankruptcy.
Idk why anyone trusts peddlers of proprietary bullshit
For real dude it’s really hard to feel bad for 2d game devs when an open source solution has been around for years.
It’s like the whole xitter situation. Why would you want to stay on a platform that so obviously doesn’t want you there? bUt MaStOdOn Is HaRd 🙄 grow up, move on, stop investing in capitalists ideas that only benefit you when it benefits them.
This is victim blaming. These devs already made those games and released them before Unity made these decisions.
They chose to be a victim when they chose to support proprietary software.
unless all these people are now going around telling people not to use proprietary software, they are choosing to be victims again, and the only bad guy they can identify is you lol
Thanks this actually made me laugh. I know how people work. I knew I was gonna get down voted. I’m comfortable having controversial opinions.
I’ve been telling people not to tust proprietary software because, the only reason to keep things proprietary is to reserve the right to fuck over your customers.
Its like I told you not to play in traffic, but you chose to listen to the casket salesmen who benefit from your demise.
At some point it is the victims fault
I haven’t heard this argument before, and it’s VERY hardline, but it works and the analogy is good too.
I wasnt saying it to be mean, I’m just tired of people misappropriating their anger.
We collectively have the power to prevent this from ever happening again.
planned parenthood is political yadda yadda yadda, but a children’s hospital?
Planned parenthood shouldn’t be political. In a few years drinking water well be seen as a policial statement against brawndo
It’s only political because Conservative Christians made it one.
It’s a registered 501c3. Whatever anybody’s opinions, it’s a legal charity.
Yes, it is. That’s a different planned parenthood.
Planned Parenthood delivers vital reproductive health care, sex education, and information to millions of people worldwide. Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. is a registered 501©(3) nonprofit under EIN 13-1644147. Donations are tax-deductible to the fullest extent allowable under the law.
Seriously. I could see some right-wing shithead complaining about “evil” abortions, but who doesn’t wanna save the lives of post-pregnancy children? Oh, that’s right. Right-wing shitheads. As always.
And planned parenthood does WAY more than abortions. They save lives on the daily.
There are no child hospitals in the Bible 😡😡😡/s
There is no commandment “Thou shalt save children”, duh.
It’s not some struggling hospital in a poor country, but an award-winning, Xbox-equipped premium institution in Michigan. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.S._Mott_Children’s_Hospital
They obviously do good work and probably could use more money and, sure, I want sick children to have an Xbox, but I’d still feel misled by calling that ‘charity’.
