Anyone interested in game development has probably heard about the current situation with Unity and it's 'runtime license fee' thing by now - if not, here's Unity's proposed changes and here's some background to the backlash against them.
I won't go into the changes themselves, as plenty of others have already highlighted how and why they're terrible and been a lot more insightful about it than I could be, so I'm just going to post a bit about about what it means with regards to my own project.
My game was never intended to be commercial. It was really just a passion project and a way to learn a little bit about game development and coding, so the pricing changes don't really affect me directly. However, I do see the changes as being pretty bad and understand the position of others who would be directly affected. I don't think it'd be right to support or promote a company that thinks it's okay to push this policy out with little notice and no consultation. Because of this, I'm going to pause work on my current Unity project (the Zarch/Lander/Virus thing) at least until it's resolved, at which time I'll reconsider.
Given the pushback, I don't think Unity can afford to go ahead with their proposed changes, so it's likely I'll resume at some point. However, it does make me seriously think about whether I want to work with their engine longer term as, to me, it highlights an attitude towards their userbase that I think is exploitative and arrogant. While the policy and pricing may get walked back, it's going to be harder to show that the attitude has changed. There's a real trust deficit now.
Because of this, I've been looking into other engines, both for this project and for future ones. I don't really want to have to restart this all in another engine unless I have to, so I'll wait and see how things pan out before doing that and, in the meantime I'm going to try out some other ideas in other engines.
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