At the time of publication, 16 different studios have pulled their Unity and IronSource ads: Azur Games, Voodoo, Homa, Century Games, SayGames, CrazyLabs, Original Games, Ducky, Burny Games, Inspired Square, Geisha Tokyo, tatsumaki games, KAYAC, New Story, Playgendary and Supercent.

Collective letter from game development companies: Turning off all IronSource and Unity Ads monetization until new conditions are reviewed

We are the collective voice of the game development industry—developers, game designers, artists, and business minds. Passionate about our craft, we’ve invested years in shaping an industry that touches the lives of millions worldwide. As stakeholders, we cannot remain silent when a decision threatens to destabilize this ecosystem.

Unity has been an instrumental force in this industry. In many ways, it has inspired us to create new immersive worlds and empowered a plethora of dynamic and independent developers to bring their visions to life. We’ve played our part in this journey, moving the industry forward and creating specialists that use Unity as the primary game engine for their projects.

We’ve hosted Unity-centered events, shared our knowledge, and crafted educational content that’s inspired an international community. Thanks to this symbiosis, Unity has evolved into a cornerstone of game development and is now established as an indispensable asset in game creation.

That’s why the September 12 announcement hits us hard. Effective January 1, 2024, Unity plans to introduce installation-dependent fees, a decision that jeopardizes small and large game developers alike, made without any industry consultation. To claim, as Unity has, that this new ‘Runtime Fee’ will impact only 10% of the industry is not just misleading, it’s patently false.

We strongly oppose this move, which disregards the unique challenges and complexities of our industry.

While we’ve always viewed our work as a collaborative effort, this decision blindsided us. With one stroke of the pen, you’ve put hundreds of studios at risk, all without consultation or dialogue.

To put it in relatable terms—what if automakers suddenly decided to charge us for every mile driven on the car that you bought a year ago? The impact on consumers and the industry at large would be seismic.

This comes at a time when the industry is already grappling with tightening profit margins, heightened competition, and escalating costs in both development and marketing. This isn’t just about developers. This impacts artists, designers, marketers, and producers. It’s a cascade that could lead to the shuttering of companies that have given their all to this industry.

Unity, we’ve stood by and celebrated your every innovation. Why, then, were we left out of the conversation on a decision so monumental?

As a course of immediate action, our collective of game development companies is forced to turn off all IronSource and Unity Ads monetization across our projects until these changes are reconsidered.

We urge others who share this stance to do the same. The rules have changed, and the stakes are simply too high. The Runtime Fee is an unacceptable shift in our partnership with Unity that needs to be immediately canceled.

We entered this industry for the love of game development, but what makes it truly special is the community—a community built on openness, shared expertise, and collective progress.

If you share our sentiment, we call on you to join us. Turn off all IronSource and Unity Ads monetization until a fair and equitable resolution is found.

You can also back the movement by signing our open letter. Check out the link to add your voice to the cause.

Sincerely,

Azur Games, Voodoo, Homa, Century Games, SayGames, CrazyLabs, Original Games, Ducky, Burny Games, Inspired Square, Geisha Tokyo, tatsumaki games, KAYAC, New Story, Playgendary, Supercent

…and all who sign this letter, engage in other forms of protest, or simply stand in solidarity with the gaming industry

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[–] [email protected] 113 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I hope unity's shareholders are happy with what they hoped for. This is the result of driving a company too far. Let's makes this a guideline to follow for other companies not to make such shady decisions.

It becomes more appearent with every new instance of protest that there's something equally valuable for a company as money, and that is community trust. Because losing it can stop growth. I love the new layer of accountability we obtained with the internet.

[–] expected_crayon 64 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The problem is a lot of executive compensation packages are based on short term growth rather than long term growth. So CEOs are incentivized to maximize profits today at the expense of tomorrow so they can get that sweet sweet bonus money. It’s a fundamental flaw with our entire economic system that I don’t think is likely to fix itself.

[–] pennomi 29 points 1 year ago

Well looks like even short term profits are being threatened. Good.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I think they believe that they can use the increased profit of today to fix the losses of tomorrow.

But trust in general comes by foot and goed on horseback, and that is especially true with communities.

[–] [email protected] 31 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I hope unity’s shareholders are happy with what they hoped for. This is the result of driving a company too far. Let’s makes this a guideline to follow for other companies not to make such shady decisions.

I don't think that's going to happen as long as the ownership structures surrounding shareholders remains the same. It's not the average person who invests in Unity that's doing this, it's the wealthy equity firms with significant holdings that are pushing for this unsustainable behaviour. After the 2008 crash, the EU, the US, Canada, and the UK all did studies on the economic stability of coops (1-person-1-vote democratically owned businesses) versus traditional companies and found that the coops were considerably more sustainable:

The cooperative banking sector had 20% market share of the European banking sector, but accounted for only 7 percent of all the write-downs and losses between the third quarter of 2007 and the first quarter of 2011.

(UK) A further study found that after ten years 44 percent of cooperatives were still in operation, compared with only 20 percent for all enterprises.

(US) Credit unions, a type of cooperative bank, had five times lower failure rate than other banks during the financial crisis and more than doubled lending to small businesses between 2008 and 2016, from $30 billion to $60 billion, while lending to small businesses overall during the same period declined by around $100 billion.

A 2010 report by the Ministry of Economic Development, Innovation and Export in Québec found the five-year survival rate and ten-year survival rate of cooperatives in Québec to be 62% and 44% respectively compared to 35% and 20% for conventional firms.

There's also a study using 100 years of data on French wine coops vs non-coop wine companies showing similar results: not only do coops survive longer, the survival rate gap widens over time as more and more non-coops collapse [Cooperatives versus Corporations: Survival in the French Wine Industry. Journal of Wine Economics, 13(3), 328-354. doi:10.1017/jwe.2017.1]