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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[–] woelkchen 280 points 1 year ago (1 children)

They turned off ads? Great. Can that be a standoff that lasts forever?

[–] [email protected] 144 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I bet it'll last less time then the reddit standoff. But I do wish them all of the luck. Fuck Unity and their bullshit fees.

[–] [email protected] 82 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I think this one will work. Most of these games are already "multihomed" on different ad networks and display the one that is most profitable to them at any given time, or a semi-random mixture. The differences in profitably aren't that huge, and it will get even worse if advertisers run away from Unity too. Unity is making an absolute killing from their ads division, and this is now being threatened.

And who are the advertisers? Other game devs. The whole mobile game advertising scene is one gigantic ouroboros with the ad platforms cutting off a huge portion in the middle. If you leave, you're going to both stop showing ads and stop your advertising there.

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[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (6 children)

But hey, at least they didn’t give it a set end date; from the very start of their “strike” the reddit mods straight up admitted that they couldn’t stay away from their unpaid powertrips and leave their octogenerian mothers’ basements for more than 2 days, and instantly folded at a single empty threat to take away the only thing in their lives that’ll ever give them purpose and make them feel like they wield power over others.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Don't shove us all under the same rug. I packed my bags, shred my old comments and posts and went into the Fediverse.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Hey some of us said we'd go on indefinately and after being told to open decided to maliously comply only. /r/baduibattles a sub I started is now only letting posts be of New reddit or the Reddit app. User involvement has plummeted, there are fewer posts, each with votes and comments. Automod also posts telling people to join us at [email protected]

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (3 children)

eh? do people still use reddit even? last i heard they have employees actively create threads now to try and keep engagement going.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 1 year ago

Reddit employees searching TikTok for memes to repost to Reddit be like:

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Now it’s down to just the low-effort memes, ”religious people bad”/“reddit good everywhere else bad” circlejerks, unhelpful advice, and edgy 14 year olds who just discovered politics, thinking homophobia and fragile masculinity are “based” and that they’re communist because they hate their home country because something something pronouns, know 2 russian words (both obscenities), have been playing too many WW2-themed games and say comrade every 4 seconds all despite coming from money themselves and supporting a war being waged by a far-right regime.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Don't forget the 4+ "rate me" subs that started hitting the front page every day.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

I'm confused about what you want.

Mods literally got replaced by reddit because they refused to capitulate.

I'm not a fan of reddits choices, but if I was deeply involved in a community I'd consider staying to be part of that community still.

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[–] [email protected] 113 points 1 year ago (7 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.

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[–] [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]

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[–] [email protected] 77 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Better off just cutting ties and moving on, true colors don’t really change

[–] echo64 83 points 1 year ago (8 children)

'cutting ties and moving on' would require a total rebuild of their games in a new engine. it doesn't really work that way.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They're going to try this bullshit again, or in another manner. Maybe having everything centralized onto a proprietary single point of failure isn't a great idea.

Cutting ties and moving on is the right answer.

[–] echo64 26 points 1 year ago (4 children)

No one wants this situation, but the reality is that you can not switch from one engine to another engine without rebuilding the product. This is true for every game development company on the planet, this is how the industry is.

we can sit and laugh at that and call them stupid for building an entire multi-billion dollar industry on this, or we can understand the realities of the whole thing.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I’m not calling anyone stupid or laughing.

The reality is they’ve shown their hand.

Why anyone would continue to do business with them is insane to me. You’re setting yourself up for future failure.

Sure, it’s not easy to switch engines; is this going to change in the future? I doubt it, so this is only delaying the inevitable.

[–] echo64 13 points 1 year ago (8 children)

Why anyone would continue to do business with them is insane to me.

you have a mature stack built entirely on the engine, that stacks the only thing that powers your companies revenue, if that stack did not exist then you would fold quickly
you probably have an entire company of experts in this engine, an deep knowledge-base that you are throwing away if you move away, your ability to have speed and agility is likely crippled until you get up to speed anywhere else. good luck affording to pay for that monumental shift in your company. 3, almost all the talent in the industry (at your level) is on unity engine, good luck hiring for $obscure_engine

basically, it's incredibly naive to just say "just switch, obviously they are bad, they will be bad in the future too so switch". it shows deep ignorance. it's worth trying to understand the situation before saying any of this stuff.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

“Oops, we ratcheted up the heat too fast. We’ll need to do it again slower so the frogs don’t notice.”

[–] Potatos_are_not_friends 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Every company I worked in always had a plan B.

Being fully under the whims of a service is how companies die. And unity is going to put a financial stranglehold on so many businesses. So really if they aren't planning to cut ties, they won't survive in a few years.

[–] Katana314 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’ve felt this same way about content creators complaining about YouTube. It’s far too risky to develop your life plan around a particular company continuing their service.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago

And that's why tools to migrate to another engine are now a must, like this one! https://github.com/barcoderdev/unitypackage_godot

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

You can't just cut ties in this scenario. These games are already built on the unity engine, it's not feasible to rebuild it again on a totally different engine, and now unity is going to apply new fees to all these already existing games.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Can’t just pay these ridiculous fees either, I have no belief that Unity will back track in any way here unfortunately

[–] Potatos_are_not_friends 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Seriously this.

Once the heat dies down, they'll ramp up again.

[–] WhiskyTangoFoxtrot 7 points 1 year ago

If the heat dies down then devs will have time to finish their current projects and switch to new engines for the next ones. Even a temporary walk-back would be enough to prevent disaster for a lot of studios.

[–] Furbag 64 points 1 year ago (1 children)

2023 truly is the year of unfathomably bad business decisions.

[–] Cornelius_Wangenheim 32 points 1 year ago

2023 is the year the free money stopped flowing. Without limitless 0% interest money, tech companies that have been losing money for their entire existence have to start making a profit or go bankrupt.

[–] Fapper_McFapper 51 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

And also in app purchases, subscriptions, pay to win, etc.

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[–] AWittyUsername 43 points 1 year ago

Fuck a reversal. Boycott unity.

[–] mightyfoolish 29 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Perhaps it is time for big companies to start funding Godot?

[–] Tenthrow 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

An explainer in case you weren't already in the know about Unity's misdeeds like I wasn't until now:

https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/09/12/unity-runtime-fee-explained-game-installs-changes-plans

[–] [email protected] 23 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Nope. At any point in the future, Unity could simply stop the runtime fee waiver, and the developers would be screwed.

[–] Katana314 17 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Something I think people miss is, at any point in the future anyone can make any inane pricing decision, and people are screwed in lieu of response.

The one apple seller in a town that sells all kinds of baked goods jacks up prices of apples to $100 each. There will be an outcry, people will scramble to get another apple supplier, and in the meantime they will have a hard time putting out products.

This is basically what we’re seeing now: Inane pricing hurts everyone, we just need to make sure overall it hurts Unity more. I can only imagine we ever see this type of thing from crazed MBAs that are increasingly out of touch with reality and consequence.

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[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

All the more reason to pour into a Free and Open Source alternative like Godot.

[–] ratskrad 21 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I don't fully understand why they need to do this. What is the cost of their service? Using the tool is already a subscription service, what else do they want? It's not like they have cloud services. They just want free money I guess?

[–] reagansrottencorpse 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They don't need to do this. It's rent seeking behavior.

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[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

So, here's my understanding:

Unity has an in-house advertising/monetization system called LevelPlay. It's their system for putting ads/analytics/etc. in games. But not a lot of people use it; a lot of people use a direct competitor called AppLovin, which is just outright better.

Several developers have reported Unity quietly reaching out to them and saying "Hey, we see you're using AppLovin...if you switch over to our LevelPlay service instead, we might just waive some or all of our new Fuck You Fee."

So apparently this is being done to kill a competitor.

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[–] JustANOTHERuser 9 points 1 year ago

This was a long time coming. In every instance so far, the "little" people (devals, programmers, studios and so on) have been cast aside for more everything be it exposure or money or other companies. They all see ti get far too big for their britches and at the same time forget where they came from and who helped make them who they are. It's about time this standing up to Big Corp happens. They have FA far too long its time those "little" people teach Big Corp a lesson and make Big Corp FO. Business is about (or at least should be)far more than money and making obscene abouts of profits year over year. When people have nothing left to lose and people feel pushed into a corner for too long they're gonna fight back. It's happened all through history. Let this be the chage that needs to happen.

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