Over the past week, there has been quite a bit of to-do surrounding the Unity game engine, and recent changes that have been made to its monetization model. The first published project that Mad Wonder was ever involved in was a plug-in we created for the Unity game engine, so this story is one we have been following closely.
Mad Wonder itself is not going to be noticeably affected by these changes. We stopped using the Unity engine directly years ago, and had already abandoned any plans for future plug-ins or projects related to Unity. A lot of our technical dabbling has shifted to python, SDL, web interfaces, and small-scale hardware platforms. Our current game engine of choice is Godot, and likely will remain so for some time.
The repercussions of Unity’s calamitous decision are going to be felt across the game development industry for quite some time. This will likely end up an object lesson in how not to handle community-driven efforts. Unity’s greatest achievement was likely its ability to build itself up on the back of a vibrant development community. The introduction and handling of the Unity Asset Store was a masterstroke in super-charging and incentivizing that development community to flock to and support Unity’s platform. It is sad and a little depressing to see mismanagement burn so much progress to the ground in pursuit of short-term gains.
We extend our deepest sympathies to any developers caught in the middle of this mess, and sincerely hope that they are able to either navigate these turbulent circumstances, or successfully migrate to a different development platform.