Sorry for not posting a newsletter last week. The brain was foggy and I couldn’t get it to clear up at all. I did manage to get an interview of sorts for this week.
Is the Unity engine on the chopping block? After its announcement this past week, many people think it might be.
Artists…
Skunk Artworks
I recently encountered this artist on Twitter and was impressed by a partial sketch of Frankenstein’s monster. Even though he only had the top half of the piece in the picture, it looked as though the monster was slowly emerging from the canvas. I reached out to him and asked a few questions.
Q: What got you into art?
A: Comic books. As a kid, I soaked up these images like a sponge.
Q: What was your favorite comic book?
A: Kelley Jones Batman. The visuals were unlike anything else I had seen before. Also John Bolton’s adaptation of Army of Darkness.
Q: What medium do you use:
A: Ink, acrylic, and oils.
Q: How long have you been creating art?
A: About 8 years I think.
You can find his art in the upcoming “Kill Them Dead” comic. The Kickstarter can be found here:
Jason Robinson
Illustration by Design
This Jack-of-All-Trades is as talented as he is versatile. In a world where one can request a graphic design for a company one day and an illustrated cover the next, Jason has you covered!
His attention to detail and coloring is exquisite! You can find him by clicking on his website above.
Comics…
El Krudo
EL KRUDO is an orangutan raised by the USMC who is dropped into the Vietnam War and gets stuck behind enemy lines. It’s like Project X meets Apocalypse Now (errr, Ape-ocalypse Now).
-from the Kickstarter
I have been following this one for a long time, and when my budget permits, I may have to pick this one up.
This sounds like an interesting twist on the Vietnam era, and I am curious as to where the writer is going to take it.
The artwork looks solid as well.
Immortal Rising
Dark Fantasy meets Epic Fantasy in a compelling story of survival 2 stories in 1 book 44 anime/manga-style pages by Jose Garcia Gods, monsters,and men
-Kickstarter
From what I have seen, this is looking to be two wild rides in one book. From the colors to what I have seen with the dialogue, I might be correct.
This is another on my wishlist.
Video Games…
NukGames Burning Skies
I love all types of video games, but one of my favorites was 1943: The Battle of Midway. I played that every chance I got, and this game has that feel to it. I will be adding it to my wishlist on Steam. The trailer is a very good start.
Twitter
Dusk Tactics
If you like pixel games and RPGs with a little strategy thrown in for good measure, check out the gameplay sample above. It just might make your wishlist.
Website
Game Developers Jumpship the Unity Ship after Business Model Change.
Unity, a game engine used by Valheim, 7 Days to Die, Subnautica, and many other games, caused an uproar in the game development community with the announcement of its new business model. On Sept 12, 2023, Unity announced a fee for installations for its Runtime tool.
We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user.
Unity
Their belief is that is a better way to maintain revenue, unlike revenue sharing. Per download means just that, if you have the game downloaded on your computer and install it to play it, that is a fee for the developer. If you install it on more than one device even though it’s the same account, the developer gets billed per device installation.
This can be devastating for small development companies. There is, however, a threshold.
The threshold to incur the fee is:
The company will not be charged for reinstallation of a game so long as it is on the same device.
Demos will not count toward the fee as they are only charging for installs of the full game. Unity has stated that they will work with companies to prevent them from being charged if a pirated copy has been installed, but they have not gone into detail as to how they will be able to track if the game is purchased or pirated. They said they would help identify “install-bombing” and not charge the company if that happened, but again, no details as to how they would be able to tell.
They will not bill retroactively, but I have yet to see any information that would make any company exempt from the fees no matter how long they’ve been using Unity. This is also known as being grandfathered.
For more information, they have an FAQ on their site. This will take effect on January 1, 2024.
As you can imagine, this caused a major ripple in the game development community with many looking at and moving to other gaming engines. As many independent developers are still very small with a handful of people as staff and can’t afford any new charges, this would be devastating financially. Some would argue that they may be too small to hit the threshold, but in 2021, Embracer, which owns Coffee Stain, sold 6.8M copies of Valheim in early access. That’s 6.8 million downloads.
The way they are structuring it is below:
Five days later, they issued this statement on Twitter:
We have heard you. We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused. We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of days. Thank you for your honest and critical feedback.
-Unity
Some hope the changes will be a full reversal with others in “wait-and-see” mode. There are those who are saying if they reverse course, they will only be doing it to get back the companies they’ve lost and slowly and quietly roll the fees back into the mix.
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