Unity has released the details of their new revenue model and let's just say that the reception from the development community has been overwhelmingly negative.  If you're not familiar with the news I've included a link to the Unity page that attempts to explain what is happening. 

 https://unity.com/runtime-fee. 

  I'll spare the world of another opinion post of why this change is bad for indie developers.  At this point it has been covered by pretty much everyone else and honestly, those with more skin in the game. 

  Rather, I want to make this post more about how someone like me, who is Just starting out, sees things and is this move by Unity enough to push me away from Unity forever?  It's very possible that by the time I ever get good enough to make a full game that I would actually feel comfortable charging for, this all could be ancient history and have no impact on me whatsoever. So, what is someone like me to do or think about this then. 

  I've been working with Unity for about 2 years now. This is now the second time I've personally seen the pitchforks come out against the company. The first time was when they merged with Iron Source. https://blog.unity.com/news/welcome-ironsource  At that time all the news was bad because Iron Source was known for developing monetization solutions for games. Monetization in the gaming industry is a dirty word and these guys seemed to fit the bill of a good villain. The heat was pretty strong for a while and even at that time I had considered trying other game engines since there was a lot of talk of the downfall of Unity.

  I continued with Unity and overall, I didn't see how that merger was going to affect me personally, and from what I could tell there wasn't anyone really jumping ship. Just the Internet being loud. So, I moved forward with learning Unity. 

Now, here we are in 2023 just over a year later and the pitchforks are out again but this time is different.  I feel like this "could" affect me down the road. Not only that, but the possible damage this could cause to the Indie scene. 

So, where do I go from here. I think the change and the lack of response from Unity has been big enough to consider other options.  I'm only tied to Unity due to my current project and because it's the engine I know and have so far grown with. I have no doubt that the skills I've learned in Unity can be transferred in some way to other engines. 

I think what all of this really teaches us is, we can't always rely on others or companies to do the right thing. Nothing is ever guaranteed and as game developers, we need to be flexible and adaptable.  With this in mind, I'm going to take the opportunity to not only learn more about Godot but also dabble in Unreal engine 5.  I will continue to keep tabs on Unity because I genuinely do like to work with that engine. Who knows, maybe in a few years things will change and Unity will come out of this better than before. 

As of today, the work on Neon Syn will be halted until further notice. This will disappoint all 3 or 4 people but hey, have to start somewhere. I'll be using this blog post to now focus on learning a new engine and we'll see where this adventure takes us.