The main thing for the weekend (September 16-17)
More than 190 game—related companies have publicly spoken out against Unity’s new pricing policy, the head of the Actors Guild of the USA called for a vote for a strike against gaming companies, GTA V turned ten years old – we tell you what happened in the gaming industry over the weekend.
▪️After Unity announced the new pricing policy, an account called Game Studios Disappointed By Unity appeared on X (Twitter). It collects statements criticizing the engine’s business model. Judging by the tweets in the account, by Sunday night, over 190 companies had already officially issued appeals. Among them are the developers of Cult of the Lamb, Among Us, Darkest Dungeon, Phasmophobia, Human: Fall Flat, Another Crab’s Treasure, Totally Accurate Battlegrounds and many other games.
▪️AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi has sent an open letter to the head of Unity calling for the cancellation of the additional installation fee. He wrote that he understands the reasons that prompted Unity to reconsider the monetization of the engine, but the company should not solve its problems at the expense of the entire developer community. “If you continue on the path you are following, you will destroy your credibility and destroy the reputation that you have spent years building. This will tear our industry apart,” Forugi said.
The president of the Actors Guild of the USA, Fran Drescher, called for a strike against gaming companies. She called on the Guild members to vote for organizing a protest. Recall that the voting began on September 5 and will last until September 25. If the strike takes place, it will affect companies such as Activision, Electronic Arts, Take-Two and Epic Games. During it, the Guild will try to achieve a salary increase and improve working conditions for actors.
On September 11, most of the 4,000 Ubisoft Montreal employees were forced to return to the office. According to IGN, the developers are very unhappy with this circumstance. They have been working remotely for the last three years, and the studio management has repeatedly assured that if they wish, they will be able to continue working from home. During this time, many employees managed to “make important life decisions.” Now developers are required to be in the office for at least two days a week. Ubisoft gave about two months to “adapt” to the new schedule.
On September 17, GTA V celebrated its tenth anniversary. The game was originally released in 2013 on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Its release became one of the most successful in the history of the gaming industry: in the first three days GTA V earned $ 1 billion.
▪️Tango Gameworks has announced that the number of Ghostwire: Tokyo players has exceeded 6 million, including Game Pass and PlayStation Plus subscribers. The game took the previous bar of 5 million people in mid-June.
