游戏研发

Unity has decided to terminate an agreement with its subsidiary Weta, a VFX studio co-founded by acclaimed filmmaker Peter Jackson. This will result in another round of layoffs for the engine maker.

Unity has announced new large-scale cuts. This time the reason was the termination of cooperation with Weta FX, a special effects studio directed by Peter Jackson. A total of 256 people or 3.8% of the total number of Unity employees will remain unemployed.

In October, it became known that the basis of the new Russian open engine Nau Engine will be a solution from Gaijin Entertainment — Dagor Engine. App2Top talked with Andrey Karsakov, Head of Nau Engine development, about how it happened and what technologies the engine will support.

The GameMaker team announced that developers who are not going to make money on their games can now not pay for the engine. The only limitation is that the free version of GameMaker cannot be used for console projects.

GameMaker has a special Thanksgiving surprise for its community by announcing major changes to its pricing model. And the team decided to do the opposite of what some other engine makers do.

No game engine is perfect. And sometimes developers may have a hard time working with specific frameworks due to a large amount of legacy code or lack of good documentation.

Unity has announced the new major version of its engine that will feature various improvements such as performance optimization and accelerated multiplayer game creation. However, the biggest highlight is the new AI tools for developers.

During the Unite 2023 conference, Unity announced Unity 6, the next version of its engine. With it, developers, among other things, will get early access to tools based on Unity Muse and Unity Sentis artificial intelligence.

Unity has released its financial report for the third quarter ended September 30. The company called its results “mixed”, also outlining growth plans and warning about possible layoffs.

Unity has summed up the financial results of the third quarter of 2023. She said that compared to last year, her revenue increased by 69%. The growth could have been even greater, but in September, after widespread criticism of the new pricing policy of the engine, its revenues decreased slightly.

What should be the game documentation at the first stages of development, who should lead it, whether fake shots are needed - the editors of App2Top talked about this and much more with Konstantin Sakhnov, founder of the indie studio Vengeance Games and author of the course "Fundamentals of Game Design".

Gaijin Entertainment has decided to open-source its Dagor Engine. However, the War Thunder developer seems surprised by reports that the Nau Engine team, financially backed by Russian tech giant VK, plans to use parts of it for its upcoming framework.

Last week, the Nau Engine team announced that they had taken a render core and system-level components from Dagor Engine for their engine. According to Gaijin Entertainment, the company that developed Dagor Engine, it was a surprise for her.

Developer anger and the loss of loyalty among partners are just a few of the consequences Unity faced when it revealed plans to start charging per-install fees. Advertisers have also turned away from the company.

Many American advertisers abandoned the Unity advertising network after the company introduced a new pricing policy on September 12. According to Sensor Tower analysts, in the week from September 11 to 17, their number in the Unity network decreased by 15%.

RE Engine is an integral part of Capcom’s production pipeline, powering games ranging from Street Fighter 6 to all the latest Resident Evil titles. The company has no plans to abandon the engine, as it has now announced the next-gen version of its proprietary technology.

At the beginning of the week, the creator of the God of War series, David Jaffe, citing sources, said that Connie Booth, one of the iconic figures of the gaming division, had left Sony. Now a Sony representative in a comment to Axios confirmed that Booth no longer works for the company.

Syndicat National du Jeu Video (SNJV), a trade organization, surveyed 577 French game development studios. She found out that more than half of the teams last year did not earn even 300 thousand euros. At the same time, the number of large studios has grown.

After the resignation of John Riccitiello and the softening of the terms of the Runtime Fee, the scandal surrounding Unity's pricing policy subsided. Nevertheless, the MobileGamer portal continued to understand the situation. We share a brief squeeze of the material.

Connie Booth, vice president of game development, has left Sony. So say the sources of the creator of the God of War series David Jaffe (David Jaffe).

The team of the Russian engine Nau Engine has published a roadmap. It is designed for the next two years.

AppLovin could be interested in buying Unity again after the scandal over the Runtime Fee and the departure of Unity CEO John Riccitiello. Citibank analysts think so.

The recent Runtime Fee controversy and CEO John Riccitiello’s departure have sparked speculation among some market experts that Unity could be considered an M&A target. Mobile monetization platform AppLovin, which offered to acquire the engine maker last year, was named as a potential buyer.

Unity announced the change of leadership in a recent press release, specifying that John Riccitiello is leaving his post "immediately."

Unity has announced a leadership transition after facing a huge backlash for rolling out its new pricing policy and trying to oblige devs to pay for game installs. John Riccitiello will be stepping down as CEO and president of the company after nearly 10 years.

In this article for Game World Observer, ZiMAD artist Andrey Novikov shares his insights on how to interact with AI tools and explains which parts of the work can be delegated to them without compromising quality.

Next year, the Unreal Engine will switch to a new pricing model for corporate clients not related to game development — film companies, car brands and others. This was announced by the head of Epic Games Tim Sweeney during a speech at the Unreal Fest 2023 conference.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney addressed the recent mass layoffs during the first day of the Unreal Fest 2023 conference. He also discussed the company’s Metaverse ambitions and the changes to the Unreal Engine pricing model.

After massive outrage from developers, Unity introduced an updated version of its pricing policy. The Runtime Fee will only be charged to Unity Pro and Enterprise customers. At the same time, the system itself should become more transparent.

Mobile marketing and monetization platform AppLovin has launched a new project to help Unity developers switch to other engines like Unreal and Godot. It can already speed up code translation, and tools for asset and plugin migration are also in the works.

Re-Logic, an indie studio behind evergreen sandbox hit game Terraria, has commented on Unity’s controversial decision to introduce per-install fees. The team not only condemned this move, but also decided to support two open source engines.

Over the past week, there have been many developers who have decided to abandon the Unity engine and switch to other platforms. To help them, AppLovin has released Unifree, a tool that allows you to transfer the code of games written for Unity to the Unreal Engine, Godot and Cocos engines.

Re-Logic studio, which developed the game Terraria, supported the creators of the open engines Godot and FNA. She announced that she had donated $100,000 to each team.

The new Unity collection is called Runtime Fee. It got its name in honor of the Unity Runtime library set. The company believes that since libraries are installed on users’ devices along with the game, the developer must pay for it. We talked about Unity Runtime with Kirill Shabordin, the founder of Yerevan Cowboys Games, and Alexey Pechenin, the founder of Infinite Art Solutions.

Unity is now in the process of overhauling its controversial Runtime Fee, which caused a revolt in the game development community. Here are the first details about the possible changes.

On September 18, Unity shares fell 7.92% to $33.45 apiece. For the company, this is the biggest* daily drop in September.

At the Unity Software general meeting, which took place on Monday, it was announced to employees that the company would abandon the main provisions of the new monetization policy, which was announced last Wednesday.

Unity has responded to backlash over its new Runtime Fee. The company claims it will be making changes to the policy, but developers still want per-install fees to be reverted.

Unity reacted to the massive outrage of developers with the new pricing policy. She said she hears criticism and apologized for the “confusion and anxiety” that arose after the announcement.

In the wake of recent changes to Unity’s pricing policy, several game developers have decided to completely turn off Unity Ads and ironSource monetization across all of their titles. Companies like Azur Games and Voodoo are calling for per-install fees to be canceled, urging their colleagues to join the protest.

Against the background of changes in Unity’s pricing policy, a number of gaming companies have decided to disable the monetization of Unity Ads and ironSource in all their games. They demand to cancel the new installation fee. Among the signatories of the appeal are Azur Games, Voodoo and many others.

Nekki has abandoned the Unity engine. Its founder Dmitry Terekhin wrote on LinkedIn that the Spine action already in development will now be made on Unreal Engine.

Unity’s new per-install fees will apply even to older games released before the pricing changes. It also appears that earlier this year, the company also retroactively removed one clause from its terms of service.

The media reported that those gaming companies that will start using the Unity LevelPlay Mediation advertising platform will not have to pay a fee from each download.

On Reddit, we noticed that over the past year and a half, Unity has greatly changed the approach to working with the engine license. A user under the nickname Darkfrost wrote a post in which he talked about noticeable changes.

After the change in Unity monetization, many developers announced plans to move to another platform. Godot project manager Remi Verschelde, amid increased interest in the engine, warned that such a decision should not be hasty.

On September 12, the Godot open engine team officially announced the launch of the Godot Development Fund. She will collect donations through him for the development of the engine.

More developers are beginning to openly express their concerns about Unity’s new pricing policy. Here is how per-install fees could affect mobile game studios, according to developer Nekki.

Many developers have spoken sharply about Unity’s new pricing policy. One of them was Dmitry Terekhin, the founder of Nekki.

The announcement of the Unity Runtime Fee has caught many developers off guard. Here is what the professional community has to say about the company’s decision to charge extra fees based on game installs, as well as the lack of a clear explanation and rationale for the new pricing model.