Terraria's developers, Re-Logic, have pledged to support two up-and-coming open-source game engines following Unity's predatory 'Runtime Fee' pricing model that would charge devs whenever a game was installed or launched.
Even though the pricing model was tweaked, the trust has been broken, with many game devs having to take precautionary measures to limit costs.
So, let's see what Re-Logic has promised to do.
A Sizeable Contribution 💰
In a recent announcement on Twitter, they said two major things.
One, they denounced the pricing model changes proposed by Unity by mentioning the following:
We unequivocally condemn and reject the recent TOS/fee changes proposed by Unity and the underhanded way they were rolled out.
The flippant manner with which years of trust cultivated by Unity were cast aside for yet another way to squeeze publishers, studios, and gamers is the saddest part.
They also added that a simple public statement was not sufficient to undo such a thing, and trust had been broken that cannot be repaired easily.
However, the main highlight of the announcement was their pledge to donate $100,000 each to open-source gaming engines, Godot and FNA.
And, that's not all, they have also decided to sponsor these projects for $1000/month each, with only a simple demand:
All we ask in return is that they remain good people and keep doing all that they can to make these engines powerful and approachable for developers everywhere.
Now, that's an excellent thing to ask for in return! 😄
Even though the mobile and console ports of Terraria use Unity (maintained by a third-party), this hasn't stopped them from being vocal about the situation.
You can follow the discussion surrounding this on the original announcement tweet to get more insights on what the users and game developers think.
Time to Shine?
I say, yes!
Open-source game engines such as Godot and FNA are the need of the hour, seeing that most popular game engines are either close-sourced behind a paywall, or strictly for a game developer's own use (I am looking at you RAGE).
It is great to see a popular game developer like Re-Logic trying to support open-source game engines like this, it has been some time since we saw such an endeavor.
I hope with this, more developers take a keen interest in supporting open-source game engines in whatever way they can, it could be either monetarily, or by contributing to the code.
💬 What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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