Oh boy! I have absolutely no idea where to start, so let's just jump straight into it.....
Yesterday morning Unity, a company and game engine known for its accessibility and support of small developers, thought it be a good idea to announce new pricing plans that would also hurts us.
Introducing the Unity Runtime Fee
Where you will be charged based on downloads of your games. Not just purchases, but free downloads, demos, early access, re-downloads, and even pirated downloads. This even includes games that were released YEARS AGOS.
Now you may be asking "what's the big deal, it's just $0.20?" Because there's no reason to believe that this price will stay fixed. At any point, at any time, they can increase the price from $0.20 to say $0.40 or to a $1.
As mentioned before this is per download/installed - SO IN THEORY, so at any point in time, someone can uninstall and reinstall the game(s) of a dev they hate or to be a troll and congrats you have yourself a financial problem!
Same thing applies if someone have multiple devices (I.E consoles, PC, mobile, etc) and want to have your game(s) on those devices and they purchase or redownload the game!
This creates a couple, (maybe a lot) of different problems. One of them obviously being the game itself, four years of hard work, time, money, and energy destroyed by this one move.
Learning a new engine isn't easy, it requires a lot of time and work to know what everything does, where everything's at, and how to use the tools.
And depending on the type of game your making and the engine, you just loss a substantial amount of tools and the quality and polish of your craft.
So, here's the plan moving forward...…
Three Random Archives demo will be pulled from Steam, Itch.io, IndieDB, and GameJolt on November 6th (maybe even sooner, Soul-Chain and Makeshift Hell will also be pulled) if this decision isn't pulled back on.
In that time, I'll be working as hard as I can, and as fast as I can to provide another build of the game, that still retain the level of quality, feel, look, and polish I deem acceptable.
Sadly I can't guarantee, I can recreate a one-for-one version of the original, or the gameplay/story will be the same. But limitation breathes innovation, I'll make do with what I have.
If you haven't played the demo yet, this will likely be your last chance to play through the original authentic experience.
Maybe sometime in the near future I'll reupload the original version as some "limited edition" wouldn't that be fun?
That's all for now! As always thank you everyone for your support and I hope you have a funtime day!
- Xion
https://www.buymeacoffee.com/XionBrown
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2523820/Three_Random_Archives/
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