Controversy and upheaval around game engine Unity has forced the developer of a WipEout-style racer to cancel its planned Nintendo Switch port.
BallisticNG, which launched on Steam via PC in 2018 and currently enjoys an “overwhelmingly positive” user review rating, was set to recent a port on Nintendo’s console, but this is no more.
Explaining the decision in a post on Steam, developer Neognosis said it was moving forward after what it called the “Unity debacle”.
Last week, Unity announced key changes to its widely panned Runtime Fee policy, which spawned both derision and confusion from developers and the gaming community at large when it was unveiled earlier this month.
As originally announced, starting on January 1, 2024 Unity would have started charging developers a small fee every time someone downloaded a game built on Unity’s game engine after a certain threshold for minimum revenue and install count.
The different tiers of Unity plans (Unity Personal/Unity Plus, Unity Pro, and Unity Enterprise) had different thresholds and, per the original announcement, smaller developers using Unity Personal/Unity Plus would have had to pay Unity $0.20 per install once their game passed $200,000 in revenue over the last 12 months and 200,000 life-to-date installs.
Backtracking, Unity said there will now be no Runtime Fee on games built on Unity Personal, which will remain free. It also increased the financial threshold of Unity Personal from $100,000 to $200,000, and removed the requirement to use the Made with Unity splash screen. “No game with less than $1 million in trailing 12-month revenue will be subject to the fee,” Unity’s Marc Whitten said.
Crucially, Unity said the Runtime Fee policy will only apply beginning with the next LTS [Long Term Support] version of Unity shipping in 2024 and beyond. “Your games that are currently shipped and the projects you are currently working on will not be included – unless you choose to upgrade them to this new version of Unity,” the company said.
“For games that are subject to the Runtime Fee, we are giving you a choice of either a 2.5% revenue share or the calculated amount based on the number of new people engaging with your game each month,” Unity continued. “Both of these numbers are self-reported from data you already have available. You will always be billed the lesser amount.”
It seems this statement and a perceived requirement from Nintendo to run Switch games on newer versions of Unity has caused significant concern at Neognosis.
“Nintendo has a rolling Unity version requirement for game releases and we’re already behind the threshold by two years,” Neognosis explained. “Two weeks ago this wouldn’t have been an issue, no doubt there’d have been some pains in updating BallisticNG to a new version of Unity again, but it would have benefited us in the long run.
“By the time we’ll have a Switch version of BallisticNG ready, the threshold for Unity versions will exceed the new versions that Unity are pushing their TOS [Terms of Service] changes with, and we currently have no confidence that they won’t try pulling another move or pushing back to their original plans under / beyond this new TOS.”
As a result, the Switch port of BallisticNG is canceled. “Despite Unity’s efforts to recover after their PR disaster, there just isn’t any trust and security for us to continue moving forward with newer versions of their tools in the foreseeable future,” Neognosis said.
“It comes with much frustration and disappointment that we’re announcing the cancellation of the Switch version. Several years of development has gone into preparing BallisticNG technically for the port while maintaining the usual output of updates for the PC version, so this comes as a big kick in the balls to both us and everybody else who was excited for this version of the game. We’re sorry that it has turned out this way, and we’ll be looking at working with the console (or the rumoured Switch 2) in a future project not bound by Unity.”
Mention of Switch 2 relates to Nintendo’s much-rumoured next-gen console, which is reportedly due out in 2024. BallisticNG said it’s currently “evaluating other engines for future projects”, which may move to this unannounced hardware.
After Unity announced the original policy on September 12, the backlash was swift. Amid concern about what the Runtime Fee would mean for charity bundles, free-to-play bundles, multiple installs, and Game Pass, some developers hinted they’d be forced to pull their games from the engine. Among Us developer Innersloth confirmed to IGN that “pulling Among Us for a little while” was on the table.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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