Devs learn rival Godot engine in a week to poke fun at Unity, publishes game to Steam

NobleGamer · September 28, 2023

Summary

After Unity outraged its community of developers by introducing per-install runtime fees for games built on the company's engine, and rolling them back to some extent, this gave two developers an idea for a game based on the install fees. Indie devs John Warner and Trevor Da Silva realized "it would now be possible for developers to become bankrupted by the action of a handful of angry troglodytes with a bat file which would automatically reinstall their game." This, they noticed, "would make a great game" itself.

Quotes

Quote

Introducing Install Fee Tycoon, they say:

'The makers of the "Chaos3D" game engine have begun pocketing 20 cents from developers every time one of their games is installed. Behind closed doors, however, they are paying you one cent every time you perform a reinstall. It's time to get rich. Use your connections on the dark web to trigger more reinstalls faster and faster. Install Fee Tycoon contains the addictive fun of Idle Clickers like Cookie Clicker but adds some interesting twists; your contacts will need your help to become more efficient, and the game contains several minigames to play while waiting for your wallet to get fatter. It's a perfect addition to the genre. Additionally, Install Fee Tycoon includes a simple but funny narrative component.'

Granted, an idle clicker isn't exactly the most advanced type of game, but it demonstrates the point that experienced devs can whip up something in Godot, fully formed, in no time and that Unity is not the be-all and end-all. It also neatly plays on concerns many had about how Unity's install tracking would work and how it could potentially be open to abuse.

"If we get very lucky, we'll get into a position where we would have owed more money than we made, had this been released in Unity under the proposed plan. It would be the perfect punchline to our joke. As John said, we have a lot of love for Unity; they're certainly correcting this blunder, but it's still funny to think of the bullet we all dodged."

My thoughts

This is news-worthy in its own right because it is regarding a new satirical game that sheds light on not just recent events with a game engine's monetization, but also makes tangible the implications of such things and illustrates how easy it can be in some cases to switch game engines. I think it is a hilarious dev response to the Unity install Fee debacle, and making the Steam game as cheap as possible (40 cents US) is a great way to see how the real numbers would shape out if they had used Unity and paid install fees.

Sources

https://www.theregister.com/AMP/2023/09/27/unity_install_fee_tycoon/

Game:

Edited September 28, 2023 by NobleGamer
Added link to game