Following a tumultuous week for Unity, in which the company infuriated a significant portion of the development community by making dramatic changes to its engine licensing terms – only to then partially walk them back on Friday – at least one studio has had enough, with developer Neognosis announcing it’ll no longer be porting its acclaimed Wipeout-inspired racer BallisticNG to Switch as a direct consequence of Unity’s actions.
Last Tuesday, Unity announced changes to its licensing agreement that would have forced developers to pay an additional fee every time a user installed their game. After significant outrage from the development community, the company changed course, saying its new pricing plan would now only apply to developers choosing to use its next Long Term Support version – but, as highlighted by Neognosis in a post announcing the cancellation of BallisticNG for Switch, many developers might not have a choice but to upgrade.
“Nintendo has a rolling Unity version requirement for game releases,” the studio explained, “and we’re already behind the threshold by two years. Two weeks ago this wouldn’t have been an issue… [but] 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 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.”
“Despite Unity’s efforts to recover after their PR disaster,” Neognosis continued, “there just isn’t any trust and security for us to continue moving forward with newer versions of their tools in the foreseeable future.”
While the developer says it’ll continue supporting the existing PC version of BallisticNG, the planned Switch port is now officially dead. However, the studio does say it’ll “be looking at working with the console (or the rumoured ) in a future project not bound by Unity.”