Unity temporarily shuts offices after receiving threats
The company was made aware of “a potential threat”
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Update (9/15, 14:30):It has been revealed by San Francisco police that the individual responsible for the threat was a Unity employee, via a message to their employer via social media. (viaPolygon)
Unity Technologies, the company behind the popular Unity game engine, has had to close up some of its offices after it received threats to its employees' safety.
While the threats came soon afterUnity announced a controversial new installation fee policy, which would charge developers per install after reaching a certain threshold, it’s important to note that it hasn’t been confirmed that the threats issued are in relation to the policy.
After receiving what it referred to as a credible death threat, Unity offices in Austin and San Francisco were temporarily closed,Bloombergreports.
A Unity spokesperson provided further context in a statement toIGN, saying: “Today, we have been made aware of a potential threat to some of our offices. We have taken immediate and proactive measures to ensure the safety of our employees, which is our top priority. We are closing our offices today and tomorrow that could be potential targets for this threat, and are fully cooperating with law enforcement on the investigation.”
Unity’s new policy has received much criticism in the days since its announcement, from developers and players alike. When enacted, the policy would see developers charged a fee of $0.20 per game install after a threshold of 200,000 installations has been passed. It will come into affect on January 1, 2024.
Titles like Among Us and Cult of the Lamb are just a few of the games that have claimed they’ll be pulled from digital storefronts after the policy comes into affect. While Unity has acknowledged the “confusion and frustration” felt by developers, they’ve only muddied the waters by claiming they will no longer be charging for re-installations, trials, demos, web and streaming use and games that are sold as part of a charity bundles.
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We want to acknowledge the confusion and frustration we heard after we announced our new runtime fee policy. We’d like to clarify some of your top questions and concerns:Who is impacted by this price increase: The price increase is very targeted. In fact, more than 90% of our…September 13, 2023
How it intends to actually work out which installations are trials or sold as charity bundles remains to be seen, however.
Unity is one of the most popular and accessible game engines for developers out there, and is largely used by both indie developers and AAA studios. Some popular titles running on the Unity engine that would be impacted by the fee includeGenshin Impact, Fall Guys, Cuphead,Escape from Tarkovas well as anticipatedupcoming gameslikeHollow Knight: Silksong.
Some indie developersare encouraging fansto purchase their titles now ahead of Unity’s new policy coming into effect. You can browse ourbest indie gamesandbest Steam gamesguides for top recommendations.
Rhys is TRG’s Hardware Editor, and has been part of the TechRadar team for more than two years. Particularly passionate about high-quality third-party controllers and headsets, as well as the latest and greatest in fight sticks and VR, Rhys strives to provide easy-to-read, informative coverage on gaming hardware of all kinds. As for the games themselves, Rhys is especially keen on fighting and racing games, as well as soulslikes and RPGs.
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