Terraria developer donates $100,000 to Godot development
Indie games developer and publisher Re-Logic, best known for the Terraria franchise, has donated $100,000 to open-source game engine Godot.
The donation is roughly twice the amount that Godot currently receives each month via its new Godot Development Fund. Re-Logic will continue to donate $1,000/month going forward.
The donation was made in response to rival engine developer Unity’s controversial announcement last week that it is planning to introduce installation-based fees for Unity games.
An unexpected boost for the newly launched Godot Development Fund
Launched last week, the Godot Development Fund is Godot’s equivalent of the highly successful Blender Development Fund, which funds development of the open-source 3D app.
At the time of writing, Godot’s own fund attracts just over €47,000/month (around $50,000/month), with backers including indie game developer Spiffcode, service developers Heroic Labs and Ramatak and venture capital firm OSSC.
Terraria developer Re-Logic pledges $100,000, plus $1,000/month going forwards
This month’s funding was tripled in a stroke by Re-Logic’s announcement that it was donating $100,000 to Godot, plus a further $1,000/month going forwards.
The firm is also donating the same amount of money to FNA, an open-source reimplementation of XNA, Microsoft’s now-discontinued game development framework.
Donation made in response to Unity’s unpopular proposed Unity Runtime Fee
The donations were made in response to Unity’s announcement last week that it plans to introduce a Unity Runtime Fee for games developed using the engine from 1 January 2024.
The fee would apply to free Unity Personal accounts as well as paid Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise accounts, and would be charged on a per-install basis above a revenue threshold.
The announcement was hugely unpopular with developers: according to GamesIndustry.biz, by yesterday, over 500 had signed a collective letter pledging to turn off Unity Ads monetization until the “changes are reconsidered”.
As of this morning, the link to the collective letter has been redirected to the Godot website.
‘Now is the time to get behind open-source game engines’
In a powerfully worded tweet, Re-Logic said that it “has been watching the recent events surrounding Unity with both interest and sadness”, and that it “unequivocally condemn[s]” the proposed changes in fees and the “underhanded way they were rolled out”.
Although Unity issued a public statement at the weekend apologizing for the “confusion and angst” the original announcement has caused, stating that it will “share an update in a couple of days”, Re-Logic commented that “even if Unity were to recant their policies and statements, the destruction of trust is not so easily repaired”.
Re-Logic says that it does not personally use Unity “outside of a few elements on our console/mobile platforms” but feels that “now is the time to get behind … up-and-coming open source game engines”.
Read Re-Logic’s full statement that it is donating $100,000 to fund development of Godot