Following the controversial announcement of a Unity Runtime fee, which will essentially charge developers for the number of times a game running on Unity Engine is installed, two of the company's offices have reportedly had to be closed down due to "credible" death threats.
Earlier this week, Unity announced that, starting on January 1, it will be introducing the Unity Runtime fee. This new policy essentially means that, depending on which version of Unity a developer uses, once a game passes a certain amount of money made in a year and its lifetime install count, it will have to pay royalties to Unity. The move has been controversial, especially for indie developers who might be using Unity Personal, which would result in them paying around 20 cents per install.
Things have been looking pretty negative for Unity since the change was announced, but it looks like it's only going to get worse. Bloomberg reports that Unity had to cancel its planned town hall meeting earlier today and close two of its offices due to what CEO John Riccitiello described as "credible" death threats.
As reported by Rock Paper Shotgun, several developers working for Unity have responded to the report, confirming its legitimacy. Senior XR product designer Javier Busto said, "Hey y’all, just a reminder to think before you target Unity employees. This morning we learned that law enforcement notified several Unity offices of credible threats. This fucking sucks".
Meanwhile, senior software engineer Eli C Davis also responded to the threats, saying, "Working at Exxon, threats on our office I could at least like, "get". But working at Unity? What?! Threatening devs in AUSTIN is the stupidest fucking thing".
A Unity spokesperson also had this to say to Rock Paper Shotgun, "Today, we have been made aware of a potential threat to some of our offices," a Unity spokesperson told RPS over email. "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."