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Epic Games has joined the Improbable/Unity feud by offering support to developers affected – support in this case taking the form of a $25m fund to help developers transition from Unity to Unreal.
In a joined blog post, Epic’s CEO Tim Sweeney and Improbable’s CEO Herman Narula said they wanted to “reaffirm [their] commitment to giving game developers the best combination of engine and other technology backed by interoperable standards that work for everyone, while respecting developers’ ability to choose partners and software components freely.”
As a result, the two companies strengthened their partnerships in order to help developers “left in limbo” following the announcement yesterday that all titles using both Improbable’s Spatial OS and Unity are in breach of Unity’s terms.
“Epic Games and Improbable are together establishing a US $25,000,000 combined fund to help developers transition to more open engines, services, and ecosystems,” the announcement read. “This funding will come from a variety of sources including Unreal Dev Grants, Improbable developer assistance funds, and Epic Games store funding.”
It continued: “We believe we are at the beginning of an unprecedented age of inclusive online games that become parts of our everyday lives. Enabling this will take much more than Epic or Improbable; it will take a vastly more mature, broad-based industry to enable this future: a community of companies connected by values such as fair and openly disclosed business terms, respect for developer choice, and full interoperability between platforms, software, and services. We encourage others with a similar vision to reach out, so we can find ways to make it come sooner.”
Unity’s co-founder Joachim Ante reacted to Improbable’s announcement from yesterday by stating that Improbable’s report of the situation was incorrect and explaining the reasons behind the issue. He also said that Unity “never communicated to any game developer that they should stop operating a game that runs using Improbable as a service.” Ante added that this had been brewing for some time, with Unity informing Improbable of its issues a year ago, and formally in writing six months back – it finally took the decision to deactivate Improbable’s Unity Editor license keys two weeks ago.
