LogInThat's a lot of money, but Rust earns plenty as well.
Facepunch Studios
Garry Newman, the creator of Garry's Mod and Rust, shared some unfortunate news he received from "a certain game engine company," which required him to have a minimum spend of $500K a year.
Considering Rust is powered by Unity, no one has a doubt in their mind who contacted Newman.
"Anyone else had a call with a certain Game Engine company to tell you that for some reason you now have a MINIMUM SPEND of HALF A MILLION DOLLARS A YEAR with them," he said. "Because our game is popular and we use their engine, we now have to spend $500k a year using their other services. Is this okay?
The reactions were split: some were baffled by this greedy decision, but others pointed out that this is what the Enterprise license does when you earn over $25 million in annual revenue and funding.
On the other hand, Newman says his company, Facepunch, never agreed to the deal and hasn't signed any agreements. "We were already on [E]nterprise, this is a doubling of that cost, a minimum spend on their other services for some reason."
"I am sure we're on a more up to date licensing model, my point is more that we've paid per user every year for 20 years, that's what we agreed to. We didn't knowingly opt into spending $500k a year on [U]nity, we didn't agree to any new licensing terms, when they scrapped the [R]untime [F]ee we were told we could stay on the old licensing forever. I resent every penny I give to Unity, especially when they arbitrarily double it," he continued.
Unity has to be very careful with its policies after the disastrous Runtime Fee, which asked for money for each install. Thankfully, it was eventually canceled, but some developers still distrust the company.
To be fair, Unity basically offers its engine for free and struggles to turn a profit, so perhaps the $500K requirement is not that crazy.
What do you think about it? Should the Rust team pay this money or move to another engine? Join our 80 Level Talent platform and our new Discord server, follow us on Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, TikTok, and Threads, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.