Update 3: In a surprising announcement, Fortnite studio Epic Games announced that it had teamed up with Improbable to create a $25 million fund aimed at encouraging developers to leave Unity in favour of other platforms. Epic and Improbably created the fund to give cash to developers who abandon Unity for other game-development tools. Epic, of course, owns and operates the very popular Unreal Engine, which competes directly with Unity.`To assist developers who are left in limbo by the new engine and service incompatibilities that were introduced today, Epic Games and Improbable are together establishing a $25 million combined fund to help developers transition to more open engines, services, and ecosystems,` Epic Games boss Tim Sweeney and Improbable executive Herman Narula said in a joint statement (via VentureBeat).`This funding will come from a variety of sources including Unreal Dev Grants, Improbable developer assistance funds, and Epic Games store funding.`Update 2: Unity has now responded with a blog post of its own that disputes Improbable`s account of the situation and states emphatically, `Improbable`s blog is incorrect.`Unity offers a detailed breakdown of what`s happened over the past year-plus, though it starts out by clarifying, `Projects that are currently in production or live using SpatialOS are not affected by any actions we have taken with Improbable. If a game developer runs a Unity-based game server on their own servers or generic cloud instances (like GCP, AWS or Azure), they are covered by our EULA. We have never communicated to any game developer that they should stop operating a game that runs using Improbable as a service.`It goes on to explain the background of the situation, claiming that despite discussions between the two sides, `Improbable chose an approach which doesn`t involve partnering with Unity, but instead involves making unauthorized and improper use of Unity`s technology and name in connection with the development, sale, a ...
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