Sep 26, 2023 15:00:00

The oldest official Unity user group 'BUG' disbands due to loss of trust in Unity

The Boston Unity Group (BUG), which was founded in 2010 as the first official Unity developer community, has announced that it will cease operations after an event on September 27, 2023.

bostonunitygroup.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/index.html

https://bostonunitygroup.s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/index.html

The End of an Era - BUG's Final Event, Wed, Sep 27, 2023, 7:00 PM | Meetup
https://www.meetup.com/bug-boston-unity-group/events/296318684/

In September 2023, Unity, a game engine, announced a new fee structure that would charge each time a game is installed, and received fierce protests from game developers. After that, Unity announced a review of the price revision, but a deep gap between Unity and the community remains, with many game developers already announcing the transition to a new game engine.

Unity introduced a pricing system that ``fees are generated every time a game is installed'' and game developers were furious, and ``Unity Plus'', which costs about 50,000 yen per year, also stopped accepting new applications - GIGAZINE

In response to these issues, the Unity official developer community BUG announced on September 26, 2023 that the next monthly meeting will be the group's last event.

It is with a heavy heart that we are announcing our final Boston Unity Group event. We are eternally grateful for our community, supportive Unity employees, speakers, sponsors and venues.

We have released a joint statement here: https://t.co/fbs1lSQxqO https://t.co/AhPO7pSfTp pic.twitter.com/rDyIjwaIpZ

— Boston Unity Group (@BosUnityGroup) September 25, 2023

BUG is the world's first official Unity user group, founded in 2010 by game developers Elliott Mitchell and Alex Schwartz. In order to release games using Unity, which was a relatively new technology at the time, BUG held regular meetings on the last Wednesday of each month for 13 years, developing the Unity community through lectures, workshops, and technical exchanges.

During that time, BUG's membership has increased to several thousand people, and a diverse range of people, from Boston indie game developers to blockbuster title developers, engineers, educators, and filmmakers, have come together to participate in events and activities. I did.

Additionally, Unity and its former CEO David Helgason have endorsed and enthusiastically supported BUG since its inception. BUG would like to thank David and all Unity employees for their time and effort to support us and the broader Unity community. .

On the other hand, since around 2020, Unity has withdrawn from supporting the game industry and developer community, and has prioritized profits by laying off core personnel after its initial public offering (IPO). .

The deciding factor for BUG to give up on Unity was the aforementioned price revision. BUG said, ``Management-driven business decisions could easily and thoughtlessly bankrupt the game studio we have worked so hard to build, threaten our professional livelihoods, and threaten the very survival of the industry.'' 'The current Unity is not the same company that BUG was when it was founded, and the trust we had in the company has been completely destroyed.' .

In order to fulfill our original philosophy of supporting game developers rather than Unity as a company, BUG has decided to change its policy to provide opportunities not only to Unity but to all game developers. BUG is encouraging members to join a new group called Boston GameDev , which will connect with local Boston game developers through Unreal Engine, Godot, and more in addition to Unity.