Many heroes fight with a blade. I do not. I wield the weapon of soldiers and warriors, not of heroes. I am no hero. I profess no village to protect, I profess no god to herald. With my weapon and with my conviction, I unlash myself from the bindings of the earth—the first step to my enlightenment. The Heavenspear Art teaches that the first step is always this: no gods, no kings.
What King but me? What God but me? Become the spear. The spear does not choose who to kill, only the wielder.
I am the wielder and the wielded. I am the spear and the thrusting hand. I understand this, even as the naga courses through me. I understand this, even as the spirit of a thousand rain-waters courses through my veins, powering my katas, my spear twirls. I ascend, ascend, and ascend. I am the rain, I am the storm, I am the lightning rising, returning to the clouds that is its womb.
And I face the angel machine head on. What else but a fool chooses to reactivate such weapons of mass destruction? Virbanwa must be curbed. Their inutility has become a nuisance, near a danger to all of Gubat Banwa. Its eyes aflame with unpursued glory, its wings sprouting from behind its back like thorns from a lotus. Not an affront to creation—nay, just a pitiable excuse for a weapon in this land of suffering.
I wield my weapon and I am wielded by the naga. A sword swing from the horrible excuse for a God Body and the naga parries it with a live hand, and I see my opening. I am like the shooting stars, I am the comet, I am crashing straight through its heart and I am become the spear that scours heaven, both imagined and real. The skies are my friend, but alien conquerors are not. Jamiyun Kulisa, the Thunderbolt Brother, imbues me with a certain fulmination.
I am white-hot, brighter than the sun. Through my deed and my violence I shall be remembered as Sri Lakan Bishruta Nalilipad Sa Bulalakaw, and in this moment I am King.
Art above by @villain-returns!
Above is fiction for Gubat Banwa, a Tabletop Tactics Roleplaying Game (think, D&D) where you play as KADUNGGANAN, overdramatic warrior-braves and martial artists taking jobs from datu and rajas in a Classical Southeast Asian Fantasy setting! We have a kickstarter coming soon!
If you haven't heard yet, starting in 2024, Unity will start charging developers per download for games that meet certain requirements.
This is pretty bad, but how bad is it?
Who does this affect?
It doesn't apply to games that have made under $200,000 over the last 12 months. If your game hasn't made that much, then this new change doesn't apply to you.
If your game makes more than $200,000 dollars in a year, you could always just pay the $1800 pro fee to bump up the threshold to $1,000,000.
Who does this hurt?
After thinking about it for a while, it doesn't currently hurt most small and solo developers. The real people it hurts is small to medium sized studios. $200,000 is a ton of money for a solo dev, but to a studio of just 5 people, that's only $40,000 per person (ignoring overhead costs). These new fees that force devs to buy the $1800 pro subscription PER PERSON are absolutely disgusting.
Should you change engines mid-project to avoid this?
Maybe. If you're a solo dev who is a decent amount into a Unity project, the time to learn and port to a new engine might not be worth it. However, if you're a small or medium team, you should really consider it.
Should you use a different engine on new projects?
Yes. The direction Unity is going in doesn't seem like it'll get better any time soon. It seems like they want to wring as much money out of their users as possible, and I wouldn't be surprised if the subscriptions and other fees become more and more predatory over time.
There are plenty of free and open source game engines like Godot and Ren'Py. There are also engines out there like the RPG Maker series where you just pay for it once.
I'm still not sure whether or not I want to port my game, FWOG-E, to Godot. I guess this is an important lesson to always use open source or single-purchase software.