Unity closed two offices following a “credible death threat” sent to the company in response to the controversial Runtime Fee. Now, it seems that the threat originated from one of its own employees in an “out of state location”.
A spokesperson for Unity relayed to Bloomberg that a “potential threat” was registered earlier this week and that “immediate and proactive measures to ensure the safety of our employees” were enacted. This included closing offices on September 14 and September 15 as well as total cooperation with law enforcement.
Then a statement supplied from the San Francisco Police Department to Polygon reporter Nicole Carpenter said that the threat originated within the company itself. Once police officers arrived on the scene, the “reporting party informed [them] that an employee made a threat towards his employer using social media”.
This employee is located “out of state” but it was apparently impossible to contact the corresponding jurisdiction. The police officers advised Unity to try again to file the report in the area that the employee lives in and took a courtesy report.
At the moment, Unity has not responded to the claim that the threat was sent by one of its employees.
All of this arose as a result of the backlash towards Unity’s new pricing plan which is perceived to dramatically depreciate smaller scale studios’ revenue.
If a game runs on Unity, then the company will charge a Runtime Fee to the developer or distributor every time the product is installed for the first time on a system from January 1, 2024.
This will only affect those who have surpassed a specific threshold in annual revenue and lifetime installs since launch and Unity asserted that realistically 90 per cent of its customers will not incur the Runtime Fee.
However, a lot of developers continue to deride Unity for failing to resolve the anxieties that they have over this new pricing plan and for inconsistent messaging over anti-fraud measures.
In other gaming news, Idris Elba raps on two new tracks on the Phantom Liberty soundtrack for Cyberpunk 2077 and an entire radio station is comprised of the actor and DJ’s own unreleased songs.
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