More than two years after it was announced, the Switch version of BallisticNG has been cancelled. Neognosis explained the situation on the game’s Steam page, noting that it comes down to the recent Unity debacle.
Neognosis said that “Nintendo has a rolling Unity version requirement for game releases and we’re already behind the threshold by two years.” There wouldn’t be a problem if the engine stayed the course, but after announcing changes earlier this month, now it’s going to be a problem for the studio.
As explained by Neognosis, earlier this month, Unity announced “a new business model where they were removing the Plus license, introducing always online DRM to the Unity editor, will start charging developers a per install fee (the runtime fee) based on their own black box estimates after certain thresholds were met, in some rare cases potentially bankrupting companies, and took down their public Github repository for their TOS, which allowed people to track every minute change, while forcing everybody into a new agreement that applied retroactively.” After a massive uproar, the company adjusted its plans. However, the Plus license is still being pulled as it’s merging with Personal and the editor will still include always online DRM.
Speaking more about cancelling the Switch version of BallisticNG, Neognosis said:
By the time we’ll have a Switch version of BallisticNG ready, the threshold for Unity versions will exceed the new versions that Unity are pushing their TOS changes with, and we currently have no confidence that they won’t try pulling another move or pushing back to their original plans under / beyond this new TOS.
Despite Unity’s efforts to recover after their PR disaster, there just isn’t any trust and security for us to continue moving forward with newer versions of their tools in the foreseeable future.
If Neognosis changes is mind about a Switch version of BallisticNG or announces plans for the system’s successor, we’ll let you know.
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