hello everybody!
on 11/3/2023, i will be making my indie game, cool people club, free to play.
i am doing this mainly because of Unity's attempted changes to their pricing structure in september of 2023.
during the whole Unity runtime fee fiasco, i actually felt stressed at the idea that if my game blew up, i'd have to deal with the apparent nightmare that is Unity's legal team, and potentially be stuck with the headache of paying whatever new fees they decided were acceptable on a month to month basis... somebody made a chart showing that based on Unity's proposed pricing structure, they could be charging a developer more than a game actually made. yikes!
even though they've walked back some of these changes, and even though Unity's TOS prior to the runtime fee was specific about following the terms of the version you're on, the fact that Unity's legal team tried at all to justify retroactively charging everybody is bad enough. so, i feel compelled to act in a way that both preserves my game's existence, and makes it so that i don't have to stress out about something like this ever again.
above all, my highest priority is that this game is available for anybody that wants to give it a try. i could port the game to another game engine (or pay someone to do it for me), but i believe that my time and money would be far better served on new projects.
i've given it a lot of thought, and i think making my game free is the best solution for me. by doing this, my game can stay up, i won't have to pay any made up fees, and if this company ever pulls anything like this again, i won't have to worry about it. this also has the added benefit of making my game accessible to more people, which is a cool bonus…
this decision is final. for everybody that bought the game, i just want to say that i really do appreciate your support! thank you for giving this game a shot. for anybody that likes the game now that it’s free, if you want to show your support in some way, the best way is to buy the soundtrack on bandcamp at coolturtle.bandcamp.com.
also, one last thing - any future games i make will be on a different game engine. thanks for understanding, stay cool.
all the best,
cool turtle
cool turtle games