On September 15 we reported that a collective of game developers had rapidly banded to together to produce a joint agreement (and an open letter to Unity) to show the level of their upset against Unity's planned introduction of the Unity Runtime Fee, due to kick in on January 1 2024.

Furthermore, signees to the list agreed to remove Unity Ads and ironSource fuelled advertising from their titles (effectively closing off a source of revenue for Unity) until Unity's planned introduction of the Runtime Fee was "immediately canceled."

While the initial list featured big names such as Azur Games, Voodoo, Homa, Century Games, SayGames, CrazyLabs and were joined later by the likes of Matchingham Games, now the campaign has attracted the support of - at the time of writing - 1052 sign-ups.

Notable new additions as part of the pile-on include MagicTavern, TapTap and Belka Games.

David(s) versus Goliath

All signees have agreed to the following pledge:

As a course of immediate action, our collective of game development companies is forced to turn off all ironSource and Unity Ads monetization across our projects until these changes are reconsidered.

We urge others who share this stance to do the same. The rules have changed, and the stakes are simply too high. The Runtime Fee is an unacceptable shift in our partnership with Unity that needs to be immediately canceled.

The list of companies willing to show their support and withhold Unity's ads fees is too long to list here, but you can visit their site, read their letter, see the full list of signees so far and sign up too right here.

UPDATE September 20. It appears that the Collective's page has been taken down (most recent reported total of sign-ups being 553) and the link above now instead leads directly through to alternative development system Godot's homepage…

UPDATE September 21. The page is back. And displaying 922 sign ups.

More news as it happens.