Just last month, indie roguelike hit Vampire Survivors swapped to a whole new game engine in Unity. Now, with the whole game industry crying foul over Unity's half-retracted fee changes, the game's creator has a simple answer for whether he'd ever use the engine again: "lol no thank you!"
While the Vampire Survivors team is now, indeed, a team, the game was originally created by solo developer Luca Galante using a free engine called Phaser. Following the game's massive success, the devs spent the better part of a year teasing a switch to a new engine that would help improve the game's performance and compatibility. That engine, it turned out, was Unity. The update launched on August 17, just a month before Unity introduced the controversial new fees that game developers instantly began rallying against.
While Unity has revised its fee plans, many devs remain skeptical of the company in the aftermath of the controversy, including Galante. In a recent Reddit AMA, Galante was asked if he'd use Unity for a sequel to Vampire Survivors or another game in the future. That's where we get the golden "lol no thank you!" response.
- Before selling millions of copies, Vampire Survivors creator says he'd "given up on the idea of success," and he's not interested in making something just to be successful
- Vampire Survivors creator admits his success was “lucky” amid a wave of cheap mobile knock-offs: “For everyone else, they have to stand out among the hundreds"
"We probably won't need to switch again for Vampire Survivors, but eventually we'll be ready to do so if it becomes necessary," Galante says. In another comment, he adds, "We'll keep working on our roadmap, but we'll also look at different engines going forward. Even if Unity were to walk back entirely on their decisions, I don't think it would be wise to trust them while they are under the current leadership."
