Not Art Post - Tumblr Posts

So uh, first actual post I guess. This is all random dumps (taken from my instagram stories, so they’re formatted weird lol) of symbols and things associated with Simon. I’ve never seen anyone do this for him before so mwahaha I guess I’m the first >:3c. Sorry if this is kinda just a random stream of words, I’m just getting a bunch of thoughts down and anyone can use this information for theories, art, story analysis, and etc later d(^^ ).

The first one is a bunch of possibility important references, primarily things from HoD, but also a couple from OoE and the Hanged Man Skeletons, which are explained a bit more in the second and third image. There’s a couple details I didn’t have the space for oof (T_T ). If I remember correctly, the Smiling Statue is found in the area where the Hellmont enemies are. I’m not exactly sure if there’s any significance to any of the statue placements, but they’re definitely supposed to be a Carmilla and Simon reference, not sure on who the Sage statue is supposed to be tho. My best guess is maybe Death since he’s the other Simon’s Quest boss lol, but the statue really doesn’t look like him. It’s interesting. The Hero statue is very obvious, Juste gets the little flavor text that “that’ll be me someday” kinda referencing how Simon looked up to Christoper in a similar way (yes, Christopher, he is mentioned in the first manual in Japan I believe, I should talk about him eventually). The whole Hellmont/Shimon thing is nuts and idk why it’s just never mentioned again. Like the name Simon has the ability to be a pun in Japanese on “Death Gate/Gates of Death” which is 1. Badass and 2. Ominous as heck! I also didn’t get to fit in the random family heirloom clock that’s in ghost Dracula’s castle for some reason in HoD, the one that has the nice description of having been “bought on the day your grandfather was born” (not an exact quote word for word but yeah). It feels significant to me idk, why would family heirlooms end up in there? Also didn’t mention the Bullet Tip (called “Christopher’s Soul” in Japan), but that one’s interesting too.

Also I wasn’t able to fit the OoE and Simon’s Quest maps on there so I might make a post about comparing them later :3. That Anna girl could be talking about someone else, but considering the similarities and references to Simon and his games in the rest of OoE (which I also should explain if I can manage to get it all together) it’s safe to assume she’s having nightmares of one of Simon’s fights against Dracula. Which is also interesting in the context that her whole side quests revolve around helping her cat protect her from dark spirits.

I know this wiki isn’t the most reliable source, but I’ve seen other sources that claim the skeletons on the outer wall of SotN and DoS (I believe) are supposed to be a reference to the whip swinging in CV4. It’s really interesting that they’d make a reference to Simon by having the skeletons be hung by one foot like the hanged man is commonly depicted considering the meanings behind that card, but since the position of the skeleton is pretty much the same in both, it’s probably intentional.

The last Chronicles one is kinda based on the assumption that these are rose thorns, but when looking up thorn symbolism a looooot of the specific red rose symbolism kinda started to line up really well. Roses also have a lot of religious significance too so I figured it wouldn’t be that big of a stretch to say they were rose thorns. Chronicles is not the first time flowers have been mentioned with Simon in mind however, I couldn’t fit it anywhere, but the Japanese text for the fastest Simon’s Quest ending mentions he “brought full blown flowers in next spring”, just a fun fact tho, idk how to add it into anything here tbh (-w-; ).

What was the most interesting about this dive into random symbols and other details was how often things ended up symbolizing “self sacrifice” and/or “martyrdom”! Usually twice or thrice wouldn’t be that big of a deal, but considering the vague nature of all the Simon’s Quest endings in all versions of the game and the general lack of focus on Simon’s story aspect, it’s pretty cool to see some things that line up like that :O! Also I am thoroughly aware that I might just be looking to deep into things and connecting things and aren’t there, but I don’t really care cause I had fun!!! :3 Anyway, do with this knowledge what you will, hope you guys like it.

Everyday I look up Simon Belmont on the same like three social medias and find no new fanart or discussion posts of him, so I guess I gotta do everything myself then huh—

My phone gallery is a nightmare, fuckin like 5,339 photos to go through to be able to post anything

Anyone else experiencing some weird skipping issues on here? Like I’ve been scrolling through my recommended or even just other people’s blogs and suddenly tumblr will either jump a few posts forward or a ton backwards and I’ll have to scroll to find my place again. Honestly probs just a mobile issue (alas mobile is the only platform where I have all my photos accessible so I have to use it on mobile) but man why have a mobile version if you’re not gonna fix the bugs on it :/

I keep forgetting that I have not yet posted like 99% of my art here and probably should like dang I actually have to fill tumblr in on the lore ig

Hello! I'm really enjoying your art and blog! I wish you good luck in your journey through tumblr!

Oh hey thanks!!!!! :D!!!! I’m glad to hear people are liking my stuff, it means a lot :3. And yeah, tumblr has been pretty fun so far, definitely a more forgiving platform than others I’ve been on. Way more of a post at your own pace and not whenever the arbitrary posting times are kind of a place, it’s nice! 🍀\(>.<\ ) accepting that luck too cause I’ll need it hehe

wake up babe, new reason to ditch FANDOM/Wikia just dropped

Previosuly

corporate monster infested with ads which devoured Gamepedia and other companies (feat me on their shit policies, SEO and migration process)

turning entire articles into ads if paid enough

limited functionality preventing admins to even fight vandalism

merging and removing of LGBT+ wikis (and forced domain change for educational [think serious] wikis to "fandom")

official wiki status has no meaning in controlling shit

very much censorship (same good ol' allergy to adult stuff)

gets paid by US Navy to advertise their events (one, two)

Alternative free wiki hostings (aka wiki farms)

Miraheze - started in 2015, non-commercial - no ads and runs on donations, wide array of MediaWiki features, wide array of allowed types of wikis and content, much autonomy for projects, custom domain and private wiki options

wiki.gg - started in 2022 by former Gamepedia staff, limited to video games, accent on involvement of game devs and thus hosting official wikis, has ads for anons (but only of games having wikis here)

Telepedia - started in 2022, limited to entertainment (although might allow other themes upon review), has ads for anons, replicates Miraheze structure

WikiTide - started in 2023, no ads and runs on donations (but also tied w/ premium version called WikiForge), largely replicates Miraheze but has stricter content policies, custom domain option

Other free options I'm aware of are either too limited in allowed content or are very outdated/unstable in technical department to recommend here (or in case of Neoseeker - I'm completely unfamiliar with it, and can't say anything about it), but you still can check them out, alongside paid hostings, on this MediaWiki page.

If you (or your community) are brave and dedicated enough you can go with self-hosted MediaWiki instance (aka independent hosting), like JoJo Wiki (who started on Wikia and succeed at overtaking the SEO) or NIWA wikis. This option, of course, requires funding and technical knowledge, but it's still very much possible.

How to find existing alternative/independent wikis

try to use "-fandom" filter for search query in Google, or use other search engines like Bing or DuckDuckGo

Indie Wiki Buddy browser extension - it modifies search engine results and performs redirects based on its centralized list of independent wikis; a new indie wiki has to be requested/submitted to get added [ Firefox / Chrome ]

Redirect to wiki.gg browser extension - same as IWB but for wikis moved to wiki.gg (as I understand, works automatically without dedicated listing) [ Firefox / Chrome ]

(simple) Redirector browser extension - in case the wiki is neither on IWB or wiki.gg, and it doesn't filter out search results - only performs redirect on whatever you get; a redirect has to be set manually - see this tutorial [ Firefox / Chrome ]

Fuck FANDOM, support real people, support indie wikis

I’ve been trying to post something with images for a while now, but tumblr has been weirdly changing some of the thumbnails to be the same as others? Like I had one picture of Richter and one of Maria next to each other and the Maria thumbnail image kept switching to that Richter image randomly, it’s weird. Hopefully when I do make this post I have in mind, tumblr doesn’t pull a sneaky one and change my images on me like that (X_X ;)

Can we talk about Trevor’s sass and bully energy in CoD? Please? Please, I really want to talk about the sassy boi so bad!!!!!!

I have so many ✨thoughts✨ as to why an otherwise open guy who makes friends exclusively with fellow misfits would be so hostile to someone like Hector (a misfit trying to do the right thing).

I know some people have pointed out that it’s because Trevor is slightly affected by Dracula’s curse, but I feel like that kinda takes away from a more core/interesting take that you can make an argument for.

While I like the idea of even a Belmont being susceptible to dark magic to some degree (we see this happen with other Belmonts like Simon and Richter), I feel like it takes away from something that I think is a little more obvious?

Man’s is pissed, bro.

Trevor and his family have gone through hell up until this point. His ancestor basically doomed the clan to forever hunt the most evil being on earth for what will end up being centuries (looking at you, Leon). Which is good, considering they’ve made themselves the most qualified, but it cost them basic respect from the people they’re protecting and they’ve lost so much more because of it. But they’re noble and don’t seem to complain. You’re lucky, Leon.

Now, we know Trevor probably doesn’t care what people think about him so long as he can keep them safe. It’s his duty, and we see time and time again that he’ll literally do anything to make sure people are alive so that they can think their stupid silly thoughts about him and his family. By his time, he’s exiled, excommunicated, and shunned but he never once complains. Even when people come crawling to him for help, he doesn’t hesitate to do so. This is what he was called to do: kill Dracula and bring peace. He’s noble like that. He’s a knight like Leon in his own way.

As far as he knows, Dracula cannot come back after he and his friends defeated him in CV3.

Until things start looking… off. There’s a creeping darkness and uncertainty that feels so familiar. But that’s impossible, right? Dracula is gone, so how…?

“You’re telling me Dracula’s employee - some fucking guy - wants to bring Dracula back from the dead!?”

Would you not also be fucking pissed? To have your family endure centuries of pain and trauma - to have experienced it for yourself - and finally done what you have prepared your entire life to potentially do, only for some fucking guy to try to fuck all of that up? Would you not rush out of your home to go kick their ass and pummel them for daring to plunge the world into darkness? That same darkness you yourself expunged and went through hell to do???

Uh, if you say no you’re a liar.

From canon, we know that Trevor and Sypha have either started a family or are at least thinking about it at this point (I assume it’s the former since I am 110% certain she would have tagged along. Things would have been so much easier with her magic. And I personally think that would be a fun date idea - beating the tar out of Dracula’s unhinged employee - but I realize I’m not most people). Point being, Trevor not only has to worry about all of humanity (again), but his family. And, considering he was the last known member of his family when Dracula bit the dust, he’s going to fight tooth and nail to keep this.

If you say you’d play nice and try to be understanding when the lives and futures of your kids are at stake, you’re lying. Idk what to tell ya.

Trevor obviously takes initiative and it borders on impulsiveness, but he’s not going to make the mistake of letting this situation get to a point that all hell breaks loose if he has any say in it. I do like to think that he’s inherently a little sassy anyway, but let’s ramp that up to 100 when he’s livid.

But anger leads to getting sloppy and making mistakes. He doesn’t give Hector a chance to explain himself. That would take too much time. The Forgemaster could deceive him and cost him time or worse. He gets distracted and lets Isaac get away. He gets distracted again and nearly gets himself killed.

Maybe under different circumstances Hector would have at least gotten an apology. Like “aw fuck, sorry. I forgot there were two of you. My bad. Wanna help me out with this one?” Ultimately, he does help Hector despite his initial skepticism, and I think it’s a mix of feeling at least a little bad about beating him up and realizing that he works better with a team.

Going off of how he talks down to Hector after beating him up, one could argue that maybe Trevor is just kinda full of himself? Like he’s riding the high off of being the hero? Well, you’re wrong. Trevor is very quick to hype his friends up and give them equal credit in kicking Dracula’s ass. Sure, maybe he jokes about it with his friends, but he’s not full of himself to the degree that he’s going to hype himself up when his friends aren’t around. He’s humble like that. Fight me behind Waffle House about it.

Trevor isn’t incompetent, but he does let his emotions control him. Again, he works better with a team, but he’s so impulsive and pissed at this point that he probably just ran out of the house to go and do what is (up until this point) his job; keep people safe. Keep his family safe.

So, yeah, maybe the curse feeds into his emotions and decisions, but I think it’s more compelling for Trevor to be a very tired, traumatized, and livid dad doing what he thinks is the right thing to do to make sure his kids (and other people, sure) have a future in which they don’t have to go through the horrible things their mom and dad (and uncle Grant and uncle Alucard) went through. If he could see what became of future members of his family and see the hells they faced, I genuinely think it would break his heart.

So yeah, Trevor is bitchy, but I think he has a right to be bitchy when someone is threatening to blow down his metaphorical house of cards that he went through hell to stack up.

So I was playing Simon’s Quest (again) earlier and you guys might know by now that I’m incredibly normal (extremely deranged) about that game, but it’s got me thinking about something: what exactly are the hearts and why are they the money in this game?

Hearts in the first game and almost every game after Simon’s Quest are the thing that you need to collect to be able to use subweapons and they primarily come from candles, but enemies can drop them too. But in Simon’s Quest, while they do still power a couple subweapons, it’s only the ones we’ve never seen before like the Sacred Flame and Golden Knife while not being used for the Holy Water, something that does in every other game. And they only come from enemies because there’s no candles. And there’s different sizes of them. And collecting enough of them levels Simon up. And their primary function is completely shifted to currency!!! Odd, isn’t it?

And the whole way that you buy anything in this game is really framed like some black market sketchy deal. These sellers (or crooked traders with bum deals lol) are primarily holed away in their houses under one or two layers of walls and floors only breakable by magical infinite Holy Water, something only the local badass vampire hunter guy would have after having bought some with said hearts in the first town, or they’re way tucked away in the thick of these Dracula’s army overtaken mansions, some of them even standing directly where skeletons walk past them or in between relatively large pits of spikes. Whatever the reason, these guys obviously want this fairly secret. (Aside from the first town white crystal guy, he’s fine being out in the open lol.)

So what gives??? What is Simon grinding monsters for and trading with the locals for weapons and herbs???

Now this is where things get really ✨speculative✨. I’m gonna put the cut here for suspense and intrigue I guess lol XD. This is gonna be a lot of me thinking out loud and throwing down ideas, not really like a confirmed answer to anything, just havin fun thinkin about a part of a game d(•w• )

I think there’s a few possibilities. They could be the same thing that they are other games or they could be something different just used similarly as a power source.

But first we gotta break down what hearts could be in Cv1. In a lot of the games they seem to be some kind of a general mana, a magic energy possibly not unlike how metaphysical/magical things are depicted in other media. Perhaps the subweapons themselves are magic objects and not really a physical thing that require “hearts” to be conjured. Maybe they could be physical objects that need to be enchanted with “hearts” to be anywhere comparable to Vampire Killer level usefulness. Just a few possibilities.

If the hearts in Simon’s Quest are the same thing, then this kinda makes some sense. Simon trading monster soul energy or whatever with presumably magic users for things he needs on his Quest, especially since things like Laurels (also can be called bay laurels or bay leaves) are commonly used in spells and who better to be selling a spell component than someone who does spells! Also, it makes sense that these people would be fairly out of sight as magic use was still a touchy subject at the time.

Now I don’t know how accurate this is, and if I do find a source somewhere in my way too many bookmarks I will reblog this and link it to it, but I remember reading somewhere in an interview about either SotN or one of the games made close before it that the candles are like the souls of Dracula and his army’s victims that you free when you hit them and they leave you a little parting gift for it. Yes, these games were made way after, so it’s not certain if that was the original intent of these, but I figured it adds something to this.

But what if the hearts in Simon’s Quest are not the same thing? After all, the Holy Water doesn’t use them and we can’t say if they would or not work for other subweapons that appear in CV1 since they aren’t in this one. Well there’s something else that could be dropping from killing monsters that could also fit into the above probability that these traders are magic users and it’s a little darker!

Hearts! Bones! General viscera! And this also kinda makes sense! I mean the whole plot of the game revolves around Simon already carrying pieces of Dracula’s corpse around to burn all together on an altar to cure his and the surrounding area’s curse, it’s not that far of a stretch to say that he’d be fine with carrying around pieces of other monsters and that magic users might be willing to trade things for them so they can use them in their own spells, potions, and so on. And that might also explain why Holy Water isn’t powered by hearts and is incredibly weak in comparison in this game. And why these weird, new subweapons seem to be Simon exclusive! They could be powered by things like monster blood instead of the usual magic energy-ish stuff we’re used to hearts symbolizing.

Regardless of if I’m right or not with either of these, Simon is probably taking advantage of some underground monster essence/organs trade the whole game and this is just such an interesting batshit detail for him as a character.

Anyway, I love this game so much, I’m gonna be spreading propaganda for it like this a lot hopefully lol. Okie that’s it hope that was fun, do with this information what you will :)

This is so “I was born in the wrong generation cringe” of me, but I am so sad that video game toll lines, the kinds where a game manual or magazine would have a phone number to call if you were stuck so somebody reading a book of common problems could tell you what you were doing wrong and give tips, aren’t a thing anymore because ranting to random people about Castlevania all day is exactly all I wanna do most of the time.

shanoa and simon would be besties i think

I think a lot about how Christopher went and fought Dracula all alone and things went wrong, but the whole Soleil situation was swept under the rug so when Simon was looking up to Christopher a lot he only saw him as “cool hero man who did everything by himself, you should be like him” and went off into Castlevania all alone and what do you know things went wrong, but somehow the whole quest to break the curse story got told wrong somehow, so Maxim thought the Dracula revival was on purpose and only saw Simon as “cool hero man who did everything by himself, you should be like him” and went off into Castlevania all alone and things went wrong, but somehow the whole ghost castle situation must not have been told about, so when Richter looked up to Maxim and Juste and everyone before them he only saw them as “cool hero man who did everything by himself, you should be like him” and went in Castlevania alone and even though he had Maria to help him he already had this idea of what high expectations he had on him to be like everyone before him and things went wrong—

I tried to make an art post and it stopped loading at the bottom of my screen suddenly and disappeared :/

not to be angsty on main but ive really been thinking about the fact that i have never seen even a single droplet of discussion about the fact that maybe just possibly trevor would not be perfectly fine and chill after the events of cod? its a stressful time for everyone involved of course, no matter what.

but most notably, after isaac sexually assaulted him and almost murdered him in the same breath. because idk, but if some stranger stabbed me through the literal heart, and held me against his chest as i writhed in pain helplessly, taking clear (probably erotic?) pleasure in my suffering as he dug the blade in, before kissing me without my consent and fully piercing my chest with the dagger before dropping me on the ground and leaving me to bleed out and die...

... idk but i probably wouldnt be perfectly fine and dandy? just a thought? i didnt word that too elegantly but you get what i mean right

Also sorry for the lack of art posts but tumblr has been having troubles loading picture posts correctly recently AND this app is making my phone hotter than the sun rn, I had to set it on a fan to cool it down one time 💀💀💀

So, let me try and put everything together here, because I really do think it needs to be talked about.

Today, Unity announced that it intends to apply a fee to use its software. Then it got worse.

For those not in the know, Unity is the most popular free to use video game development tool, offering a basic version for individuals who want to learn how to create games or create independently alongside paid versions for corporations or people who want more features. It's decent enough at this job, has issues but for the price point I can't complain, and is the idea entry point into creating in this medium, it's a very important piece of software.

But speaking of tools, the CEO is a massive one. When he was the COO of EA, he advocated for using, what out and out sounds like emotional manipulation to coerce players into microtransactions.

"A consumer gets engaged in a property, they might spend 10, 20, 30, 50 hours on the game and then when they're deep into the game they're well invested in it. We're not gouging, but we're charging and at that point in time the commitment can be pretty high."

He also called game developers who don't discuss monetization early in the planning stages of development, quote, "fucking idiots".

So that sets the stage for what might be one of the most bald-faced greediest moves I've seen from a corporation in a minute. Most at least have the sense of self-preservation to hide it.

A few hours ago, Unity posted this announcement on the official blog.

Effective January 1, 2024, we will introduce a new Unity Runtime Fee that’s based on game installs. We will also add cloud-based asset storage, Unity DevOps tools, and AI at runtime at no extra cost to Unity subscription plans this November. We are introducing a Unity Runtime Fee that is based upon each time a qualifying game is downloaded by an end user. We chose this because each time a game is downloaded, the Unity Runtime is also installed. Also we believe that an initial install-based fee allows creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement, unlike a revenue share.

Now there are a few red flags to note in this pitch immediately.

Unity is planning on charging a fee on all games which use its engine.

This is a flat fee per number of installs.

They are using an always online runtime function to determine whether a game is downloaded.

There is just so many things wrong with this that it's hard to know where to start, not helped by this FAQ which doubled down on a lot of the major issues people had.

I guess let's start with what people noticed first. Because it's using a system baked into the software itself, Unity would not be differentiating between a "purchase" and a "download". If someone uninstalls and reinstalls a game, that's two downloads. If someone gets a new computer or a new console and downloads a game already purchased from their account, that's two download. If someone pirates the game, the studio will be asked to pay for that download.

Q: How are you going to collect installs? A: We leverage our own proprietary data model. We believe it gives an accurate determination of the number of times the runtime is distributed for a given project. Q: Is software made in unity going to be calling home to unity whenever it's ran, even for enterprice licenses? A: We use a composite model for counting runtime installs that collects data from numerous sources. The Unity Runtime Fee will use data in compliance with GDPR and CCPA. The data being requested is aggregated and is being used for billing purposes. Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs? A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data. Q: What's going to stop us being charged for pirated copies of our games? A: We do already have fraud detection practices in our Ads technology which is solving a similar problem, so we will leverage that know-how as a starting point. We recognize that users will have concerns about this and we will make available a process for them to submit their concerns to our fraud compliance team.

This is potentially related to a new system that will require Unity Personal developers to go online at least once every three days.

Starting in November, Unity Personal users will get a new sign-in and online user experience. Users will need to be signed into the Hub with their Unity ID and connect to the internet to use Unity. If the internet connection is lost, users can continue using Unity for up to 3 days while offline. More details to come, when this change takes effect.

It's unclear whether this requirement will be attached to any and all Unity games, though it would explain how they're theoretically able to track "the number of installs", and why the methodology for tracking these installs is so shit, as we'll discuss later.

Unity claims that it will only leverage this fee to games which surpass a certain threshold of downloads and yearly revenue.

Only games that meet the following thresholds qualify for the Unity Runtime Fee: Unity Personal and Unity Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs. Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: Those that have made $1,000,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 1,000,000 lifetime game installs.

They don't say how they're going to collect information on a game's revenue, likely this is just to say that they're only interested in squeezing larger products (games like Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, Fate Grand Order, Among Us, and Fall Guys) and not every 2 dollar puzzle platformer that drops on Steam. But also, these larger products have the easiest time porting off of Unity and the most incentives to, meaning realistically those heaviest impacted are going to be the ones who just barely meet this threshold, most of them indie developers.

Aggro Crab Games, one of the first to properly break this story, points out that systems like the Xbox Game Pass, which is already pretty predatory towards smaller developers, will quickly inflate their "lifetime game installs" meaning even skimming the threshold of that 200k revenue, will be asked to pay a fee per install, not a percentage on said revenue.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: Hey Gamers!

Today, Unity (the engine we use to make our games) announced that they'll soon be taking a fee from developers for every copy of the game installed over a certain threshold - regardless of how that copy was obtained.

Guess who has a somewhat highly anticipated game coming to Xbox Game Pass in 2024? That's right, it's us and a lot of other developers.

That means Another Crab's Treasure will be free to install for the 25 million Game Pass subscribers. If a fraction of those users download our game, Unity could take a fee that puts an enormous dent in our income and threatens the sustainability of our business.

And that's before we even think about sales on other platforms, or pirated installs of our game, or even multiple installs by the same user!!!

This decision puts us and countless other studios in a position where we might not be able to justify using Unity for our future titles. If these changes aren't rolled back, we'll be heavily considering abandoning our wealth of Unity expertise we've accumulated over the years and starting from scratch in a new engine. Which is really something we'd rather not do.

On behalf of the dev community, we're calling on Unity to reverse the latest in a string of shortsighted decisions that seem to prioritize shareholders over their product's actual users.

I fucking hate it here.

-Aggro Crab - END DESCRIPTION]

That fee, by the way, is a flat fee. Not a percentage, not a royalty. This means that any games made in Unity expecting any kind of success are heavily incentivized to cost as much as possible.

[IMAGE DESCRIPTION: A table listing the various fees by number of Installs over the Install Threshold vs. version of Unity used, ranging from $0.01 to $0.20 per install. END DESCRIPTION]

Basic elementary school math tells us that if a game comes out for $1.99, they will be paying, at maximum, 10% of their revenue to Unity, whereas jacking the price up to $59.99 lowers that percentage to something closer to 0.3%. Obviously any company, especially any company in financial desperation, which a sudden anchor on all your revenue is going to create, is going to choose the latter.

Furthermore, and following the trend of "fuck anyone who doesn't ask for money", Unity helpfully defines what an install is on their main site.

While I'm looking at this page as it exists now, it currently says

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

However, I saw a screenshot saying something different, and utilizing the Wayback Machine we can see that this phrasing was changed at some point in the few hours since this announcement went up. Instead, it reads:

The installation and initialization of a game or app on an end user’s device as well as distribution via streaming or web browser is considered an “install.” Games or apps with substantially similar content may be counted as one project, with installs then aggregated to calculate the Unity Runtime Fee.

Screenshot for posterity:

That would mean web browser games made in Unity would count towards this install threshold. You could legitimately drive the count up simply by continuously refreshing the page. The FAQ, again, doubles down.

Q: Does this affect WebGL and streamed games? A: Games on all platforms are eligible for the fee but will only incur costs if both the install and revenue thresholds are crossed. Installs - which involves initialization of the runtime on a client device - are counted on all platforms the same way (WebGL and streaming included).

And, what I personally consider to be the most suspect claim in this entire debacle, they claim that "lifetime installs" includes installs prior to this change going into effect.

Will this fee apply to games using Unity Runtime that are already on the market on January 1, 2024? Yes, the fee applies to eligible games currently in market that continue to distribute the runtime. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

Again, again, doubled down in the FAQ.

Q: Are these fees going to apply to games which have been out for years already? If you met the threshold 2 years ago, you'll start owing for any installs monthly from January, no? (in theory). It says they'll use previous installs to determine threshold eligibility & then you'll start owing them for the new ones. A: Yes, assuming the game is eligible and distributing the Unity Runtime then runtime fees will apply. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.

That would involve billing companies for using their software before telling them of the existence of a bill. Holding their actions to a contract that they performed before the contract existed!

Okay. I think that's everything. So far.

There is one thing that I want to mention before ending this post, unfortunately it's a little conspiratorial, but it's so hard to believe that anyone genuinely thought this was a good idea that it's stuck in my brain as a significant possibility.

A few days ago it was reported that Unity's CEO sold 2,000 shares of his own company.

On September 6, 2023, John Riccitiello, President and CEO of Unity Software Inc (NYSE:U), sold 2,000 shares of the company. This move is part of a larger trend for the insider, who over the past year has sold a total of 50,610 shares and purchased none.

I would not be surprised if this decision gets reversed tomorrow, that it was literally only made for the CEO to short his own goddamn company, because I would sooner believe that this whole thing is some idiotic attempt at committing fraud than a real monetization strategy, even knowing how unfathomably greedy these people can be.

So, with all that said, what do we do now?

Well, in all likelihood you won't need to do anything. As I said, some of the biggest names in the industry would be directly affected by this change, and you can bet your bottom dollar that they're not just going to take it lying down. After all, the only way to stop a greedy CEO is with a greedier CEO, right?

(I fucking hate it here.)

And that's not mentioning the indie devs who are already talking about abandoning the engine.

[Links display tweets from the lead developer of Among Us saying it'd be less costly to hire people to move the game off of Unity and Cult of the Lamb's official twitter saying the game won't be available after January 1st in response to the news.]

That being said, I'm still shaken by all this. The fact that Unity is openly willing to go back and punish its developers for ever having used the engine in the past makes me question my relationship to it.

The news has given rise to the visibility of free, open source alternative Godot, which, if you're interested, is likely a better option than Unity at this point. Mostly, though, I just hope we can get out of this whole, fucking, environment where creatives are treated as an endless mill of free profits that's going to be continuously ratcheted up and up to drive unsustainable infinite corporate growth that our entire economy is based on for some fuckin reason.

Anyways, that's that, I find having these big posts that break everything down to be helpful.

Random tiny details I like a lot in CV4:

- you can be killed by frogs

- also tables

- and falling off the stairs

- Simon sometimes moonwalks on the stairs

- Simon really has trouble with stairs doesn’t he

- there’s a particular brick pattern in one of the backgrounds that looks like teeth

- 3/4 hanging skeletons can be ducked under without having to kill them

- if you stand in place with the whip held over your head none of Deaths projectiles can hit you

- the cute little bugs on the title screen

- the ghost dancers are named Paula Abgoul and Fred Ascare (hehehe puns)

- that bone horse in the background of the first level

- Simon just kinda flails the whip around with wild abandon when “spinning” it, like it’s barely a spin bro is just panicking

- hehehehe Simon swing!!! It’s so fun

- a lot of enemies are taller than Simon

- the sound when you jump off a treasure chest

- almost all the hand enemies don’t do any damage they just hold you in one spot

- secret room!

- the end use of Simon’s theme of course, still sad there’s no curse of man/second phase tho

There’s more but like man it’s the little things, I love this game I’m replaying it again that’s the whole context for this lol