BallisticNG Switch port cancelled due to new Unity policy

Neognosis has announced that a Switch port of BallisticNG, a wipeout-style racing game available on PC has been cancelled as a direct result of Unity’s new runtime fee policy.

In a post on Steam the developer said…

”It comes with much frustration and disappointment that we’re announcing the cancellation of the Switch version. Several years of development has gone into preparing BallisticNG technically for the port while maintaining the usual output of updates for the PC version, so this comes as a big kick in the balls to both us and everybody else who was excited for this version of the game. We’re sorry that it has turned out this way, and we’ll be looking at working with the console (or the rumoured Switch 2) in a future project not bound by Unity.

Nintendo has a rolling Unity version requirement for game releases and we’re already behind the threshold by two years, Two weeks ago this wouldn’t have been an issue, no doubt there’d have been some pains in updating BallisticNG to a new version of Unity again, but it would have benefited us in the long run.

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.”

This is likely to be the first of many games to be cancelled that are planning to use Unity.

BallisticNG is available on Steam and currently has an Overwhelmingly Positive rating.