For quite some time now, Amplitude games have been my go-to example of the fact that games made in Unity can be rich, fulfilling, beautiful experiences. What the studio has consistently accomplished in the engine is impressive.

However, today Unity announced that they are merging with ironSource, a company known primarily for installCore. installCore is an installer platform that allowed embedding ads, harvesting user data, charging users on a per-installation basis, and was so frequently used as a vector for malware and fraud (as in, individuals would use it to put up official-looking third-party downloads for software) that it is widely flagged as malware. The company's current focus is still on app monetization, particularly through the use of ads (and therefore user data harvesting).

Naturally, this raises significant questions about the integrity of Unity Engine going forward. I do not imagine this will be much of an issue for games built on any existing version of Unity so far (including Endless Dungeon), and given that the news only broke today and would take any responsible organization time to weigh the options I do not anticipate confirmation one way or another on whether Amplitude will continue to use the engine on future projects.

Still, I felt it was important to mention this news here in the hope that when the time comes for future project kickoffs that may use versions of Unity Engine released after the Unity/ironSource merger, consideration may be given to shifting away from Unity to other engines like Godot. I understand that this would involve walking away from a nontrivial chunk of institutional engine familiarity, but I trust that the studio can continue to excel at mechanics, UI, and UX design regardless of the engine used. I do not want to be in the position of having to weigh the privacy of my personal information or the security of my computer against the desire to play, hypothetically, Endless Legend 2.

Amplitude has source code access to Unity, even making making large changes for Humankind's asset system. Even in the worst case scenario (Which I'm doubtful of) I expect they would be completely insulated from it. Not that any of their game would use installers nor is it something particular with IronSource (Bad actors can make malware with Unity if they wanted to, just no good reason to, though supposedly there is a Discord scam doing so)

Unreal isn't particularly a great choice for 4X games. I don't expect them to stop using Unity simply because all of their codebase uses it and it'd cost quite a bit to redevelop it for another game engine. Frankly, I'd just expect them to make their own game engine if they were to change anything at all.