Solidarity’s CEO, CTO promise ‘steadiness’ after runtime price debacle

Which types of video games are Solidarity CEO Matthew Bromberg and CTO Steve Collins currently enjoying?

This may appear to be a leisurely inquiry, but for individuals who may soon lead a game engine company supporting developers throughout the sector, it’s crucial to understand which games are at the forefront of their thoughts. During a discussion with Game Developer at the 2025 Game Builders Conference, Bromberg mentioned he had been spending time lately playing Camouflaj’s Batman: Arkham Shadow. Meanwhile, Collins had engaged with Unlit Salt Video games’ Dredge while traveling to San Francisco.

Both expressed admiration for the games, but also articulated how Solidarity’s close collaboration with Camouflaj and Unlit Salt was a part of its new post-runtime value approach. Bromberg stated that Solidarity worked in tandem with Camouflaj almost as a “co-developer,” assisting the team in addressing challenging VR issues such as Batman’s rapid flight through Gotham.

Conversely, Collins discussed Solidarity’s aim to ensure that Dredge performs as seamlessly on Android platforms as it does on consoles. Achieving this doesn’t just expand Dredge to a mobile audience; it also introduces the Lovecraftian fishing simulator to users on devices like the NVIDIA Shield or the Ayaneo Pocket. “It’s an exciting narrative about taking an existing property and expanding its reach,” he remarked.

A “broad reach” is undoubtedly part of Solidarity’s appeal to developers as it unrolls the Solidarity 6.1 roadmap. The company seems to be indicating to developers who were contemplating leaving after the 2023 runtime fee controversy that remaining with Solidarity is not only about having a reliable game development tool, but also about being a valuable porting ally to extend your game to a significantly wider audience.

Related:The technical sorcery behind Doctor Strange’s portals in Marvel Rivals

It’s an appealing proposition in a time when developers are struggling to thrive in a competitive marketplace. However, many have been questioning if remaining with Solidarity implies risking another existential crisis in the future.

From the perspectives of Bromberg and Collins, the hope is that the answer is a definitive “no.” This leads us to the final aspect of their pitch: under their oversight, Solidarity aims to establish more stability for partners and clients. But are they referencing technical stability, or organizational stability?

Their clarification to Game Developer was: “it’s both.”

‘Stable’ versions of Solidarity should ideally be more reliable

The runtime fee revelation wasn’t only a matter of a development team fearing for their financial stability; it was also a significant blow to a collective already burdened by years of technical debt within the engine. Browse through the list of acquisitions Solidarity made leading up to its initial public offering and you will find a variety of intriguing tools that could be beneficial—however, as Godot co-founder Juan Linietsky pointed out in our conversation last year, a company acquiring new tools at such a pace is creating a substantial amount of technical debt very rapidly.

Related:How Assassin’s Creed Shadows makes environments look impressive up close and at a distance

Launching and maintaining all these products can lead to the older more mainstream tools potentially falling by the wayside. Unfortunately, Solidarity chose to tackle this challenge by eliminating 25 percent of its workforce in 2024, followed by another round of layoffs in February 2025.

These layoffs, for better or worse, are a consequence of Solidarity’s decision to narrow its focus, Bromberg explained. “We made a series of decisions at the product level regarding what we wanted to concentrate on,” he acknowledged. It was painful for some individuals and painful for us, but there were repercussions.”

Any future reductions in 2025 may be conducted with the same mindset, he asserted. “We’re not looking to cut costs for financial reasons,” he stated. One can interpret that winding down products and services means a company has no need for the individuals who brought them to existence—yet it does little to soften the burden that dedicated developers are still enduring due to executive missteps.

Nevertheless, Solidarity is, as Bromberg outlined in a 2024 blog, shifting its technical approach. Starting with 6, Solidarity is redefining its strategy for “stable” and “experimental” builds. In the past, both terms were associated with the release of new versions of Unity. Now the company is decelerating the introduction of “stable” builds, “blessing” certain builds as ones that will receive long-term support and bug fixes while development on new features continues for the next few months. If, for example, Unity 6.4 were to receive that blessing, the next “stable” version would not be designated until Solidarity

6.5, .6, and .7 have previously been launched.

Related:Transforming saves, a challenging platform rush

Efficiency possibilities require one aspect to be “more streamlined” than the manner issues are set to occur, as noted by Collins. This means developers can distinguish a clearer requirement between addressing new features early in the process and committing to a consistent development that may indeed support them throughout production effectively.

Developers seeking updates on anticipated projects like .NET modernization and block shader initiatives may need to wait a bit longer. Collins mentioned these are ‘extremely important’ to Unity, but their current attention is on this year’s rollout of Unity 6. “The efforts we are investing in AI, the improvements we are making in performance, and the expansion of the platforms we are backing…that is where our focus lies, assisting developers in delivering the titles and games that they are currently producing.”

“The fundamental endeavors we are pursuing regarding balance are intended to place us in a position where developers don’t feel like they have to choose between…expanding features and stability,” stated Bromberg.

Engaging with developers who shaped Unity into what it is

Another pain point for developers affected by the Runtime Fee is the perception that Unity has overlooked the community that contributed to making the engine such a widely used tool. The platform flourished through user-created plugins and features that became essential. In a post-IPO landscape, does that somewhat open-source mindset still hold?

Hopefully. In its mission to focus on its strengths, Bromberg and Collins noted that community-driven resources (many available on the Unity store) could still serve to bridge the gap for users who seek more than the company’s core offerings. “We aim to collaborate more closely with these partners,” Collins remarked, referring to developers who dedicate their efforts to those plugins and other tools. “I would say much of what we are discussing here [revolves around] the idea of ‘focus.’ Focus entails deciding what [we] will and will not create, but also ensuring we don’t develop things that are well handled by the ecosystem.”

“There are significant solutions available where we can simply improve how we engage with these, and we intend to pursue that. We plan to be the next partner…