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1) That's not the installCore SDK. That's the IronSource SDK.  Different SDK. One is for installCore the other one is for ads. Also these types of deceptive fake playable ads are nothing really new. Many companies used them and still use them to promote their product. They are deceptive as many ads are ,but usually not malicious.

2)Obviously to you know make ads personal many companies usually collect a lot of data of users. I will say this while this is shady IronSource is 100% not the only company doing this stuff. Google, Meta(Facebook),Amazon even Unity themselves do this. There are bound to be a couple of privacy violations. I think the most famous one is the Facebook one. Google themselves got in trouble with COPPA with Youtube. Again while shady it's really nothing new in the world of mobile app/game development or how ads work in general. You would be surprised with how much Google knows about you.

3)Unity developers can use other ad services other than IronSource or Unity ads.... however reminder that no matter what service they use ads are always going to be shady and deceptive. That's just how ads work nowadays. 

What this means for Unity is unknown ,but since IronSource is a massive player in mobile app/games development and one of the massive ad service providers it means Unity will probably use IronSource for their ads. Again this does not mean that every single unity game will suddenly become infested with these ads as Unity ads are an optional package that developers choose to use(unless that changes somehow) and like I mentioned before they can use other ad services. In fact IronSource was one of many ad services Unity developers could and still can use to this day. Some unity developers already use IronSource. Do what you wish with that information.

Like I said it's fearmongering and it's honestly not the first time Unity got a bad reputation. The engine itself nor games made with it won't magically become viruses because of this merge because installcore(the open source installation SDK) is deprecated and IronSource themselves shifted focus from installcore to the mobile app and game market. They are now one of the major players in the mobile development market. In fact nothing major will come from this merge to the engine itself. The area of focus for this merge were mobile ads which are again going to be optional and if you want to use some other company for ads rather than Unity Ads you can and always could do. You can use Ironsource SDK for mobile ads in your Unity game right now as we speak.

You can still use Unity and still make games with Unity and it will still be continued to be used. However I would say switching engine if you are worried about the future of Unity and how the former EA CEO who is now Unity's CEO is running the company worries you then yeah consider switching. To what? I have no idea.... GODOT 4 when it comes out maybe.

As for the reputation hit yeah it's to be expected. Unity has always had a bad rep with gamers in general.

I am not saying the merge is good or any news surrounding Unity is good. 4.4 billion dollars could have been used to I dunno improving the game engine so it stops being such a bloated piece of software. The fact that the company laid off 200 employees who were working on their own game project is really really scummy ,but hey look who's the ceo of Unity now. It's none other than former EA CEO who during his time at the company got an award for the worst company ever twice and who got laid off by the company themselves because he basically destroyed many game studios under EA. The dude called game developers who don't focus on money when developing games f-ing idiots.

If there is a reason to switch it's because a former EA ceo is now the CEO of Unity and he as always is a greedy f-ing idiot.

I must the panic attacks from this are a bit overblown considering a couple of facts:

1) InstallCore has been deprecated for a while. If you try to google for it or it's SDK you will find absolutely nothing. 

2)InstallCore itself wasn't a virus at all as many people think it was. It was actually an open source installation and content distribution SDK which is where it was classified as a virus because many malware creators used it to create infected installers for programs. Not to mention it was also free and widely used(100 million users according to wikipedia).

3) Ironsource shifted their focus towards mobile app development and monitization and their main area of focus nowdays are mobile apps , ads and games. They even own a mobile game publishing company called Supersonic studio. Many mobile developers use Ironsource for their mobile apps or games even the ones made in Unity. 

Unity itself will not become a virus or become overloaded with ads. The reason why Unity merged with Ironsource to begin with was because Unity started to focus more on profit and mobile ads were earning unity a lot of profit and that's where Ironsource is hugely successful.

This merge will only massively change who the provider of mobile ads is going to be thou in reality nothing will change with this merge because you could already use the Ironsource SDK with Unity for a long time(since version 2017.2).

You can still use any older Unity version if you so desire. The only reason for change is because Unity as a company themselves shifted focus from the game engine to profits. The rest is honestly just fearmongering. While IronSource is shady rest assured that this will only affect the mobile game development and mobile ads.

My newest game No Honor is a wave based survival game.

As you wake up in a world void of life a voice taunts you and send shadow people to kill you.

Fight and discover why you are in this place in the first place.

https://shiftyhead.itch.io/no-honor

Good game. 

The bugs and the elements are scaled by their HP which is random and it goes from 1 - 5 ,but I do agree there should be an UI element that tells this information. However I cannot update the game now because the ratings are currently going on so yeah.