Unity: I am altering the deal, pray I don't alter it any further

[jlv]

Here's the article.

Have to say I'm amazed anyone would build their game around something with a "we can change the deal any time we want to" clause in the TOS. If you're dumping years of effort into something you need a better guarantee of future support than that! That's like an anti-support clause.

[Pumaxcs]

I also saw a post that pirated copies also count toward the download numbers a publisher has to pay.

[jlv]

The thing is they could do much worse. They could completely revoke everyone's license to distribute Unity if they wanted to. You'd be screwed with no way to distribute a working version of your game until you port to a different engine. I can't believe that clause wasn't a deal breaker for anyone considering using Unity. The only way you could justify using it under those terms would be if they paid you up front for the cost of porting to a different engine.

[Jakob Hubbard]

I thought it was funny that initially they were considering re-installations as a new download then backtracked the next day realizing how silly that was. But how do they keep track of that? And also, how do they keep track of a cross-platform game where someone buys it downloads it on a console, then downloads on a PC. Is that considered two or just one? If it is just one how do they keep track of that? There's a lot of ambiguity with this new change. This screws over devs who already built successful projects with Unity, and also pushes away any potential new game devs that will just go to their competitors.

[jlv]

While the devs have been screwed, it's their own fault for not reading the license. What kind of fool would gamble their million dollar game on an engine with a "we may modify or terminate at any time" license? This is like jumping into the lions den at the zoo and blaming the lions when you get mauled.

[LKR47]

As a hardcore Unity user, this was very hard to swallow. While we currently do not meet the income and installs threshold, we are being impacted directly in other ways and it sucks bad. Ever since 2017 they have been shitting the bed starting first with the 3-way split of render pipelines with no interop still to this day, unfinished/broken engine features, and buying up useless companies/tech like the Weta and Ironsource acquisitions.

I am considering switching engines to Unreal or using a framework like Raylib but I like C# too much (although, some frameworks have a bunch of language bindings). Godot just isn't there for me yet and the setup for C# seems annoying. Dedicating a project to Unreal is also a risk but Tim Sweeney is still in charge which instills trust in the engine for me, not to mention EULAs are perpetual.


Unity has been a little shady lately so I hope they can right the ship. It's weird that they made the ToS tracking repo private on GitHub and it also seems telling how a few Unity execs sold some of their shares soon before the announcement (there was a list of who sold and how many that I saw on Twitter but can't find now). This article from the Verge goes into more detail about the ToS stuff.


Unity posted a tweet a bit ago that sounded somewhat hopeful for devs, but I think a full rollback won't regain the trust of developers again. It's sad that Unity execs were warned and asked not to put the new policy in place by their employees ahead of time so maybe J.R. and the board need to get booted.
https://x.com/unity/status/1703547752205218265?s=20

Luckily, I can port over our physics and gameplay systems to a new engine/framework pretty easily but stuff like multiplayer and UI would need to be redone completely. Fingers crossed Unity doesn't double down or enact something slightly less worse, otherwise, there will be a mountain of work for me in the near future.

[Jakob Hubbard]

Definitely the devs fault but 100% greedy and scummy out of Unity. I saw that the CEO of Unity was the former CEO of EA and had some ideas that were deemed "too greedy". Being too greedy for EA something I never thought I'd see lol.

[jlv]

As a hardcore Unity user, this was very hard to swallow. While we currently do not meet the income and installs threshold, we are being impacted directly in other ways and it sucks bad. Ever since 2017 they have been shitting the bed starting first with the 3-way split of render pipelines with no interop still to this day, unfinished/broken engine features, and buying up useless companies/tech like the Weta and Ironsource acquisitions.

I am considering switching engines to Unreal or using a framework like Raylib but I like C# too much (although, some frameworks have a bunch of language bindings). Godot just isn't there for me yet and the setup for C# seems annoying. Dedicating a project to Unreal is also a risk but Tim Sweeney is still in charge which instills trust in the engine for me, not to mention EULAs are perpetual.

I'm surprised at how restrictive the licenses are. You wouldn't think anyone would want to use it unless they have a guaranteed means of future support. So at a minimum, source code and permission to distribute binaries compiled from modified versions of that source. Otherwise you're orphaned if whoever's responsible for maintaining the engine stops updating it. I don't expect open source but you at least need private source access to be able to fix bugs if they won't.

Unity has been a little shady lately so I hope they can right the ship. It's weird that they made the ToS tracking repo private on GitHub and it also seems telling how a few Unity execs sold some of their shares soon before the announcement (there was a list of who sold and how many that I saw on Twitter but can't find now). This article from the Verge goes into more detail about the ToS stuff.

Is that version still available? I guess even if it is they'll have proof that you upgraded past it.

[TeamHavocRacing]

I used to used their benchmarking test.
P.S. I made this on May Day 2011 and dug it up today....

[jlv]

I used to used their benchmarking test.
P.S. I made this on May Day 2011 and dug it up today....

That would have made a good trophy for the SX series!

[TeamHavocRacing]

Aw hell, I would've put a lot more flair and effort into a trophy! Some impossible to read scroll font and the full name treatment. However, I'm 0-1 doing design and machine work for the MXS community. Puma wanted to have a fancy, one-off computer case made and I agreed before I realized that it was too ambitious for the resources available on both our parts. I was in over my head with free time needed to design and run the parts and in the programming software access, and Puma would go broke with the cost of shipping it alone. I'm still very sorry and embarrassed about leading you on like that Puma!