Valve makes so much on CS-GO skins (not mention other games and all the market transactions) alone that would probably be able to buy Epic Game Store out of pocket change.

Maybe, one caveat. THIS WASN'T PART OF THE DEAL!

You can't retroactively change a license to the determent of those that agreed to it. They are trying (and i bet if taken to court they will lose) to make all older unity games and installs also ping the dev. No, you don't put it on the back end. There's other game devs who for 1-2 years are making new games NEW GAMES that haven't been put out yet, and this change completely screws them. Do you think a dev should put in 2 years of work making a game, and then be told 'well you can just choose not to use Unity' on a product just about to come out, and would likely take 6-12 months to change to another engine?

So many companies are trying to think of it as micro-transactions and as 'services', and charging for every little feature. This is wrong, and won't work. I suppose the devs could just choose not to pay them and then wait for a major lawsuit before they bring the original license of the game engine and pound Unity into the ground.

I suppose you could also argue with people not liking how Microsoft changes windows "Well you could just not use windows".... Except the programs THEY NEED TO DO THEIR JOB only is on windows. They are forced to accept something they don't like because they don't have a choice.

That's why it doesn't go into effect until the new year. Many agreements allow for changes to be made with notice. I'm sure the devs had to sign off on that. I'm not saying it's good, just that it's likely nothing they did not agree to allow to happen.

Linux runs my windows apps just fine.

Read the small print. Pretty much any corporation who is in a position to do so will include a clause that says they can change terms, prices, anything really. Anyone doing business should include license changes in their risk management plan. If you're doing business and betting on proprietary tech without even reading the license text: haha, deserved it.

Nothing in the world gives you the right to cling on to some old license text unless the other party has granted you an irrevocable license. Their own stupidity for choosing proprietary tech that could do pull an Oracle any day.

Honestly? I don't mind at all. It's these people who like to give FLOSS advocates the middle finger and push proprietary tech all around. I'm happy to see 'em get screwed over their choices. Unity isn't something you ABSOLUTELY NEED TO MAKE A GAME. If someone chose it and now gets screwed over: sorry not sorry. Bad judgement.

Likewise Windows rarely is something you absolutely need to do your job. E.g. at my previous employer we used Linux for damn well near everything. We got bought, new employer insist on windows (and microsoft cloud shit).. I still do my work in a vm running Linux. But we've already wasted a lot of time and money caused solely on stupid microsoft problems. I only hope a bigger screwup is in the pipeline.

Unless you upgrade, change software or accept the change the license needs to be upheld, in it's original form. I don't care if they claim they revoked it, i refuse to accept changes.

If you say so. Unless it's GPL and free software, even open source code is technically proprietary. Recall reading in the books of Richard Stallman when the first 'proprietary closed source code' was showing it's ugly heads, for printer drivers. It's still ugly.

Though i suppose until they add in the EULA to all software that you have to give your bank accounts over and your first born child to be in line with the license, you won't budge.

If a game you already made is made in Unity, sorry but i'll have to say it is required, unless you want to start from scratch. Probably to the same amount as needing a monitor to program or use the computer. I'm sure you'll disagree with that too.

To my understanding, a number of 3D modeling software used in the industry only works under windows. Yes there's Blender and whatnot, but that's not what's taught in schools, it's not what the big companies hiring are asking for, thus you have to use windows, at least for that program and job.

And in the world of multimedia, some programs only work on Macs, thus you'd be required to use a Mac to do your job. As often you aren't using your own hardware and software, you're using what's supplied to you.

- Bold Added

Yes, it's wrong, and wanna bet?

Given a choice between paying more fees, renting their games instead of owning them, or putting up with anti-piracy crap that always, ALWAYS negatively affects legitimate paying customers waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more than pirates (DRM) or just not buying/renting games and playing them, the choice is ALWAYS to accept the bullshit, ask for seconds, and then bitch and moan. This has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt... no proven beyond ANY doubt time and time and time again.

Yes, Steam will eventually do away with their false advertising (every game on their platform uses the term "Buy" or "Purchase" rather than rent or subscribe) and go ahead and change all of their buttons to "Rent-$XX.xx/month" and make no bones about the fact that we don't own something they clearly tried to make us believe we were buying. And there will be much pearl clutching, much bitching and moaning, but it will become the new normal. And it won't be unanimous (NOTHING is, even the most basic facts like the world being round instead of flat isn't unanimous among humans) and they will take a temporary hit, but their long term strategy of "hooking" us to them by not being able to play any of the thousands of dollars of games we already paid for will lessen that hit.

Never underestimate how much shit the average consumer will eat to get something they want.

And it's not Steam's fault (or Unity's in this example). It's on all of us.

I can't recall the exact quote or who said it long ago, and it was about politics and government but it applies to almost everything in life, but it went something like this - Every society lives with the exact amount of oppression that the people are willing to accept. Meaning, governments (or corporations) will always put as much pressure as they can on their citizens/costomers that they can without causing collapse. This Unity thing most certainly won't be a step too far, in fact it will be small potatoes in terms of the outrage it causes, and it will likely come more from publishers/developers than from consumers. And if... no when Steam does exactly what I stated above, it too won't be the bridge too far.

We are, and always have been, our own worst enemies. The human condition. What can you do?

ADDED: Okay, I found the quote I was thinking of here and it's a quote by Frederick Douglas.. And I wasn't really all that close so I'll just put it here. and another one is relevant to the topic:

You don't really seem to understand how software licensing and subscriptions work. I hope you don't get dragged to court one day, with that knowledge it can get quite expensive... That is not so. My point is that you didn't need to use Unity to begin with. If you decided to do so anyway, it has become an entirely self-imposed "need" and you should've known all along how it can backfire. Sure, you can always find such employers and I hope they get screwed over too. I would also make it illegal to brainwash people into using proprietary software in schools if reasonable free alternatives exist or can be created with reasonable effort. If employers want to use proprietary tech, they should bear the cost of teaching employees to use it. It's not on society and tax money to entrench a proprietary software monopoly.

However, there is a massive difference in a developer 1) CHOOSING TO USE UNITY FOR THEIR NEXT GAME and 2) an employer requiring their employee to use a specific tool. In the first case the developer is choosing to gamble their future (and even without any license changes, possibly making it very difficult or impossible to update the game a decade or two later). Case 2 isn't particularly relevant for this thread.

Pretty much agreed with this sentiment. Unity is doing what they reserved a right to do at any point the moment you agreed with their license and ToS. Change the terms at any point. People just clicking OK at the kilometers long texts when opening the program for the first time is a user error.

If this was against the license every Unity user agreed to, they would already be drowning in lawsuits. Is it scummy and immoral? Yes. Illegal? No.

Unity and game developers had a reasonable deal, one that should have been making profit for them.

I'm all for contracts being clearer, but also for them being shorter, and that requires being able to rely on a certain level of good faith. I hope that what Unity has done is shown to be an act of bad faith, because the alternative is to make contracts even longer and more detailed.

Unity meanwhile clarified, that not the shops, but the distributors will be invoiced.

They say they will track the hardware and game that an installation is made on. Most likely, this means that the Unity runtime engine will phone home and report a hardware fingerprint.

Ergo, unless the version of the runtime bundled with a game already has this feature, older games would most likely not report installations. However, Unity runtimes are famously not backwards compatible, making retroactive updates of a bundled runtime unlikely, if not impossible.

Unity stated, they want to invoice distributors of gaming passes and other services that provide access to these games for free AKA game streaming services, and they will count and invoice installations of free giveaways.

Meaning, they haven't defused the initial criticism, that giveaways or huge one-time marketing campaigns might inflate installations beyond the threshold, causing sudden substantial retroactive invoices. For example, the threshold for the free version of the runtime is at 200,000 installations. If the threshold is triggered, each past installation would be invoiced at 20 Cent, which might cause an impromptu invoice over 40,000 USD.

Plus, it is yet unclear how they plan to convince a giant like Microsoft (let alone Amazon) to pay for installations of the Unity runtime. Microsoft might just as well give them the finger. They haven't signed a contract, and it's hard to see how they could be forced. At the very least, Microsoft et al. will most likely demand a better (exclusive) deal.

Furthermore, this might mean that in an attempt to keep the number of installations low, distributors might put pressure on shops to double down on DRM to track installations and limit the number of total installations. Meaning that shops like GOG could see fewer releases in the future.

All in all, if there hasn't been enough reason to avoid Unity before, it appears there is now.

1. The runtime would track installs, but it would need to phone home, and it needs permission to create a hardware fingerprint on the client machine. Might be worth checking the end user license agreement.

2. Unity stated that demos and charity keys are exempt--but only if the distributor applies for an exemption.

3. Yes. According to the last statement by Unity, for each unique combination of gaming key and hardware fingerprint.

So Hypothetical situation. I make a computer, and i install Windows 95 on it. It has a software license attached to it, but Microsoft let's say has revoked that and you have to accept the current Windows 12 license even for something put out in 1995/1996.

Is that right? Is that en-forcible? Or if i installed and never told them, would it even matter?


If they want to inject the new fee to the newer version of Unity i suppose they can do that, assuming they can get it to work, but i don't see it working on works that licenses didn't have that clause in it. WotC trying to revoke their old version of the OGL to push their 1.1 version (completely different license) from what lawyers and people who understand the law, said you can't just revoke a license just because you want to. People were free to continue to use that license, WotC was just trying to bully everyone to accepting the new one; Which turned out badly as a backlash result.

If you can read it (but can't modify it or compile it) and still have to pay for it, it's only slightly better than closed source code. (course the open source part could be a farce and they use different versions of the source when compiling; but who knows)

Rrriiiigggghhhhtttt..... Again back to the OGL for WotC, the OGL shares a small subset of the system so everyone is on the same page, it was as many called it a 'gentleman's agreement', i agree to use the OGL you agree not to sue me.

Then they tried to change the OGL and hope no one was the wiser. Who could have seen that coming? I'll just pull out my crystal ball, and see... oh yess, you have to donate one of your eyes to microsoft so they have biometric data, and you have to be plugged in a VR system to use their OS in 10 years, because i could totally see that happening from the now.

This is sarcasm. There's no knowing this was on the horizon, anymore than the FTC deciding to ban an entire frequency range making electronics you bought that were compliant suddenly not compliant and needing to buy all new hardware. (Yes this does happen from time to time)

That's pretty much the entire gaming industry and probably film and entertainment as a whole. Finding the outlier that doesn't use it will be fewer and far between.

Again, when choosing an engine and finding the features you want with the amount of work to get something working, you eventually select something. Berating a dev for choosing something because it was perfectly serviceable at the time but they were a dumbass for selecting it because of unforeseen changes is stupid. As mentioned before, mentally we still work in the 'i buy something it's mine' mentality, as such with something that's free, you accept it and all the understanding of how it works and limits of it WHEN YOU GOT IT, not something that just changed overnight for no good damn reason.

And why isn't case 2 relevant? You might as well say All employees who work with hardware required/needed for said job is stupid. Touchscreens at Subway and the POS software, they are dumbasses too as far as you're putting forward because they don't HAVE to use it, except they don't have a choice. Maybe they move to walmart, are they suppose to drag their own POS or drag the one from Subway to Walmart because they preferred it? Sorry, no. And if the multimedia or software they require has to use windows, again you're forced to use windows.

But i know what you'll say. 'so just don't use windows'. Yeah... so just don't work and eat either.

Except: What if you've already invested years into a project using Unity and then they spring these license changes on you?
There's also games with opt-in telemetry, like Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark. (You're prompted when you first start the game.)

I don't see an exception. It sucks. But you agree to the risk when you accept their engine and EULA.

Except that you did not acept the newer EULA, only the older one.

Thats always the problem with monopolys.