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1.5 years of learning unity gone down the shitter. here I come, godot
even if they backtrack, trust is ruined at this point. this only makes sense if you're trying to destroy the company intentionally and short your stock on the way out. what the fuck
1.5 years of learning unity gone down the shitter.
And this is the real damage to their business here. They clearly lost sight of their business model: Create an army of developers who know their product very well, so that it's on a short list of products studios are all but forced to consider.
A wave of developers who know soemthing other than Unity or Unreal has the potential to turn the games development ecosystem totally on its head. They didn't shoot themselves on the foot, they possibly shot themselves in the femoral artery.
6 years of professional experience for me, only engine I've used.
Yes, but no. My company is working in a proprietary engine, so there is almost no one we can hire with that engine experience, but we still want people who became familiar and strong with other engines because they can do it again with ours.
Don't be too discouraged by this, but start learning your next engine.
It's actually neither of those, the biggest impact is free-to-play games. Hearthstone, Legends of Runeterra, virtually every Unity mobile game in the market... Having to pay per install has huge potential for abuse and can cost a fortune for games with millions of downloads.
JFC, I just learned that they are retroactively applying this new rule. This means that games that are out already or have been on sale for multiple years will have to pay the runtime fee too. Insane. They can bankrupt a studio before they even release their next game.
I still can't believe that retroactive fees like that are legal.
Welcome to capitalism! Ain't it grand!
I don't think they can enforce that, right? I assume that would be a change of the contract, which they can't just do willy nilly.
Yeah, I think that's straight up illegal and I would simply refuse to pay.
If they can retroactively change terms, why can't I, as a bonafide counterparty in that agreement? Maybe something like a 100% discount on runtime fees for days that end with 'y'.
Otherwise I could simply "retroactively apply" a 100% discount on my lease or new car purchase.
The correct answer and what all studios/devs should do: tell them to retroactively pound sand and ditch Unity for all future projects.
This needs to turn into a class action suit that results in John Tortellini having his oxygen rights revoked. I can't imagine shareholders will be happy finding out that John Riceroni has been selling off Unity's stock, and I'm pretty sure what Unity's trying to do here is straight-up illegal in the US. Fuck John Rigatoni. God, I was so happy thinking he'd died and gone to hell after EA, but nope, still alive and well.
Hahaaa nah, ToS:
The Parties agree that any arbitration will be conducted in their individual capacities only and not as a class action or other representative action, and the Parties expressly waive their right to file a class action or seek relief on a class basis.
Forced arbitration is one of the most villainous legal practices still somehow allowed in the US.
From their FAQ, looks like Unity doesn't have any real way of dealing with pirated or fake installs. Their FAQ says you have to work with them when that happens so they can correct your bill. It doesn't say Unity will automatically filter those installs out.
pirated? they want developers to pay Unity for people pirating their game???
Officially no, but the wording on the FAQ says it's the developer's job to take it up with them to resolve it. So it's clear they don't have any safeguard and only after you're affected you can talk to them lmfao.
Does the Unity Runtime Fee apply to pirated copies of games? We are happy to work with any developer who has been the victim of piracy so that they are not unfairly hurt by unwanted installs.
Same thing goes for "install-bombing":
We are not going to charge a fee for fraudulent installs or “install bombing.” We will work directly with you on cases where fraud or botnets are suspected of malicious intent.
So not only are the fees outrageous, but now devs are responsible for making sure this whole system isn't being abused. It's not gonna be long until people figure out how the install count is updated, and will proceed to weaponize it lmfao.
and don’t forget that this is “we’ll work with you” - i.e. you’d better build your own analytics into your game to prove your case otherwise unity can go “well assume 10% are bad installs - now pay for 90%”
There is no way they can legally enforce retroactively charging. How the fuck is that even possible or legal?
Unity is not a product, it's an ongoing subscription. You can distribute Unity as part of your game as long as you have a subscription.They changed the terms of the subscription for next year. If you don't have a subscription then you cannot redistribute Unity. So your choice is to either accept the new terms, or pull your game from the stores.
Why the ever loving fuck would any company willingly use a library or framework in their product that uses a subscription model instead of a licensing model? That's absolutely mind blowing. Having critical tools with subscriptions is bad enough, but at least those aren't shipped to customers.
If it's really true that Unity uses a perpetual subscription rather than a license I'm utterly flabbergasted that it ever got as popular as it was.
Companies love subscription pricing and customers keep it up. Lots of software went this route and proved people still want the product. It shouldn't be a surprise
I'm waiting for a Legal Eagle breakdown or something. I've been thinking the exact same thing. Sneakily removing stuff from their TOS in GitHub a while back is dodgy.
So there’s a little nuance here. They aren’t going to charge you for the downloads that already happened, it’s on all downloads moving forward, even if the game has already been released. I still think it’s ridiculous, but it is not the same as suddenly hitting you with a bill for all the downloads the game already had. That would not hold up in any court. But the latter case…we’ll see. Depends on the specifics of the initial agreement I suppose. Totally possible they are within their rights even if it’s scummy.
Correct me if I’m wrong, that’s my understanding. I don’t think if you had a million downloads last year, for instance, you’ll be charged for those.
No, you won't be charged retroactively for previous downloads. But the change does retroactively affect games previously released on Unity.
So last year you made decisions on your game's price and revenue model that are no longer true. if you made your small game free to play with microtransactions and its had more than 200,000 installs you're probably shitting yourself. Unity will be charging $0.20 per install even if it's to the same device multiple times. A million installs of your game is you having to write a check to Unity for $160,000 for installations alone.
So your microtransactions game now must average a spend of at least $0.20 per install, plus per seat licensing of Unity, plus your overhead for it to even begin to make a profit.
And Unity has said that multiple installations on the same device will all be charged. So it's inevitable that script kiddies with bad attitudes are going to install a game thousands of times. Unity has said you can appeal this type of behavior, but that puts the onus of detecting and reporting this stuff on the devs, further increasing their workload and risk.
I don't want Silksong developed on Unity. Scrap it, start fresh. I'll wait.
Scrap it. Start fresh.
The number of games that should do this is too damn high
I encourage people here to check out Stride too, for something open sourced, C# based, and if Godot isn't your cup of tea for some reason.
If Silksong is delayed because of this I'm going to riot!
I understand the controversy, especially in light of the recent Reddit bullshit. But I don't think I understand the tech.
For the sake of it, let's focus only on games that are paid for, installed on a system (or downloaded using Game Pass), and do not involve a multiplayer element. (Hollow Knight, Cuphead, etc)
Is there some ongoing resource use (on Unity's end) when people download or play these games? Like, when I play Hollow Knight, my system isn't connecting to Unity to use their servers to run the game on my home system, is it? When I download a game to my system, an I downloading the engine separately from the software, thereby using Unity's servers?
As abhorrent as the Reddit API change was, at least they were charging for the ongoing consumption of some digital resource (Reddit data). Unless I'm misunderstanding something, this just seems more like trying to collect a residual after the fact.
No, there are no costs for Unity in this situation. The way they'll need to track installs is with the unity runtime, which gets packaged with games made using Unity.
This is what economists call "rent-seeking", where companies seek to extract more profit by charging subscriptions, rather than introducing desirable products. Adobe, AutoCAD, Microsoft Office, and the Reddit API are all high profile examples of rent-seeking.
Unity Revenue reporting has always been "self-reported" by users. If they think you're lying and aren't on the right license they send the complkance team to make sure you're giving enough. Unity has no way of knowing installs because as you said it doesn't connect to Unity.
You don't download anything separately, the runtime is included with the game.
Is there some ongoing resource use (on Unity’s end)
Nope. The engine is part of the game once compiled. So all hosting and bandwidth cost goes to steam/gog/whoever is selling the game.
They are just trying to get more of that sweet viral game money.
Looking forward to pihole lists that block every single domain from ubity.
