Comment on The Unity Games That Could be Impacted Most by Controversial Fees, From Silksong to Cult of the Lamb - IGN

• snooggums@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I still can't believe that retroactive fees like that are legal.

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  • ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    They aren’t and likely won’t hold up in court.

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    • snooggums@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Gotta pay the lawyers to go to court though.

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      • vanontom@geddit.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        Hope enough teams can band together and file jointly, combined with decent fundraising and fair lawyers. Fuck these Unity execs and their ilk, apparently they need to be humiliated. Maybe others will think twice about whether their strategy of enshittification and rampage of greed is worth it.

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  • WHYAREWEALLCAPS@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Welcome to capitalism! Ain’t it grand!

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  • BURN@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Because they’re not charging for previous installs, not new ones, and they operate technically on a free “subscription” model it’s going to be hard to challenge legally

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• Cavemanfreak@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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.

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• dust_accelerator@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  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 ends with ‘y’.

  Otherwise I could simply “retroactively apply” a 100% discount on my lease or new car purchase. Or for a better comparison, retroactively charge my employer for previous work, as I now decide to add a fee?

  The correct answer and what all studios/devs should do: tell them to retroactively pound sand and ditch Unity for all future projects.

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• AnonStoleMyPants@sopuli.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  I don’t think this is true? Their site unity.com/pricing-updates says “The fee applies to new installs beginning January 1, 2024”

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  • Heavybell@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    New installs not new releases. So if you put out a game a few years back and suddenly a bunch of people start installing it on their new PCs, you’d get hit with this fee… assuming it is legally enforceable.

    Hell, even if it isn’t strictly legally enforceable, if you still need to deal with Unity in some way in future you could be forced into dealing with this fee in order to get Unity’s cooperation.

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    • AnonStoleMyPants@sopuli.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      Oh yeah good point. The word “retroactively” just gave me the idea that it would apply to old installs, because this whole thing is about installs.

      Still, that is a major dick move.

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