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.
orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 1 year ago
There is no way they can legally enforce retroactively charging. How the fuck is that even possible or legal?
lobut@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 1 year ago
I read somewhere that they removed their TOS entirely from GitHub but I would love a breakdown of this too. I’m not familiar with how the Unity agreement works.
BolexForSoup@kbin.social 1 year ago
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.
Subverb@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
adora@kbin.social 1 year ago
they said it was retroactive
BolexForSoup@kbin.social 1 year ago
Yes, the fee applies to eligible games currently in market that continue to distribute the runtime. We look at a game's lifetime installs to determine eligibility for the runtime fee. Then we bill the runtime fee based on all new installs that occur after January 1, 2024.
adora@kbin.social 1 year ago
yeah i deleted my post because they keep changing their minds.
its retroactive (for now) in the sense that they started counting from before, just only billing for new ones.ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 1 year ago
As I understand it, they’re billing moving forward but counting past installs for the purpose of figuring out if you have to pay.
Uniquitous@lemmy.one 1 year ago
Per their lawyers it’s in the TOS. Everyone just hits “I agree” when they get that EULA but there’s always a “we reserve the right to fuck you over” buried in the fine print.
devfuuu@lemmy.world [bot] 1 year ago
I don’t think I’ve ever read one where the clause “we can change any if this at any point in the future and you automatically accept it” wasn’t there. All the fucking time it’s there. Everyone is always agreeing to this shit all the time. That’s why many services can just change their prices and whatever how they want and only send an email “next month the price is X”.
Everything is rotten.
iAmTheTot@kbin.social 1 year ago
They aren't retroactively charging. They're charging a new fee going forward.
orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 1 year ago
They are retroactively applying the new pricing model to games that have been out for years. That’s what I meant. So they’re not back-billing for previous downloads, but already-released games don’t get grandfathered in.
I’m always open to corrections though.
AngryMob@lemmy.one 1 year ago
Games that have been out for years arent going to hit the minimum 12 month downloads/revenue figures unless they are still very popular, no?
I dont agree with this downloads based fee to be clear.
orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts 1 year ago
Yeah, I’m not 100% sure. There are instances too though where someone gets a new PC and installs their old games. I think it would still count in those cases, which is just silly to me. It all feels like a massive cash grab, or they’re trying to fudge the stock value.
WHYAREWEALLCAPS@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Depends what is in the contract. If the contract says devs on are the hook for any future fees they deem necessary, then the devs are on the hook. Unless they want to pay a lawyer big bucks to take on the company behind Unity with their billions of dollars of revenue and the lawyers that buys. How many indie devs do you think can afford to do that?
HawlSera@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Not just indie devs bro
Pokemon is made in unity
anteaters@feddit.de 1 year ago
Hearthstone too
GunnarRunnar@kbin.social 1 year ago
I've been wondering this too.
Maestro@kbin.social 1 year ago
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.
orclev@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
XeroxCool@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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
orclev@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Sure, for services or stuff used internally, but not for things that they’re selling to their own customers. Unless a company is also using a subscription model for their software it makes absolutely no sense to use a subscription library in your product, you’re putting yourself on the hook for recurring expenses on something you’re only receiving income on once. Any way you slice it that’s an absolutely braindead decision, and anyone that makes it should be terminated immediately for gross negligence.
admin@lemmy.my-box.dev 1 year ago
I wasn’t aware either, but the devs who use this in their product should have known this could happen. Now the question is: did they just not consider the possibility, or is it a known risk because all the engines require a license? In that case, Unity might just very well be the first one to do this, and others will follow suit in the coming years.
orclev@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s normal for a engine to have licensing requirements, but those are laid out up front and will typically be defined based on income. So like a pretty common thing would be something approximately like free for the first $10K earned, then 10% for up to $100K, and then 30% for everything past $100K. Importantly though, that’s NOT a subscription, it’s the terms of the license you agree to in order to use the software, you aren’t paying a fee based on time, but rather based on money earned. You can choose to back out of the license at any time, you just need to stop selling the software, and as long as you keep paying the engine developer their cut you can keep on selling copies. Further the terms of the license are what they are when you download the library/framework, and they can’t be retroactively changed. If tomorrow they decide to start charging you based on total downloads, you can choose to keep distributing the previous version under the previous license terms based on profits.
Unity on the other hand, has done two things. First they require an ongoing subscription, so if you stop paying for your subscription, technically you’re no long allowed to sell your game. Secondly, and much more controversially, they’re defining the license based on installs rather than based on earnings, which is tying your debt to actions of your customers rather than your own, which is a very precarious position to be in.
This whole thing reminds me of the D&D shenanigans a few months back where Hasbro tried to retroactively re-define the terms of their “open source” license, and the TTRPG community collectively told Hasbro where they could stick their new license. There are a LOT of parallels here.
EnglishMobster@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Unreal licensing is explicitly tied to the version you use. So if you use Unreal 5.3, you are bound to the license attached to the code for Unreal 5.3.
If that license changes in Unreal 5.4 and you disagree with the new license, you don’t need to follow the terms as long as you never move from Unreal 5.3.
HawlSera@lemm.ee 1 year ago
We got used to letting one company control everything
Piers@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Because it is the best choice financially in the short to medium term and it’s pretty much impossible for most businesses to make decisions based on any other factor. Which is why most companies will end up just swallowing this change.
Da_Boom@iusearchlinux.fyi 1 year ago
Licencing and subscriptions are generally the same thing.
When you get a subscription, you’re paying a regular payment to have a licence to use the product. Stop paying? Licence revoked.
In a normal setup, you pay once for a licence.
The terms of the licence dictate how you can use the software, and what happens when you break those rules.
cactusupyourbutt@lemmy.world 1 year ago
wait so if unity goes bankrupt everyone is fucked?
Maestro@kbin.social 1 year ago
Pretty much, yes
anlumo@lemmy.world 1 year ago
They’d sell off the IP, and somebody else would continue licensing out the engine. Development might be dead, but that doesn’t matter for already released games anyways.
If there’d be truly no successor, people could just continue using their existing Unity engine binary, since there’d be nobody to stop them.
AWittyUsername@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Another reason why everything is subscription based these days, they can change the terms at will