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.
The Unity Games That Could be Impacted Most by Controversial Fees, From Silksong to Cult of the Lamb - IGN
Submitted 1 year ago by shish_mish@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.ign.com/articles/the-unity-games-silksong-cult-of-the-lamb-among-us
Comments
simple@lemm.ee 1 year ago
falkerie71@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
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.
snooggums@kbin.social 1 year ago
I still can't believe that retroactive fees like that are legal.
Cavemanfreak@lemm.ee 1 year 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.
dust_accelerator@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year 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.
AnonStoleMyPants@sopuli.xyz 1 year 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”
Cheers@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Pricing should protect indie and small businesses. When it destroys those, we need government to step in because we’re on track to create oligarchs in every industry that are too big to fail.
MossyFeathers@pawb.social 1 year ago
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.
Theharpyeagle@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
CoderKat@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Arbitration is often a good thing, by avoiding clogging up courts and arbitrators can sometimes be better than whatever judge you’d get (since both parties have to agree to the arbitrator). It’s still legally binding and arbitrators have made lots of great rulings.
But not as a replacement for class action. The whole point of class actions is to make it much more viable for many people to be represented because only one affected person has to deal with managing an expensive lawsuit and there’s just one case instead of hundreds of thousands of arbitration cases (which still cost a ton of money for lawyers). So IMO arbitration is great, but shouldn’t be allowed to replace class actions specifically.
SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 1 year ago
With all your puns, I still don’t what is John Cappelletti’s real name.
HawlSera@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I think it’s, never working in this industry again.
net00@lemm.ee 1 year ago
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.
TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz 1 year ago
pirated? they want developers to pay Unity for people pirating their game???
net00@lemm.ee 1 year ago
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.
dangblingus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Oh fuck no. Silksong is never coming out.
lorez@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Is there a way to convert it to use Godot or Unreal? I understand nothing about programming a game but… oh damn
TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Not instantly. This could take months or even years of additional work.
AdmiralShat@programming.dev 1 year ago
You can port over a lot of C# code into Godot, but there are things that are engine specific. However, they are similar enough that you can just work on refactoring without sgarting from scratch.
I’ve ported a few of my projects from Unity and it’s not impossible, it’s just a lot of copy and pasting and making a few changes
Im_Cool_I_Promise@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Someone has pulled off porting an Unreal map over to Unity before, but a lot of the maps lighting and other effects were completely lost. Look up Stanley parable rocket league. It’s definitely possible, but it would take a lot of work and a lot of rebuilding everything from scratch
mojo@lemm.ee 1 year ago
No, they’d have to start from scratch. They’re entirely different engines and everything is very specific to the engine, down to the tooling and languages used.
teruma@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It’s doable, but a tedious pain in the ass.
ComradeKhoumrag@infosec.pub 1 year ago
Probably not but the good news is a lot of the pains of developing a game is that unlike most projects you need 10 artists for every one programmer
So, while core logic will likely change, all the other assets and planning is done. It shouldn’t be as bad as remaking it from scratch
CoderKat@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Migrating really large software is incredibly time consuming and difficult. My background is with backend servers, not games, but some large framework migrations we’ve done were a multi year effort and IMO they weren’t nearly as big or fundamental as game engines can be (though we did have to maintain near perfect uptime, which isn’t a concern for an unreleased game).
ossadeimorti@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I love OSs and I contribute to a few projects, but using godot for a project of silksong calibre is asking for a disaster
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?
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.
cactusupyourbutt@lemmy.world 1 year ago
wait so if unity goes bankrupt everyone is fucked?
AWittyUsername@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Another reason why everything is subscription based these days, they can change the terms at will
lobut@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
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
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.
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.
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
GunnarRunnar@kbin.social 1 year ago
I've been wondering this too.
Skkorm@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I don’t want Silksong developed on Unity. Scrap it, start fresh. I’ll wait.
sebinspace@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Scrap it. Start fresh.
The number of games that should do this is too damn high
PotatoKat@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The number of games that can do this is too damn low
krypton22@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You mean that Silksong could be delayed? pikachu face
MrGerrit@feddit.nl 1 year ago
It’s going to be the new Duke Nukem Forever…
Shapillon@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Except it might be good :p
AureumTempus@lemmy.world 1 year ago
[deleted]Dasnap@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This difference here is that it’s pissing off businesses, not users.
foggy@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah businesses can sue you for pulling out the rug like this.
Users cannot.
BolexForSoup@kbin.social 1 year ago
We barely had a mass exodus from Reddit. It was quite modest lol
That being said, I popped my head in on reddit last week to find something, and it definitely seems noticeably worse at a glance. Or maybe I’ve just had enough distance from it now that I see the warts more plainly.
greybeard@lemmy.one 1 year ago
I imagine it will get a bump. I’d love to see more developers using Godot, more tutorials, more in the asset library. The engine itself is quite good, but it doesn’t have a huge ecosystem built around it the way Unity does.
tabular@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Unity did something like this before with built in advert data or such, and some left. Now is drawing a new line, perhaps too far for many more.
My hope is that this backlash extends to all proprietary software eventually. Discord banned 3rd party apps before Reddit thought it was cool to overcharge for the privilage.
PopOfAfrica@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Ive been making my game in Godot for a few months now. Its a really good engine after the 4.0 update.
jmcs@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
If W4 doesn’t enshitiffy it to push people to their proprietary fork (which is unfortunately required because Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft don’t allow making their APIs public).
MargotRobbie@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
refurbishedrefurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
Doesn’t Godot have C# extentions available?
sebinspace@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s excellent to know, thank you.
HelloHotel@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Contributors need to sign the following Contribution License Agreement.
How moral is this license? Im not good with legaleze
TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 1 year ago
If Silksong is delayed because of this I’m going to riot!
Then_I_said@lemmy.sdf.org 1 year ago
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.
rockSlayer@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
mihnt@kbin.social 1 year ago
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.
RedditWanderer@lemmy.world 1 year ago
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.
Piers@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This is basically like if John Deere started following everyone around so they could charge a farmer 1 cent every time you bite into a vegetable you bought at Walmart.
SlateGreyCrazyPotato@possumpat.io 1 year ago
For anyone interested to sign I found this petition against the new fee. chng.it/kYpqWBBHbB
Hoping with all the backlash Unity is forced to role it back. Thank you to everyone posting alternatives, I will be checking these out :)
HawlSera@lemm.ee 1 year ago
If they kill Cult of the Lamb over this. There will no longer be any reason to live.
Blackdoomax@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Can they go retroactively? Aren’t there contracts?
stopthatgirl7@kbin.social 1 year ago
Cult of the Lamb did come out and say they weren’t serious about delisting.
ZugZug@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
This is going to get so bad…Go godot.
lorez@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Can Steam buy Unity and end this nightmare?
mycroft@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Game Dev Story… And every Kairosoft game.
Did they just forget they sell mobile games?
shawnshitshow@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
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
Kichae@kbin.social 1 year ago
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.
jayandp@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I myself have been describing it as them shooting themselves in the chest, and are now bleeding out on the floor asking how it happened.
DankMemeMachine@lemmy.world 1 year ago
6 years of professional experience for me, only engine I’ve used.
luxyr42@lemmy.dormedas.com 1 year ago
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 that, but start learning your next engine.
niisyth@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Years of Academy training
Heavybell@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The CEO did sell a bunch of shares before this was announced, I hear.
KillAllPoorPeople@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s clickbait journalism.
He sold 2000 shares for $40/share, which he then immediately bought back for $1.42/share.
finance.yahoo.com/screener/…/RICCITIELLO JOHN S