This could have been done in a much better fashion to achieve the long term desired outcome (more income) while also ensuring continued trust and transparency with their community.<p>Simply, they could have not made this retroactive on existing released games. Rather just be clear that going forward, games build using the new Unity versions would have a per-installation fee. And they would slowly discontinue support for the older versions on a specific schedule.<p>There are new devices coming out like the new Switch, the Apple Vision Pro, and then the new features Unity is adding like AI, just add those to the new versions that have the run-time fee. People will upgrade to it on their own terms!<p>By making it retroactive and forcing it on everyone, they have basically screwed over their existing customers who shipped games expecting a certain cost structure and now it is higher.<p>Deleting this GitHub license archive repo where they make it clear that their license changes are likely unenforceable is icing on the cake.<p>EDIT: To remove the claim that Unreal Engine had a similar per-install fee, it doesn't.
This video[1] talks a bit about this from a lawyer's point of view and is a really good overview.<p>For people who are not paying as much attention to this I'd like to summarize the main points of frustration.<p>1. Unity has just shown they believe they are able, and they are willing, to change the terms on what you have to pay them. What are the bounds to terms like this? What if Unity is tight on money and decide to squeeze developers further? The risk to continuing business with Unity is very high as you have unknown future exposure.<p>2. The monetization model they've chosen is tied to installs, not revenue. On the initial day of announcement they even claimed re-installs would count but they've since walked that back (or "clarified a miscommunication"). Unity has been extremely wishy-washy on how they even plan to track this mentioning proprietary systems they can't elaborate on and your only recourse is to appeal if you think they got the numbers wrong. This is not a metric tied to your revenue and is difficult to plan around.<p>There are a lot of people arguing against a strawman of people who don't want to pay unity but that is not at all what this is about. Unity chose a terrible model they can't even explain for how they want to bill people and apply it to all past games that use the engine for all future sales.<p>This would be similar to if Microsoft said everyone who ever built anything on C# has to start paying a fee for every future install because it includes the .net runtime.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGMrebXypJo">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGMrebXypJo</a>
I posted this a few weeks ago, there’s already a project for tracking the TOS of many companies. This came up when people realized Zoom had done some funny business with their TOS as well. I see Unity isn’t there though, maybe someone should submit a PR.<p><a href="https://github.com/OpenTermsArchive/contrib-versions">https://github.com/OpenTermsArchive/contrib-versions</a>
IANAL, but I suspect part of what they're trying to hide is that the old terms [0] specify that while they can change the terms at any time, you may opt to use the old terms as long as you don't update the software beyond the current year (2023.x).<p>That wording is changed in the new terms [1] to say "If the modified Terms are not acceptable to you, your only recourse is to cease using the Services." Just in case you were wondering how one-sided this new agreement is intended to be.<p>[0] Section 8, "Modifications": <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20201111183311/https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/master/Unity%20Software%20Additional%20Terms.md" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://web.archive.org/web/20201111183311/https://github.co...</a><p>[1] <a href="https://unity.com/legal/terms-of-service" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://unity.com/legal/terms-of-service</a>
What I hate most about this is that it puts unbounded liability onto developers. They can't control how often their game will be installed in the future. The outcome will likely be that the minute a game falls below a certain rate of sales they will be forced to make it unavailable because they can't risk the ongoing cost of the existing userbase continually reinstalling it. Every time a new platform or device is released, there will be a wave of people shifting their installs which will will generate cost for developers for no return, and windfall profits to Unity for doing absolutely nothing. They get the money even if the user never even opens the app, they just click the button saying "install all my apps from my old device on my new one". Which is what a lot of users will do.
this is something they want to hide.<p><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220716084623/https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://web.archive.org/web/20220716084623/https://github.co...</a>
We are making games in Unity, and paying per developer per month the highest subscription $180+ for any tool we use. The amount is already quite high and grants us license to use Unity.<p>Their current move is either because they being extremely greedy, or because they're burning a lot of cash. We make simple games, and we're using Unity because of its community support and assets, not because we love Unity, the company. The community moves, we move.<p>Now if they're changing the terms arbitrarily, and hide that behind the "I agree" button, it proves that they have turned evil. We, along with several other fellow game companies don't support evil, and already migrating our games to Godot. We were prepared for something like this, but didn't anticipate Unity will flip their face this soon. This move only promotes Godot or Unreal; a far more different result than whatever they expected.
I'm a little confused here. If I released a game a couple years ago when the terms explicitly stated that Unity couldn't retroactively update them but now they changed the no retroactive updates clause, how can they try to apply this when that violates the terms I agreed to?<p>This seems extremely shady.
I'm surprised they even had such a repo public in the first place.<p>Every year Apple releases a new version of their Apple Developer Program License Agreement and Paid Applications agreement. I always download both as TXT files and diff against the previous one to see what changed. I practically don't even need to read any of the WWDC news to know what new things they are releasing.
Adobe put a silent kill switch into Flash player, rendering 10 years worth of casual games I'd written immediately unplayable. As a result of Adobe's actions, a whole sector of lone devs and small teams turned to Unity to build games that would've otherwise been built in AS3. I'm glad I didn't end up going that route, but I really feel for the folks who are now getting screwed again.
Just a side thought related to this: can there be a community supported initiative to parse what TOS documents of different companies mean, and specifically, what to watch out for in each company's TOS vis-a-vis what is the norm in a certain industry?<p>Right now, the "gotcha" power is entirely one-sided. A wiki-like approach towards documenting TOS might make the user better aware of what to really watch out for when using a particular software.
When I've made enough money, I would like to retire and just develop a free-2-play game. No intention of it making any money. I would happily pay a few thousand dollars for a good engine for that - like Unity. But I would not want to take the risk that my free game becomes wildly successful and suddenly costs me millions. It is very unfortunate, but I will now spend the weekend to learn Godot.
Source of the reddit post [1] with the web archive link [2].<p>[1] <a href="https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/16hnibp/unity_silently_removed_their_github_repo_to_track/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/16hnibp/unity_sile...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220716084623/https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://web.archive.org/web/20220716084623/https://github.co...</a>
An under-discussed aspect of this pricing structure is the number of older games that will simply be pulled from the (virtual) shelves. I've already seen a few and I fear more devs will follow suit.<p>The ripples and unintended consequences of this move could really be significant for years.
Good use for git scraping <a href="https://simonwillison.net/2020/Oct/9/git-scraping/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://simonwillison.net/2020/Oct/9/git-scraping/</a>
Sorry but I cannot help but blame developers again. Again you idiots put all your eggs into one basket, whilst forsaking alternatives, even open source ones because "unity is better." Well close gardens locking you in (or out) is always a risk and instead of calling people like me tinfoil-hat wearing lunatics for sounding the alarm for years, may be you should have heeded it.<p>Same goes for youtube, discord, zoom, aws. Invest in the alternarives you idiots, don't wait until it's too late. You won't garner any sympathy when they tighten the strings.