Live data from Hacker News

Unity Engine ToS change makes cloud-based SpatialOS games illegal

arstechnica.com

101–110 of 277 posts

Re: Unity Engine ToS change makes cloud-based SpatialOS games illegal

#102
post #37

> You may not directly or indirectly distribute the Unity Software, including the runtime portion of the Unity Software (the “Unity Runtime”), or your Project Content (if it incorporates the Unity Runtime) by means of streaming or broadcasting so that any portion of the Unity Software is primarily executed on or simulated by the cloud or a remote server and transmitted over the Internet or other network to end user d…

I don't know why people are still using unity instead of UE4 except for historical reasons where users of the engine are hesitant to switch and have to relearn some things. Unity is not open source, it does not come with batteries included (so you end up buying a bunch of poorly maintained unity assets/plugins to do stuff that UE4 does out of the box), and I think they're struggling as a company more than people real…

How is UE on mid-range and low-end mobile devices? I have the impression that's in increasing important chunk of Unity's end user base.

Re: Unity Engine ToS change makes cloud-based SpatialOS games illegal

#104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dunno this seems clear enough to me - they don't want you circumventing the terms of your license by running the game on a single machine and streaming it to many players. Each game instance requires a separate license. I'm sure this isn't intended to stop you from running your game's central multiplayer server. It's just to make sure you pay an appropriate licensing fee for Unity.

Gotcha, so it's an effort to close a "run the game on the server, stream video back and forth, and don't pay for client-side licenses" loophole? I'm surprised to hear that's a scalable model and the terms do seem to read more broadly than that, but it's reassuring that it could be something other than a baldly monopolistic power play.

Scalable because players can take turns with the same license ;)

Re: Unity Engine ToS change makes cloud-based SpatialOS games illegal

#105
post #98

Could someone please clarify what SpatialOS actually does? Even in the updated arstechnica link I still don't quite get what is going on and how it breaches the new terms of service. Are the game clients used by the players running Unity? Is the server running Unity? How is SpatialOS's setup different from other multiplayer games?

It's a server side framework that integrates with other commercial engines ( Unity / Unreal ), what it does is it allows to have a single big map where each small chunks of the map are handled by a gameserver.

For the player it's transparent, you can have huge world with inter connected game server, instead of having one map with 32 players on it.

Re: Unity Engine ToS change makes cloud-based SpatialOS games illegal

#106
post #37

> You may not directly or indirectly distribute the Unity Software, including the runtime portion of the Unity Software (the “Unity Runtime”), or your Project Content (if it incorporates the Unity Runtime) by means of streaming or broadcasting so that any portion of the Unity Software is primarily executed on or simulated by the cloud or a remote server and transmitted over the Internet or other network to end user d…

Or Godot, a highly capable free engine!

Re: Unity Engine ToS change makes cloud-based SpatialOS games illegal

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why people are still using unity instead of UE4 except for historical reasons where users of the engine are hesitant to switch and have to relearn some things. Unity is not open source, it does not come with batteries included (so you end up buying a bunch of poorly maintained unity assets/plugins to do stuff that UE4 does out of the box), and I think they're struggling as a company more than people real…

> Unity is not open source Important to note, neither is Unreal really. It's not a pedantic distinction here either, as it affects how far you can take a project that modifies the core engine. Not that I'm against Unreal in any way, it's just important to keep in mind.

Yes, UE4 is not FOSS as per GNU, it is open source in that you can see the code and there's a large community contributing fixes and additions with every new version. I think the distinction is pedantic for most users.

Re: Unity Engine ToS change makes cloud-based SpatialOS games illegal

#108
post #37

> You may not directly or indirectly distribute the Unity Software, including the runtime portion of the Unity Software (the “Unity Runtime”), or your Project Content (if it incorporates the Unity Runtime) by means of streaming or broadcasting so that any portion of the Unity Software is primarily executed on or simulated by the cloud or a remote server and transmitted over the Internet or other network to end user d…

I don't know why people are still using unity instead of UE4 except for historical reasons where users of the engine are hesitant to switch and have to relearn some things. Unity is not open source, it does not come with batteries included (so you end up buying a bunch of poorly maintained unity assets/plugins to do stuff that UE4 does out of the box), and I think they're struggling as a company more than people real…

UE4 focuses on high-end console/PC. For rapid development of mobile games, Unity is basically the only choice.

Re: Unity Engine ToS change makes cloud-based SpatialOS games illegal

#109
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are protections against that in the EU - you can reverse engineer and otherwise circumvent all the protections for the sake of making things interoperable.

Isn't Unity Danish?

US users (both devs + gamers), and companies would still be subject to US contract law.

Re: Unity Engine ToS change makes cloud-based SpatialOS games illegal

#110
post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why people are still using unity instead of UE4 except for historical reasons where users of the engine are hesitant to switch and have to relearn some things. Unity is not open source, it does not come with batteries included (so you end up buying a bunch of poorly maintained unity assets/plugins to do stuff that UE4 does out of the box), and I think they're struggling as a company more than people real…

How is UE on mid-range and low-end mobile devices? I have the impression that's in increasing important chunk of Unity's end user base.

Unity is huge in mobile gaming. UE4 barely made a dent on mobile until the recent mobile release of Fortnite that is, which requires a fairly high-end device
Post reply on HN