[flagged]
I don't think you can fairly accuse independent game developers (who are overwhelmingly building atop Unity) of nickel and diming customers. Most of them never even break even.
“This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees
21–30 of 170 posts
Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees
#22On 4chan it immediately sparked a crowdsourced effort to make scripts that repeatedly install/uninstall games in creative ways (VMs, MAC spoofing) with the specific intention to hurt developers. This is definitely one of the dumbest choices I've seen a company do. Props to Unity for speeding up their own death.
A least now the argument that piracy hurts the developers has some weight
Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees
#23Does this mean the engine will phone home every time a software which contains it is installed? How is that compatible with the GDPR which has been interpreted by courts in a way that it forbids sending any network packets to the USA, no matter if the user consented to it or not? For reference, see the rulings which deemed Google analytics illegal independent of consent.
Doesn't GDPR basically count as the perfect excuse as why they would count the same user installing as multiple installs? Something along the lines of "we can't identify the device so we have to count it as a unique install"
> we can't identify the device
The post you're replying to seems to be more meaning "they shouldn't be receiving any information from (un)installers anyway".
So, them being able to count installs at all is the problem.
Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees
#24Ongoing threads at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37491622, among others
Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees
#25Does this mean the engine will phone home every time a software which contains it is installed? How is that compatible with the GDPR which has been interpreted by courts in a way that it forbids sending any network packets to the USA, no matter if the user consented to it or not? For reference, see the rulings which deemed Google analytics illegal independent of consent.
GDPR relates to personal data and it doesn’t forbid sending any network packets to the USA.
In some contexts the IP address already counts as personal data. Wasn't there recently an issue with web sites using Google fonts and therefore transmitting the user's IP address to Google?
Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees
#26Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees
#27[flagged]
That's unfair. A huge number of totally legitimate indie games, that do absolutely no nickel and diming, are built on Unity.
Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees
#28I don't get it.
If someone gives you something that is vital for your product for free, and the license does not guarantee your free usage in perpetuity, and you can't take the source code and maintain things yourself if the vendor changes their mind, ... surely that's on you then?
Did you think they didn't need to buy food and pay rent?
To me as a complete outsider this move reeks of desperation on their part, not malice. Maybe you should have taken steps to prevent this instead of complaining about it after the fact?
Turns out you can't pay people in exposure forever.
Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees
#29Does this mean the engine will phone home every time a software which contains it is installed? How is that compatible with the GDPR which has been interpreted by courts in a way that it forbids sending any network packets to the USA, no matter if the user consented to it or not? For reference, see the rulings which deemed Google analytics illegal independent of consent.
Unity already has UnityEngine.Analytics.dll since 2018, and it claims to be GDPR-compliant.
Re: “This Is a Disaster:” Game Developers Scramble to Deal with Unity’s New Fees
#30On 4chan it immediately sparked a crowdsourced effort to make scripts that repeatedly install/uninstall games in creative ways (VMs, MAC spoofing) with the specific intention to hurt developers. This is definitely one of the dumbest choices I've seen a company do. Props to Unity for speeding up their own death.
A least now the argument that piracy hurts the developers has some weight
You wouldn't even need "piracy" in this case, just buy one copy of the game and figure out how it phones home, and then pick your favorite method of tricking it into reporting ludicrous amounts of installs, which would significantly outnumber pirate copies.