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Unity has seemingly silently removed its GitHub repo that tracks ToS changes

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Re: Unity has seemingly silently removed its GitHub repo that tracks ToS changes

#41

Post by thowfaraway »

awesomeMilou wrote: post #30
Clubber wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users. If I understand you correctly (I haven't really been following this), they changed the contract and are trying to retroactively collect license fees for installs done prior to the change in contract? I don't think this is legal. When you change a contract, it's on a go forward bases. It w…

> Did Unity recently get acquired, new investors or new management? EA's former CEO, John Riccitiello took over last year. He inaugurated himself with quite a few statements, one of which was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32097752

Riccitiello has been CEO since 2014. There were some good times at the beginning, but things seem to be falling apart.

Re: Unity has seemingly silently removed its GitHub repo that tracks ToS changes

#42

Post by Clubber »

jskherman wrote: post #38
awesomeMilou wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Did Unity recently get acquired, new investors or new management? EA's former CEO, John Riccitiello took over last year. He inaugurated himself with quite a few statements, one of which was discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32097752

When it comes to games it's always EA, isn't it? Isn't this CEO the one also responsible for some of EA's notoriety?

EA and Activision/Blizzard doesn't have a great track record either. Megacorps are usually bad for everybody except ownership.

Re: Unity has seemingly silently removed its GitHub repo that tracks ToS changes

#43

Post by zeroimpl »

I'm surprised they even had such a repo public in the first place.

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.

Re: Unity has seemingly silently removed its GitHub repo that tracks ToS changes

#45

Post by Clubber »

gmjosack wrote: post #32
Clubber wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users. If I understand you correctly (I haven't really been following this), they changed the contract and are trying to retroactively collect license fees for installs done prior to the change in contract? I don't think this is legal. When you change a contract, it's on a go forward bases. It w…

The terms have been changed so that all future installs can incur a fee even on older games that used unity even if the haven't been updated recently.

>The terms have been changed so that all future installs can incur a fee even on older games that used unity even if the haven't been updated recently.

They'll be able to get away with that then, the weasels. Sounds like they are trying to make a golden goose and kill it in one fell swoop. The latest Unreal demos look mighty fine. Sounds like we will be seeing a bunch of games use it in the near future.

I wonder if the older engines used by older games have any way to detect installs. I'd hate to see devs who abandoned their projects years ago but are still downloadable somewhere get caught up in this.

Re: Unity has seemingly silently removed its GitHub repo that tracks ToS changes

#46

Post by dcow »

awesomeMilou wrote: post #28
bhouston wrote: post #6

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. 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 fo…

> Simply, they could have not made this retroactive How can they make this apply retroactively though? For already shipped titles, if I'm no longer providing updates anymore, how can they force me to pay money? I'm aware that games no longer have a final shipping date, with early access and all, and as a dev I'd likely would want to offer continued support in such a scenario. But the way I understand it from the over…

Well yeah, that’s what is so mind boggling about the whole thing. They are trying to do something that’s likely illegal in terms of contract law. It’s also just abundantly stupid given the social cost. There was a super clean way to do the whole transition where you announce the changes going forward starting 1 Jan 2024. You show examples of what costs will be and stress that that the pricing is an order of magnitude cheaper than Unreal, and everyone feels like it’s fair (though nobody loves price increases). Someone needs to fire their CEO.

Re: Unity has seemingly silently removed its GitHub repo that tracks ToS changes

#47

Post by marcosdumay »

Clubber wrote: post #21
bhouston wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible. Exactly. So if they did this in an upfront way, they would have said that starting with Unity 2024 there is this new cost structure. Then game devs can make informed choices if they want to build those types of games on the platform. This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure ou…

>This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users. If I understand you correctly (I haven't really been following this), they changed the contract and are trying to retroactively collect license fees for installs done prior to the change in contract? I don't think this is legal. When you change a contract, it's on a go forward bases. It w…

It's not fraud. They are not misrepresenting anything, or getting any money that doesn't belong to them.

If it's illegal, it will just be invalid. What means that people could just not pay them. There's no jail time coming out of this.

Re: Unity has seemingly silently removed its GitHub repo that tracks ToS changes

#48

Post by gmjosack »

This video[1] talks a bit about this from a lawyer's point of view and is a really good overview.

For people who are not paying as much attention to this I'd like to summarize the main points of frustration.

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.

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.

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.

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.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGMrebXypJo

Re: Unity has seemingly silently removed its GitHub repo that tracks ToS changes

#49

Post by readyplayernull »

Clubber wrote: post #21
bhouston wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible. Exactly. So if they did this in an upfront way, they would have said that starting with Unity 2024 there is this new cost structure. Then game devs can make informed choices if they want to build those types of games on the platform. This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure ou…

>This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users. If I understand you correctly (I haven't really been following this), they changed the contract and are trying to retroactively collect license fees for installs done prior to the change in contract? I don't think this is legal. When you change a contract, it's on a go forward bases. It w…

> Did Unity recently get acquired, new investors or new management?

Nope. They bought Weta tools and the investment haven't paid out and probably won't be soon if ever, now they are desperate for money.

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