Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

gamerbraves.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 180 posts

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

#51

Post by thowfaraway »

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…

They can't force you to pay. The only leverage or legal claim they have is if you want to update your title after Jan 2024, then they can ask you to get up to date on your account.

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

#52

Post by dcow »

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…

I’ve been asking the exact same question. There is so clearly a better way to have handled this whole thing it makes you wonder whether the person in charge of this transition is simply incompetent, or actually negligent. If I were a shareholder, I might consider suing.

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

#54

Post by jamiek88 »

zeroimpl wrote: post #43

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.

That's a great idea!

It'd be awesome if someone automated that and threw it up on github but that's just me being lazy.

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

#56

Post by zeroimpl »

WarOnPrivacy wrote: post #33
paxys wrote: post #24

I hate the word "silently" in headlines like these. How else are the supposed to do it? By throwing a press event?

> I hate the word "silently" in headlines like these. Why hate reporting that fairly represents what they did? > How else are the supposed to do it? By throwing a press event? Sure. That's one way to uphold the standards of full transparency about what changes are happening and when - that Unity promised.

Deleting things never makes a sound. The word silently is added entirely for the connotation that it was meant to be secret. Since such an action would never go unnoticed, it's obvious that it wasn't meant to be secret, so that word is clearly misplaced. If the author wanted to imply it was bad, they should just come out and say it, with a word like despicably.

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

#57

Post by derefr »

heavyset_go wrote: post #25
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…

They don't want developers choosing to target older Unity versions for their games, they want to milk cent they can out of their users.

Then just specify that new greenfield projects created after [date] won’t be licensed for previous versions of the engine, and that anyone with a project currently in development has until [date] to register their existing use.

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

#58

Post by glinkot »

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…

This reminds me of the old Simpsons ep where Homer realises their pet elephant costs a lot and decides to retrospectively update pricing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uQNPS9v_VU

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

#59

Post by CSSer »

glinkot wrote: post #58
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…

This reminds me of the old Simpsons ep where Homer realises their pet elephant costs a lot and decides to retrospectively update pricing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uQNPS9v_VU

Wow, this should be higher. It’s perfect. I don’t think someone could even find an XKCD more relevant.

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

#60

Post by gmerc »

bhouston wrote: post #16
gmerc wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 run-time fee, similar to Unreal Engine. No no, you don’t understand, that’s exactly what they want

It does appear to be what they want, but it is also very likely unenforcible retroactively. So it is likely that they are currently paying the steep repetitional costs of this move without making anywhere close to the additional income that they wanted from this move.

You are mistaking what the CEO and the VCs want with what a long term stable company would want.

The incentives don’t work that way. The CEO gets his bonus and ability to sell shares if he pleases VCs and VCs are looking for bagholders for the company. So the CEO creates a revenue narrative to sell to institutional investors so they take an increasingly mediocre asset from the VCs at a premium.

The pattern is all around, exactly the same as Reddit for example.

As a game designer - there is zero built in incentives for the C level of a publicly listed company to do what’s good for the company long term. It’s much better to get rich quick and cash out.

It’s just that the desperation is now now sky high and narratives for the next earnings call need to be generated quickly

Post reply on HN