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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

#141

Post by jkaplowitz »

tjpnz wrote: post #96
numpad0 wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That and/or they wanted to set up existing games. Something like 1 in 5 of top 50 iOS games, free-to-play and majority Asian(Chinese or Japanese), are making banks and on Unity. Personally I’m wondering if Chinese gamedev industry would “buy Godot” or do something to that effect. Japanese publishers won’t be able to do that nor would be willing to pay, so I’m guessing they’ll migrate existing to UE or wind down Unity…

Why couldn't Japanese publishers buy Godot (assuming that they even could)?

The seller that would be necessary is a legal non-profit foundation in the Netherlands, and currently for at least some important assets like the Godot trademark in the US, also a long-standing US 501(c)(3) public charity focused broadly on free software which is not controlled by the Godot team. These non-profits would usually not be legally allowed to subvert the purpose of the organization / the project in this way, based on their approved non-profit mission, and the relevant non-profit regulators could slap them down in court if they do.

Additionally the copyright isn’t even owned by those organizations but rather retained in full by all of the many individual contributors to Godot, without a Contributor License Agreement.

So any for-profit corporate acquirer would not be able to get the Godot name, and if they didn’t want to have to comply with the Godot copyright license, they’d have to get the agreement of every individual contributor whose work they don’t want to rewrite.

In short, they are safe from acquisition in the same way that Debian is, unlike most corporate-sponsored or small-team personally-owned “open source” projects that we see here on Hacker News.

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

#142

Post by Auracle »

gnopgnip wrote: post #36
umpalumpaaa wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that they did it retroactively and they also added a per install/download fee. So if your game has 1mio installs you pad the install fee x 1 Million. Unreal has no install fee like this. “A 5% royalty is due only if you are distributing an off-the-shelf product that incorporates Unreal Engine code (such as a game). Provided that you notify us on time using the Release Form, you will only owe royalties…

If you pay $2k for unit pro it’s a max of 15 cents an install, actually less. And you pay nothing for installs until $1m in revenue and 1m installs in the previous 12 months

That’s $2k, per seat, per year.

Which you now need to pay to get rid of the Unity splash screen. Why they haven’t learned the lesson of only poor developers (and therefore, largely shovelware and bad games) showing their splash screen is a really bad idea I’ll never understand. I suppose this will technically help with that.

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

#143

Post by Auracle »

labster wrote: post #115
bhouston wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What I hate most about this is that it puts unbounded liability onto developers. And Unity can continue to raise the per-installation price as well. If they lose a bunch of customers but want to maintain their current income, why not raise it to $1 instead of just $0.27?

I’m pretty sure that would be an unconscionable contract at $1, not a mere unethical contract. The latter is legal, the former is not.

Wouldn’t that depend on the income of the developer vs. how many installs they get? Surely even $.20 for someone that has a hit mobile game that sells for $.99 would be unconscionable. After App Store fees and accounting for potential multiple installs it could halve their income.

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

#144

Post by danielbln »

brundolf wrote: post #92
harles wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hope so, but if it’s likely to get smacked down by the FTC, it’s unlikely Unity would try this path. I’m sure this has been in the works for a long time and all the backlash was anticipated - they just expect huge profits on the other side.

We'll see I guess! But even if it's not illegal the shortsightedness is staggering, which makes me question if leadership would have even foreseen legal problems

Well, about that: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/unity-software-incs-president...

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

#145

Post by gmerc »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #97
gmerc wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 aro…

This comment makes no sense considering Unity is a publicly traded company.

They are heavily invested by VCs who need to find bagholders to buy their shares. That’s the point.

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

#146

Post by johnfernow »

gmjosack wrote: post #65
readyplayernull wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might have well devised the first of its kind "ransom by installations" in the history of software, by making it possible for attackers to fake mass installations and get gamedevs into fatal debts. And they are taking the executioner role.

We've been calling it "Install Bombing" after the common abusive practice of review bombing. Unity claims they have anti-fraud systems in place and you can always appeal with their fraud team but I don't have an reason to blindly trust a black box that when fails makes Unity more money and puts the burden on me to prove otherwise.

It is completely impossible to keep track of DRM-free games being distributed illegally on private trackers that they are not members of, and there are surely tons of private trackers that are not mentioned on the public web that no one at Unity is aware of. Short of spying on the entire world (and processing all that info), it's impossible to keep track of people sharing DRM-free games illegally on USB and hard drives with their friends, or on private folders through Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. accounts.

So unless their anti-fraud system is asking Valve, Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo, Apple, Google, Epic, GOG, itch.io, etc. how many downloads have occurred (no chance that they'll all agree to that), then their system is just going to make a guess, which they'll charge you for, and hope that holds up in court.

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

#147

Post by [deleted] »

noobermin wrote: post #116

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. Same goes for youtube, discord, zoom, aws…

[deleted]

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

#148

Post by johnfernow »

zmmmmm wrote: post #73

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 rel…

Actually, making it unavailable wouldn't even solve the problem, as once you purchase a game, even if it is no longer for sale on Steam, you can still redownload it, including to new devices.

So if you've ever released a Unity game (even if it hasn't been updated in years), even if you delist your game from the store today, presumably you could still get charged if people who already own your game reinstall it.

I'm not a lawyer, but I really don't see how that'd hold up in court — you created a product under different terms years ago, and now your product, which isn't even for sale, can be charged for something that your business has no control over. Even if the ToS says Unity reserves the right to change their fees, I don't see how that can apply to products that aren't even being sold anymore.

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

#149

Post by p1necone »

gmjosack wrote: post #65
readyplayernull wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might have well devised the first of its kind "ransom by installations" in the history of software, by making it possible for attackers to fake mass installations and get gamedevs into fatal debts. And they are taking the executioner role.

We've been calling it "Install Bombing" after the common abusive practice of review bombing. Unity claims they have anti-fraud systems in place and you can always appeal with their fraud team but I don't have an reason to blindly trust a black box that when fails makes Unity more money and puts the burden on me to prove otherwise.

All it takes is a few botnets over a decently distributed ip range to make this whole thing basically impossible.

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

#150

Post by Ylpertnodi »

white_dragon88 wrote: post #100
CSSer wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

XKCD is super overrated. Cringe at times, banal at others.

....amd yet referenced so often.
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