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Unity Engine ToS change makes cloud-based SpatialOS games illegal

arstechnica.com

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

#231

Post by andybak »

aphextron wrote: post #206
dave_sullivan wrote: post #92

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…

>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 had their brief shining moment in the sun from 2015-2017 when they were supporting the growing indie scene on Steam, their VR was lightyears ahead of UE4, and UE4 still hadn't gone free-to-use. But with all that Fortnite money now and their…

With a choice between C++ or Blueprints I doubt I'll ever be using Unreal. I might take a look at Godot one day.

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

#232

Post by Hydraulix989 »

aphextron wrote: post #206
dave_sullivan wrote: post #92

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…

>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 had their brief shining moment in the sun from 2015-2017 when they were supporting the growing indie scene on Steam, their VR was lightyears ahead of UE4, and UE4 still hadn't gone free-to-use. But with all that Fortnite money now and their…

Unity has a great asset store with a lot of reusable content (art, models, scripts, shaders, sounds) within their walled garden

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

#233

Post by wokwokwok »

rlp wrote: post #205
dave_sullivan wrote: post #92

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…

Well, I've used both extensively, and they are good at different things. Unreal is far better IF you fit cleanly into one of their templates (first person, third person, etc). Superior renderer with great built-in post effects, FAR better multiplayer support, better materials/shader editor. However, if you try to do something substantially different than they have imagined, it can get ugly very fast. The C++ used is…

The kind of sad thing to me is that I’ve talked to several people who hold UE4 up as a shining example of “modern C++ done right”.

...but it’s really quite a mess when you look closely.

A successful project and “good code” aren’t necessarily the same thing.

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

#234

Post by UnpossibleJim »

poisonarena wrote: post #106
ezekg wrote: 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!

As much as I love Godot (and really truly I do) it does not run as optimized in multiplayer 3D as Unity or UE4,YET! But, it's always looking for talented people to help. It is an open source project that you can code in an offshoot of Python or in C# (which is fairly new, so give it a shot and help them out)... sorry for the plug =)

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

#235

Post by maccard »

ignaloidas wrote: post #192
Arwill wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Without a stable and widely used model format making a game is impossible. You can drag&drop FBX into Unity and Unreal, and its mostly ready for use. Having a broken FBX importer is just a waste of time. You start with a model format, something works, you build a workflow, a system for producing content en masse, and then at some point you must consider throwing away the model format, the workflow and/or the whole en…

Godot doesn't have any broken importers, yet alone FBX which it doesn't have completely for legal reasons. Looking at Collada(.dae) Blender has a super broken exporter, so broken that Godot folks wrote a better one from the frustration. GLTF2 doesn't have enough support, even though it's a good format. The problem is that everyone is just sitting and using proprietary FBX format and don't work towards new open standa…

Sorry but saying "Godot is fine, everything else is broken" isn't really acceptable. If I were to start a 3D project only to find out that importing models didn't work in the game engine I chose, I would move on immediately.

In all honesty (without knowing the specifics of what is broken, I've only ever worked on FBX importers), if Godot want to be taken seriously then they need to be able to import without plugins, warts and all.

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

#236

Post by reitzensteinm »

jamie_ca wrote: post #152
Animats wrote: post #111

So right now we know the "what", but not the "why". What Improbable really has, or claims to have, is a way to scale massively multiplayer games where everyone is in the same world. They have a back end which is basically a synching system for small data elements between computers in a data center. Think of it as being like the way a shared memory multiprocessor synchs its memory system. Some data items belong to a s…

The "why" is apparently "so we can capture that revenue stream". They just launched an alpha of a competing service (autoscaling dedicated servers, on Google's cloud) and apparently want to nix the competition. https://unity.com/solutions/real-time-multiplayer/game-serve...

And I'd bet every penny I have that it's going to be a massive clusterfuck that nobody would freely choose to use. Unity has continuously dropped the ball on multiplayer.

Apparently the Unity executives agree with this, otherwise they wouldn't be trying to strong arm competition away instead of competing on a playing field that's already skewed in their favor.

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

#237

Post by dimgl »

funkaster wrote: post #226

Unity's official response: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/01/10/our-response-to-improba...

So in essence, this doesn't affect anyone except for SaaS platforms that are attempting to release their own products while heavily using Unity's engine within them. Which 100% makes sense. You're building your company based off of someone else's commercial product... You need a specific license for this. GG Improbable

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

#238

Post by dimgl »

bane wrote: post #220
Reedx wrote: post #34

Improbable's response: https://improbable.io/company/news/2019/01/10/unity-blocks-s... "Worryingly, this change occurred during an open commercial negotiation with the company to find a way to do more together." So they had an ongoing negotiation and Unity just went ahead and made the change? Yikes. Also kudos to Improbable for setting up an emergency fund for partners affected by this.

It's funny, I worked for a company that was negotiating a license with improbable and they also changed the terms in the middle and left us hanging. I'm playing a very small violin right now.

That blog post is so slimy. Making Unity look like the bad guy when there's clearly business dealings in the background that the public is unaware of.

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

#239

Post by fomojola »

funkaster wrote: post #226

Unity's official response: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/01/10/our-response-to-improba...

Reading between the lines, it sounds like they only want the game developer to be running Unity on the server, not any other third party. Does this create an opportunity for a professional services outfit to provide maintenance and support for running cloud servers rented by the game developer? Can I put an AMI up in the AWS marketplace and charge for it?

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

#240

Post by beerlord »

victorbstan wrote: post #65

It’s got to be said. I felt unity’s business model was not very friendly to devs because you don’t get access to the source code. Unless you have a very expensive enterprise license. On the other hand, you can get access to unreal engines source code in github for free. Switch to unreal.

Look on Upwork, Freelancer, or other jobs sites. There are 20x as many Unity programmers as Unreal.

C++ is overkill for most tasks. C# is just an easier and safer language to use.

For a small studio, using Unity can be the difference between finding a game programmer or not. Plus there is a much bigger community in case your programmer gets stuck, and more useful assets available on the store.

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