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Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

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Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#451

Post by Spivak »

TMM2K wrote: post #3
makomk wrote: post #2

Much as I love open source and the Godot engine, this seems more like a wake-up call on the importance of corporations not being able to unilaterally, retroactively change contracts in ways that impose new charges and violate existing contractual commitments that others have relied on. If they can do that then open source doesn't offer much real protection.

Open source is that protection. There's no way for an open source project to change their terms that drastically. The whole hasicorp disaster is a prime example of that. Terraform is forked and continues on like normal, users are not impacted. For programming platforms (like game engines) this is even MORE of an advantage, as with something like terraform you could conceivably rewrite your stuff in a matter of weeks…

> Terraform is forked and continues on like normal, users are not impacted.

That's a massive overstatement of the current state of OpenTF right now. Plus they're still dependent on Hashicorp's hosting which also changed their license terms in response to the project.

You're right that because it's OSS you can do this kind of thing where it wouldn't be possible at all in a proprietary system but "just fork" requires a community to organize around it. Without a bunch of backing orgs this wouldn't have happened.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#452

Post by paulmd »

Matl wrote: post #431
zoogeny wrote: post #412

I think we are starting to see the cracks in the utopic vision of open source. I know it sounds very harsh, but I feel the vast majority of people complaining about these kind of situations are people who want the benefit of the tremendous engineering accomplishment of a game engine like Unity without contributing or paying in any way. Somehow people have convinced themselves that just using a technology is equivalen…

> I feel the vast majority of people complaining about these kind of situations are people who want the benefit of the tremendous engineering accomplishment of a game engine like Unity without contributing or paying in any way. I just want to point out that the biggest non-contributors to open-source are the enterprise companies you either never or barely heard about, whose entire stacks run on tons of open source an…

just wrote a reply here that could have been a response to this comment ;)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37525456

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#453

Post by doctorpangloss »

miragecraft wrote: post #340

The logic that Epic and Unreal Engine will do something similar as Unity doesn't track for me. The argument hinges on the premise that Epic, who operates their own game store and is courting developers aggressively with generous revenue split, is willing to burn their bridge with developers for questionable increase in profit; in addition it presumes that the plain old revenue share model that Unreal Engine utiltizes…

I get that you're writing stylized speculations but in my experience in the games industry, every single point is wrong. It is the most upvoted comment because it touches on a bunch of first-principles-know-nothing boogeymen, but so it goes with Hacker News nowadays. You can keep reading to find out why, or whatever, my dog in this race is (1) I use Unity (2) I don't think they're going to change anything about these terms except maybe the installs issue (3) and the vast majority of people will continue to be unaffected by these pricing changes.

If people want to spend their breath agitating for something, it's to get Unity to share the source code for a lower price. That would actually help me make better games. At the scale where Unity pricing matters, the engine costs will take away from marketing spend.

> ...the only reason Unity went this route is because they don't want to... break the promise of no revenue share/royalty pledge... too many headcounts... privately held [is good and public is bad]... says a lot.

Ultimately there's no alternative to Unity right now as an engine. You can certainly believe there is. It's a complex piece of software and target platforms and technology are always changing, so it's understandable that it is expensive to develop.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#454

Post by paulmd »

berkle4455 wrote: post #423
zoogeny wrote: post #412

I think we are starting to see the cracks in the utopic vision of open source. I know it sounds very harsh, but I feel the vast majority of people complaining about these kind of situations are people who want the benefit of the tremendous engineering accomplishment of a game engine like Unity without contributing or paying in any way. Somehow people have convinced themselves that just using a technology is equivalen…

Nah, we used and paid for Unity because the licensing structure we signed on with made sense. They’re literally changing the terms on us in a way we cannot push back against. Games made years ago are subject to this new fee structure. Games which are no longer sold at the same nominal price and a massive existing install base who anytime they reinstall our game we get the privilege of paying Unity each time forever.

> Nah, we used and paid for Unity because the licensing structure we signed on with made sense. They’re literally changing the terms on us in a way we cannot push back against. Games made years ago are subject to this new fee structure.

and you can still do this with the software codebase released before april 3rd, you just don't get ongoing development.

this may, of course, involve rollbacks etc, you need to rebase onto the older version not the one that's been out for the last 5 months. But the license does explicitly allow you to do this.

> Unity may update these Unity Software Additional Terms at any time for any reason and without notice (the “Updated Terms”) and those Updated Terms will apply to the most recent current-year version of the Unity Software, provided that, if the Updated Terms adversely impact your rights, you may elect to continue to use any current-year versions of the Unity Software (e.g., 2018.x and 2018.y and any Long Term Supported (LTS) versions for that current-year release) according to the terms that applied just prior to the Updated Terms (the “Prior Terms”). The Updated Terms will then not apply to your use of those current-year versions unless and until you update to a subsequent year version of the Unity Software (e.g. from 2019.4 to 2020.1).

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#455

Post by linuxftw »

chambored wrote: post #439
linuxftw wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running out of ammo and instant payment sounds a lot like an arcade, which is how video games became commercially successful in the first place.

But imagine having to do that if you owned the arcade game.

If there's an EULA, do you really own it?

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#456

Post by DrBenCarson »

jorvi wrote: post #194
pdpi wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart Tim Sweeney founded Epic and wrote the Unreal engine himself. John Riccitiello’s whole career is in management. Even if they’re both entirely motivated by profit, they have different perspectives on how to get there. Also, Unity is a public company, while Epic is private. Even though Tencent owns a considerable share of the company, Sweeney still holds over…

The same Tim Cook that tries to make iPhones as unrepairable as possible? :) Don’t fall for feelgood greenwashing.

Pretty sure repairability has been getting dramatically better the last couple generations. The entire back panel is replaceable on 15s

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#457

Post by bigfishrunning »

marcosdumay wrote: post #312
makomk wrote: post #2

Much as I love open source and the Godot engine, this seems more like a wake-up call on the importance of corporations not being able to unilaterally, retroactively change contracts in ways that impose new charges and violate existing contractual commitments that others have relied on. If they can do that then open source doesn't offer much real protection.

Copyright laws are all completely out of balance and stupid. As a rule, corporations can not retroactively change contracts. If this one is legal (I wouldn't try to guess), it will be because of the EULA rules.

I am absolutely sure that the EULA stated they reserve the right to make this sort of pricing change. Every EULA does.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#458

Post by josephcsible »

ahoka wrote: post #37
TMM2K wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source is that protection. There's no way for an open source project to change their terms that drastically. The whole hasicorp disaster is a prime example of that. Terraform is forked and continues on like normal, users are not impacted. For programming platforms (like game engines) this is even MORE of an advantage, as with something like terraform you could conceivably rewrite your stuff in a matter of weeks…

“There's no way for an open source project to change their terms that drastically.” Like going from GPLv2 to GPLv3 or straight to AGPL, so now you are stuck with an old version forever? Yeah, that would never happen!

Contrast "you are stuck with an old version forever" with "you can't use the program at all anymore, not even old versions of it".

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#459

Post by bigfishrunning »

kaliqt wrote: post #65
objclxt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the fact that they are trying to break the Gplay/Apply monopoly shows that the Epic games leadership are not corporate piranhas like Unity's. Epic is not doing this out of the goodness of their heart, they're doing it because it is beneficial to them. Epic is a multi-billion dollar corporation part owned by a massive conglomerate. > BS: in reality it's usually one or two guys who actually do the actual work. Over t…

Epic is mainly owned by its founder. They are not primarily corporate though they are influenced by it. They are 100% more trustworthy than Unity or other corporate game companies.

Until Tim Sweeney sells the company, or dies, or whatever. Enter any contract you like, but know that those contracts outlast the people who executed them.

Re: Unity’s new pricing: A wake-up call on the importance of open source

#460

Post by Vt71fcAqt7 »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #453
miragecraft wrote: post #340

The logic that Epic and Unreal Engine will do something similar as Unity doesn't track for me. The argument hinges on the premise that Epic, who operates their own game store and is courting developers aggressively with generous revenue split, is willing to burn their bridge with developers for questionable increase in profit; in addition it presumes that the plain old revenue share model that Unreal Engine utiltizes…

I get that you're writing stylized speculations but in my experience in the games industry, every single point is wrong. It is the most upvoted comment because it touches on a bunch of first-principles-know-nothing boogeymen, but so it goes with Hacker News nowadays. You can keep reading to find out why, or whatever, my dog in this race is (1) I use Unity (2) I don't think they're going to change anything about these…

>Ultimately there's no alternative to Unity right now as an engine.

How can you say that when unreal exists? They are dominant in PC and even used in many large mobile games.

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