Unity Engine ToS change makes cloud-based SpatialOS games illegal • Hacker News Board

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

#61

Post by jasonlotito » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:17 PM UTC

asien wrote: post #18

In September and January of last year Unity raised a considerable amount of cash [0]. It seems like VCs want their growth number up and Unity has a very clear plan to run their engine in the cloud to create artificial growth by being the sole vendor of Unity Multiplayer Hosting. This is the shadiest move I’ve seen in the Industry, even worst than MongoDB. [0] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/unity-technologies

This is not about multiplayer hosting. It's about streaming. Basically, primarily running the engine on a cloud provider and streaming the game to a local client. They even list authorized partners: https://unity3d.com/legal/terms-of-service/software/authoriz...

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

#62

Post by Jugglerofworlds » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:18 PM UTC

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…

I've done a lot of work with multiplayer on Unity. Running a version of the game in the Unity engine as a server is necessary if you want your game to be authoritative to prevent cheating. Fortunately my game uses a custom server that I wrote, but this will be a huge hit to pretty much everyone else.

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

#63

Post by jayd16 » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:19 PM UTC

So what does the TOS change mean exactly? At first glance it sounds like they want a lince see for every instance of the editor running. This doesn't apply to build code deployed on servers does it?

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

#64

Post by ncallaway » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

throwaway2048 wrote: post #53

andrewmcwatters wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Unity's TOS, like many software agreements, stretch retroactively and proactively across versions. If you use Unity, you agree to Unity Technologies terms, and their discretion to change them, without notice. It's literally in the terms. It's not so much software as it is software as a service.

Its highly unlikely that retroactively changing an agreement like that is actually legal.

The agreement that you agreed to previously included terms that stipulated that Unity specifically had the right to unilaterally revise the terms.

If you don't agree with the new terms, you must immediately stop using the product.

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

#65

Post by victorbstan » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:20 PM UTC

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.

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

#66

Post by ac29 » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:21 PM UTC

nothis wrote: post #56

aboutruby wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably the licensing change: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MongoDB#Licensing

What’s the problem here?

It "requires that those making the software publicly available as a service must make the service's source code available under this license".

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

#67

Post by KineticLensman » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:22 PM UTC

jasonlotito wrote: post #58

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…

This is about streaming games. There are other providers that do this that are allowed to: https://unity3d.com/legal/terms-of-service/software/authoriz...

Spatial OS is wholly different from game streaming.

Here is the overview provided by one of Unity's streaming partners Genvid [0]

"Genvid provides an easy to use SDK, with a C interface, which can be used to automatically capture your game content (audio and video), encode it properly (e.g. H264), and to stream it to a service (e.g. YouTube). It also provides routines to send additional game data to spectators (e.g. scores, player profiles, chances of success, etc.), as well as hooks to receive commands coming from them."

In contrast, Spatial OS provides a back-end to a game delivered using Unity:

"SpatialOS is a cloud-based computational platform that lets you use many servers and engines to power a single world. The platform coordinates a swarm of micro-services called workers, which overlap and dynamically reorganize to power a huge, seamless world. The platform also lets you handle a huge number of concurrent players across different devices in one world"

[0] https://www.genvidtech.com/doc/SDK-1.19.0/quicktour/overview...

[1] https://improbable.io/games/tech

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

#68

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:22 PM UTC

bitwize wrote: post #15

This is why I write my own damn engines.

I write my own engines as a hobbiest developer because that's the fun part for me, but it is also nice knowing I never have to rely on some other entity. If I want to port my game to a different platform, I can just do that without waiting for upstream to get around to supporting it, for instance. Hell, even if the language I wrote it in disappears off the face of the earth I can still read the code and rewrite it in a different one.

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

#69

Post by meheleventyone » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:23 PM UTC

ezekg wrote: post #55

jimmaswell wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reads to me like you can still have servers, just without them using the Unity runtime. Is using the Unity runtime for servers common? The multiplayer Unity games that I know of don't do that.

Yes, as far as I know, running a headless version of the game (Unity in "batch mode") is how a lot of (most?) games do dedicated authoritative servers, otherwise your server wouldn't actually be running the same game. Or am I misunderstanding something?

You don’t strictly need to have the same codebase for client and server. If you’re making a slower paced game it’d be wasteful to burn processing power running the full Unity runtime.

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

#70

Post by yodon » Thu, Jan 10, 2019, 5:23 PM UTC

Twitch streaming is pretty important to most gaming markets. This announcement sounds like it also has the result of making twitch streaming against the Unity TOS.

> You may not [distribute Unity or your Unity Project Content via] 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 devices without a separate license or authorization from Unity.