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

ramatak.com

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

#711

Post by prmoustache »

charcircuit wrote: post #703
prmoustache wrote: post #697

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes you can but still need to mention the original licence and copyright notice. But your end product can be proprietary, or released under other license such as the GPLv3.

You can not chance the license of code you do not own.

But you own the modifications of your code so you can still license your derived work as closed as you want as long you as you obey the original MIT license terms which consists only mentionning it and keeping original copyright notice.

That is what all company selling proprietary products that include MIT and BSD licensed codes do. Usually the jist include a file called "third party copyright notice" with the product ad well as an entry in the "about" section of their gui.

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

#712

Post by dns_snek »

TylerE wrote: post #687
flangola7 wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Protect them from what?

Reputational damage. Big part of the appeal of consoles is “it just works”. That falls apart of you start letting random shovelware devs ship whatever.

Ok? What does that have to do with the SDK?

Having access to the SDK doesn't give you unfettered access to publish on their stores. It only allows you to write and compile code targeting their hardware/runtime.

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

#713

Post by agentgumshoe »

cornstalks wrote: post #326
agentgumshoe wrote: post #303

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What?

iPhones have long support cycles. iOS 17 supports the iPhone XS/XR, which were released 5 years ago. So iPhone users don't have to replace their phone as much, reducing environmental impact. Plus with the recycling and other stuff used to make iPhones in the first place, their environmental impact is going to be lower than some other options on the market. Combine these two things together (longer device life, smalle…

Phew, there I was thinking Apple do their best to make sure customers buy the new phone every year, but glad to hear it's not happening thanks to Apple.

I mean, Apple should just release a new model every five years and really get that footprint down...

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

#714

Post by baobabKoodaa »

RugnirViking wrote: post #694
baobabKoodaa wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are proposing is literally impossible. If I were to comb through every ToS and EULA and every other legal text related to tools I use as a developer, I would not have any hours left in the day for, you know, actual development. Even then, I wouldn't have time to read and comprehend all of the legal contracts. Hell, if I stopped sleeping entirely and spent 24 hours a day combing through legal contracts, I sti…

what use are contracts if buisnesses refuse to read them. Sure you as an employee might not but if you're running a company you really ought to read it on your key software. We're not talking about an email provider, its the key engine you're using. It's like if you didn't read the contract with the manfuacturer you hired to make your product...

Well, in Finland where I live, ToS and EULA are generally not considered to be "contracts", and for good reason.

I'm confused what you mean by saying that the employees of a business don't need to read these legal texts but that the "business" should read them. The "business" is not a physical life form that has the ability to read, only the employees of a business have that ability, since they are humans (unlike the business entity itself, which is not human). Perhaps your idea was that businesses should hire a team of lawyers whose only job should be to read through the various ToS and EULA legal texts that their other employees merely click-through?

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

#715

Post by BlueTemplar »

pxoe wrote: post #641
BlueTemplar wrote: post #526

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> was it foreseeable? Has Unity ever said anything about turning their software into a platform, for instance asking for monthly/yearly subscriptions instead of a one time fee ? If they did, that's when the devs (and especially teachers of future devs !) should have dropped it as soon as feasible.

platform isn't just about subscriptions, subscriptions don't really make a platform, and overall it'd be kind of a poor tell of whether it's time to jump ship. epic/unreal is kind of a platform (there's a bunch of stuff in their ecosystem that plugs in, etc.), so what, should people jump ship from unreal now

You're right, it's not a sufficient condition (pretty sure Red Hat offers Linux support in subscription form), you also need to have closed source software for a platform.

I don't know about the situation with Unreal, but I would be very wary of using it, considering Epic has been pushing a game Store. (And Unreal's source code is merely source available ?)

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

#716

Post by nhkcode »

0cf8612b2e1e wrote: post #629
mschuster91 wrote: post #595

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The leadership will be ousted by their shareholders quickly enough, I expect. Wouldn't be that certain... there is a lot of stuff built on Unity. The most common theme I heard was that they're trying to capitalize off of Genshin Impact [1], but there's also a ton of other highly successful games like Among Us or Untitled Goose Game that won't/can't (easily) be ported to another engine. In other words, they want to…

Is there an easy way to determine what underlying game engine is used on Steam or the Apple Store? I would love to track new releases for the next N months and see how it compares vs historical. Does utilization fall off a cliff?

I have no clue how accurate that is https://steamdb.info/tech/Engine/Unity/

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

#717

Post by slowhadoken »

hnthrowaway0315 wrote: post #573
slowhadoken wrote: post #567

Godot is completely free but I still suggest trying to write your own small frameworks. A lot of Unity’s code is third party. All their 2d rigid body physics is Erin Catto’s Box2D.

Yup, I always believe writing a simple 2d engine gives a lot of insights about why commercial engines do this or that. Even as simple as a tile based Ultima-spinoff engine, it's still a lot of work.

To a casual developer who wants to implement a simple fun idea it’s overkill but if you love making games it’s essential. You can learn stuff from using video game frameworks too.

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

#718

Post by JuanPosadas »

Gareth321 wrote: post #639
nugget wrote: post #528

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unity seems to be attempting this in the most deceptive and deceitful way possible, establishing the new Runtime Fee and then offering a temporary 100% "waiver" of the fee if you use their other (presumably inferior) products. As soon as the pressure fades, the waiver will be reduced to 50% and then eventually dropped completely - but of course the new fees will remain. They must think the average game developer has…

> They must think the average game developer has no business sense whatsoever. Well if the reports are to be believed, developers were signing agreements with Unity which allowed them to make unilateral changes to fees. If so, devs really do have no business sense.

IANAL. In US contract law, a contract that includes a clause allowing one party to unilaterally change the terms at any time may still be enforceable, but there are limitations. Such clauses are often subject to scrutiny and may be challenged if they are deemed unfair, unconscionable, or against public policy. Courts may consider factors like the balance of power between the parties, the clarity of the clause, and whether there was mutual assent to the changes.

I'm not familiar with the specifics of Unity's usual contracts, but this is the kind of thing that a court might not take Unity's side on.

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

#719

Post by _hypx »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #708
_hypx wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redfall sold disastrously. The days of releasing an incomplete game are apparently over.

okay, and I can point to a dozen games called unfinished that sold fine. We are far from over those days. We're nitpicking at this point. Can we at least go back to the core topic and agree that critics and consumers are generally more sympathetic to games with good graphics?

We are moving past that phase. All of the broken games got terrible reviews and many were immediately abandoned after launch.

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

#720

Post by johnnyanmac »

dvngnt_ wrote: post #418
_hypx wrote: post #413

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a secondary argument in favor of home-grown engines too. It's been very disappointing to see so many game companies abandon their own rendering technology in favor of Unreal. Terrible licensing rules might drive companies to go back to having their own engines.

I feel like each year makes it harder as demands increase

gamers are weird like that. I think you can still be successul without crazy graphics, but the PR you will get around the net will be dreadful because people want to justify their high end rigs or their next gen consoles. And those people are disproportionately more likely to comment.

But you also can't listen too much to the core gaming audience because they also don't think more subtly about what makes a game fun. And despite that PR good looking games can still sell. No wonder the market is so unstable, it's audience is fickle.

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