This could have been done in a much better fashion to achieve the long term desired outcome (more income) while also ensuring continued trust and transparency with their community.
Simply, they could have not made this retroactive on existing released games. Rather just be clear that going forward, games build using the new Unity versions would have a per-installation fee. And they would slowly discontinue support for the older versions on a specific schedule.
There are new devices coming out like the new Switch, the Apple Vision Pro, and then the new features Unity is adding like AI, just add those to the new versions that have the run-time fee. People will upgrade to it on their own terms!
By making it retroactive and forcing it on everyone, they have basically screwed over their existing customers who shipped games expecting a certain cost structure and now it is higher.
Deleting this GitHub license archive repo where they make it clear that their license changes are likely unenforceable is icing on the cake.
EDIT: To remove the claim that Unreal Engine had a similar per-install fee, it doesn't.
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 once the lifetime gross revenue from that product exceeds $1 million USD; in other words, the first $1 million will be royalty-exempt.”
Some mobile games have a ton of installs and a very small amount of revenue per user. Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible.
> Simply, they could have not made this retroactive
How can they make this apply retroactively though? For already shipped titles, if I'm no longer providing updates anymore, how can they force me to pay money?
I'm aware that games no longer have a final shipping date, with early access and all, and as a dev I'd likely would want to offer continued support in such a scenario.
But the way I understand it from the overall public reaction, is that they're trying to charge customers for existing titles, retroactively, in perpetuity going onward. This would be a one sided ToS change which only benefits them, which they push the customer into agreeing. Such a practice is mostly unenforceable in a lot of jurisdictions around the world.
This whole debacle is unreal (pun intended?). I don’t think they’ll be able to enforce this the way they hope to. For example they want to be paid for unity games in subscription services, like xbox gamepass. Meanwhile M$ lawyers are rubbing their hands together in anticipation.
They’re going to (already have) damaged their reputation beyond repair. This isn’t typical consumer strong arm tactics. Their clients are businesses who already have alternatives. If one of my vendors abruptly changed our agreement like this, there’s no question I’d quietly phase them out ASAP.
> Rather just be clear that going forward, games build using the new Unity versions would have a per-installation fee
I would still oppose it because I don't want every installer to spy on me as a user. I'm glad it happened in a way that spurred so much resistance instead of a slow frog-boil.
> Simply, they could have not made this retroactive on existing released games. Rather just be clear that going forward, games build using the new Unity versions would have a run-time fee, similar to Unreal Engine.
No no, you don’t understand, that’s exactly what they want
I’ve been asking the exact same question. There is so clearly a better way to have handled this whole thing it makes you wonder whether the person in charge of this transition is simply incompetent, or actually negligent. If I were a shareholder, I might consider suing.
This video[1] talks a bit about this from a lawyer's point of view and is a really good overview.
For people who are not paying as much attention to this I'd like to summarize the main points of frustration.
1. Unity has just shown they believe they are able, and they are willing, to change the terms on what you have to pay them. What are the bounds to terms like this? What if Unity is tight on money and decide to squeeze developers further? The risk to continuing business with Unity is very high as you have unknown future exposure.
2. The monetization model they've chosen is tied to installs, not revenue. On the initial day of announcement they even claimed re-installs would count but they've since walked that back (or "clarified a miscommunication"). Unity has been extremely wishy-washy on how they even plan to track this mentioning proprietary systems they can't elaborate on and your only recourse is to appeal if you think they got the numbers wrong. This is not a metric tied to your revenue and is difficult to plan around.
There are a lot of people arguing against a strawman of people who don't want to pay unity but that is not at all what this is about. Unity chose a terrible model they can't even explain for how they want to bill people and apply it to all past games that use the engine for all future sales.
This would be similar to if Microsoft said everyone who ever built anything on C# has to start paying a fee for every future install because it includes the .net runtime.
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.
>Unity has been extremely wishy-washy on how they even plan to track this mentioning proprietary systems they can't elaborate on and your only recourse is to appeal if you think they got the numbers wrong.
They must know that their methods will ultimately be revealed during discovery during the inevitable lawsuits. So I’m wondering if they haven’t actually figured out how they’re doing it yet.
I am curious -- if you are a business and buy Google Ads, and they tell you how many impressions and clicks you got, are those numbers verifiable? How effective is it at filtering out "bad" clicks, like the ones from a competitor who wants to exhaust your ad money? Is the situation similar?
Not sure why I watched the whole hour's worth of content as I'm not involved tbh, but what I gather is that the whole speech amounts to, in essence, "yes it's legal (unless you want to appeal to empathy from a court); however, Unity is saying that they'll tell you how much you owe them and you have no way of verifying it, so with these one-sided changes blemishing trust while simultaneously asking for your trust in their estimations on how much you owe them... tread carefully"
I posted this a few weeks ago, there’s already a project for tracking the TOS of many companies. This came up when people realized Zoom had done some funny business with their TOS as well. I see Unity isn’t there though, maybe someone should submit a PR.
Perhaps you should repost this periodically. The worst case scenario is that your post is ignored. This idea could become something of a foundation for tracking companies.
IANAL, but I suspect part of what they're trying to hide is that the old terms [0] specify that while they can change the terms at any time, you may opt to use the old terms as long as you don't update the software beyond the current year (2023.x).
That wording is changed in the new terms [1] to say "If the modified Terms are not acceptable to you, your only recourse is to cease using the Services." Just in case you were wondering how one-sided this new agreement is intended to be.
That was my understanding. They did it (or least claim to have made the change, maybe they left in a loop hole) in response to the Spatial OS debacle. They tried to crush competition in their ecosystem through retroactive TOS changes that time too. Some of the community got rightfully up in arms about it, so they reversed and added these long term licenses. But it seems like that was all just lip service, because here we are right back where we were.
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 released, there will be a wave of people shifting their installs which will will generate cost for developers for no return, and windfall profits to Unity for doing absolutely nothing. They get the money even if the user never even opens the app, they just click the button saying "install all my apps from my old device on my new one". Which is what a lot of users will do.
> 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?
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.
For source code, I prefer the Software Heritage archive over the Internet Archive, because it archives the git history, instead of the HTML UI. This particular repo was saved there[0] and was most recently visited 24 Oct 2022, which has two more terms updates.
We are making games in Unity, and paying per developer per month the highest subscription $180+ for any tool we use. The amount is already quite high and grants us license to use Unity.
Their current move is either because they being extremely greedy, or because they're burning a lot of cash. We make simple games, and we're using Unity because of its community support and assets, not because we love Unity, the company. The community moves, we move.
Now if they're changing the terms arbitrarily, and hide that behind the "I agree" button, it proves that they have turned evil. We, along with several other fellow game companies don't support evil, and already migrating our games to Godot. We were prepared for something like this, but didn't anticipate Unity will flip their face this soon. This move only promotes Godot or Unreal; a far more different result than whatever they expected.
There is also Unigine [1] but that has less community around it than Unreal. I am mentioning it because I think it should be known more. It was started by a single russian dev who was initially just writing online tutorials on various OpenGL and physics stuff (frustum.org). Then he decided to make a commercial engine and started a company. Of course their engine evolved a lot since and they have a team of devs now and are no longer based in Russia (and the original dev is no longer in their team I think?). I am impressed by what they have achieved (it must have been super-hard especially in the beginning) and that they continue developing it and the graphical output is quite competitive to the major engines. They are also known for various graphical benchmarks.
I'm a little confused here. If I released a game a couple years ago when the terms explicitly stated that Unity couldn't retroactively update them but now they changed the no retroactive updates clause, how can they try to apply this when that violates the terms I agreed to?
I'm surprised they even had such a repo public in the first place.
Every year Apple releases a new version of their Apple Developer Program License Agreement and Paid Applications agreement. I always download both as TXT files and diff against the previous one to see what changed. I practically don't even need to read any of the WWDC news to know what new things they are releasing.
Adobe put a silent kill switch into Flash player, rendering 10 years worth of casual games I'd written immediately unplayable. As a result of Adobe's actions, a whole sector of lone devs and small teams turned to Unity to build games that would've otherwise been built in AS3. I'm glad I didn't end up going that route, but I really feel for the folks who are now getting screwed again.
I just got started learning about Flash so I could mod Starfield’s UI. The kill switch thing actually disgusted me, like I had to re-read the article explaining it because I couldn’t believe it was possible, let alone thinkable. All that history, just gone. I spent so many hours in the computer lab at school playing Flash games, man. Glad Ruffle exists.
Was it a time based thing that applies to everyone or something?
Asking because a friend is playing a lot of ancient flash games recently using Ruffle (OSS flash player written in Rust), and doesn't seem to be having problems like that.
Just a side thought related to this: can there be a community supported initiative to parse what TOS documents of different companies mean, and specifically, what to watch out for in each company's TOS vis-a-vis what is the norm in a certain industry?
Right now, the "gotcha" power is entirely one-sided. A wiki-like approach towards documenting TOS might make the user better aware of what to really watch out for when using a particular software.
When I've made enough money, I would like to retire and just develop a free-2-play game. No intention of it making any money. I would happily pay a few thousand dollars for a good engine for that - like Unity. But I would not want to take the risk that my free game becomes wildly successful and suddenly costs me millions. It is very unfortunate, but I will now spend the weekend to learn Godot.
An under-discussed aspect of this pricing structure is the number of older games that will simply be pulled from the (virtual) shelves. I've already seen a few and I fear more devs will follow suit.
The ripples and unintended consequences of this move could really be significant for years.
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. Invest in the alternarives you idiots, don't wait until it's too late. You won't garner any sympathy when they tighten the strings.
Switching mid development is already prohibitively difficult and you’re talking about putting eggs in multiple baskets as if you could easily mix and match different engines.
As for alternatives, there aren’t that many with feature parity (or close to it), especially not one that is FOSS.
You can mock people all you want with your disingenuous “unity is better” quote, but the sad reality is that for anything serious it’s going to be either Unity or Unreal.
Even Godot, which is arguably the most fleshed out FOSS option, isn’t viable in its current state and they themselves know it[0].
So spare me the ill conceived “I told you so” nonsense.
[+] [-] bhouston|2 years ago|reply
Simply, they could have not made this retroactive on existing released games. Rather just be clear that going forward, games build using the new Unity versions would have a per-installation fee. And they would slowly discontinue support for the older versions on a specific schedule.
There are new devices coming out like the new Switch, the Apple Vision Pro, and then the new features Unity is adding like AI, just add those to the new versions that have the run-time fee. People will upgrade to it on their own terms!
By making it retroactive and forcing it on everyone, they have basically screwed over their existing customers who shipped games expecting a certain cost structure and now it is higher.
Deleting this GitHub license archive repo where they make it clear that their license changes are likely unenforceable is icing on the cake.
EDIT: To remove the claim that Unreal Engine had a similar per-install fee, it doesn't.
[+] [-] umpalumpaaa|2 years ago|reply
“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 once the lifetime gross revenue from that product exceeds $1 million USD; in other words, the first $1 million will be royalty-exempt.”
Some mobile games have a ton of installs and a very small amount of revenue per user. Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible.
[+] [-] awesomeMilou|2 years ago|reply
How can they make this apply retroactively though? For already shipped titles, if I'm no longer providing updates anymore, how can they force me to pay money?
I'm aware that games no longer have a final shipping date, with early access and all, and as a dev I'd likely would want to offer continued support in such a scenario.
But the way I understand it from the overall public reaction, is that they're trying to charge customers for existing titles, retroactively, in perpetuity going onward. This would be a one sided ToS change which only benefits them, which they push the customer into agreeing. Such a practice is mostly unenforceable in a lot of jurisdictions around the world.
[+] [-] glinkot|2 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uQNPS9v_VU
[+] [-] rapind|2 years ago|reply
They’re going to (already have) damaged their reputation beyond repair. This isn’t typical consumer strong arm tactics. Their clients are businesses who already have alternatives. If one of my vendors abruptly changed our agreement like this, there’s no question I’d quietly phase them out ASAP.
[+] [-] coder543|2 years ago|reply
Another comment already said this, but I feel it's worth emphasizing: Unreal Engine does not have a runtime fee. You don't pay per install.
[+] [-] Lammy|2 years ago|reply
I would still oppose it because I don't want every installer to spy on me as a user. I'm glad it happened in a way that spurred so much resistance instead of a slow frog-boil.
[+] [-] gmerc|2 years ago|reply
No no, you don’t understand, that’s exactly what they want
[+] [-] dcow|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zerocrates|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gmjosack|2 years ago|reply
For people who are not paying as much attention to this I'd like to summarize the main points of frustration.
1. Unity has just shown they believe they are able, and they are willing, to change the terms on what you have to pay them. What are the bounds to terms like this? What if Unity is tight on money and decide to squeeze developers further? The risk to continuing business with Unity is very high as you have unknown future exposure.
2. The monetization model they've chosen is tied to installs, not revenue. On the initial day of announcement they even claimed re-installs would count but they've since walked that back (or "clarified a miscommunication"). Unity has been extremely wishy-washy on how they even plan to track this mentioning proprietary systems they can't elaborate on and your only recourse is to appeal if you think they got the numbers wrong. This is not a metric tied to your revenue and is difficult to plan around.
There are a lot of people arguing against a strawman of people who don't want to pay unity but that is not at all what this is about. Unity chose a terrible model they can't even explain for how they want to bill people and apply it to all past games that use the engine for all future sales.
This would be similar to if Microsoft said everyone who ever built anything on C# has to start paying a fee for every future install because it includes the .net runtime.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGMrebXypJo
[+] [-] brundolf|2 years ago|reply
Literally "I am altering the deal, pray I do not alter it any further"
[+] [-] readyplayernull|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brazzledazzle|2 years ago|reply
They must know that their methods will ultimately be revealed during discovery during the inevitable lawsuits. So I’m wondering if they haven’t actually figured out how they’re doing it yet.
[+] [-] d3w4s9|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucb1e|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] janalsncm|2 years ago|reply
https://github.com/OpenTermsArchive/contrib-versions
[+] [-] michaelteter|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshspankit|2 years ago|reply
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37517378
[+] [-] lolinder|2 years ago|reply
That wording is changed in the new terms [1] to say "If the modified Terms are not acceptable to you, your only recourse is to cease using the Services." Just in case you were wondering how one-sided this new agreement is intended to be.
[0] Section 8, "Modifications": https://web.archive.org/web/20201111183311/https://github.co...
[1] https://unity.com/legal/terms-of-service
[+] [-] harles|2 years ago|reply
Overview of the Spatial OS stuff for those that didn’t follow it: https://www.engadget.com/2019-01-10-unity-improbable-epic-ga...
[+] [-] zmmmmm|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bhouston|2 years ago|reply
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?
[+] [-] johnfernow|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rolph|2 years ago|reply
https://web.archive.org/web/20220716084623/https://github.co...
[+] [-] thaliaarchi|2 years ago|reply
I have created a mirror of this more up-to-date version at https://github.com/thaliaarchi/unity-termsofservice.
Here's how to “cook”[1] an archive from the vault, if you want to do it yourself:
[0]: https://archive.softwareheritage.org/browse/origin/directory...[1]: https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/vault/git-bare/do...
[+] [-] ivanmontillam|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] EMCymatics|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] njsubedi|2 years ago|reply
Their current move is either because they being extremely greedy, or because they're burning a lot of cash. We make simple games, and we're using Unity because of its community support and assets, not because we love Unity, the company. The community moves, we move.
Now if they're changing the terms arbitrarily, and hide that behind the "I agree" button, it proves that they have turned evil. We, along with several other fellow game companies don't support evil, and already migrating our games to Godot. We were prepared for something like this, but didn't anticipate Unity will flip their face this soon. This move only promotes Godot or Unreal; a far more different result than whatever they expected.
[+] [-] neop1x|2 years ago|reply
[1] https://unigine.com/
[+] [-] blendergeek|2 years ago|reply
This seems extremely shady.
[+] [-] zeroimpl|2 years ago|reply
Every year Apple releases a new version of their Apple Developer Program License Agreement and Paid Applications agreement. I always download both as TXT files and diff against the previous one to see what changed. I practically don't even need to read any of the WWDC news to know what new things they are releasing.
[+] [-] jamiek88|2 years ago|reply
It'd be awesome if someone automated that and threw it up on github but that's just me being lazy.
[+] [-] noduerme|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hawkguy|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] justinclift|2 years ago|reply
Was it a time based thing that applies to everyone or something?
Asking because a friend is playing a lot of ancient flash games recently using Ruffle (OSS flash player written in Rust), and doesn't seem to be having problems like that.
[+] [-] sn41|2 years ago|reply
Right now, the "gotcha" power is entirely one-sided. A wiki-like approach towards documenting TOS might make the user better aware of what to really watch out for when using a particular software.
[+] [-] Gembobo|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cookiengineer|2 years ago|reply
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/16hnibp/unity_sile...
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20220716084623/https://github.co...
[+] [-] agar|2 years ago|reply
The ripples and unintended consequences of this move could really be significant for years.
[+] [-] matkoniecz|2 years ago|reply
they can continue using old terms of service if they do not upgrade
Unity is trying to hide this.
[+] [-] sleepybrett|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] downWidOutaFite|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jauntywundrkind|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] noobermin|2 years ago|reply
Same goes for youtube, discord, zoom, aws. Invest in the alternarives you idiots, don't wait until it's too late. You won't garner any sympathy when they tighten the strings.
[+] [-] turquoisevar|2 years ago|reply
Switching mid development is already prohibitively difficult and you’re talking about putting eggs in multiple baskets as if you could easily mix and match different engines.
As for alternatives, there aren’t that many with feature parity (or close to it), especially not one that is FOSS. You can mock people all you want with your disingenuous “unity is better” quote, but the sad reality is that for anything serious it’s going to be either Unity or Unreal.
Even Godot, which is arguably the most fleshed out FOSS option, isn’t viable in its current state and they themselves know it[0].
So spare me the ill conceived “I told you so” nonsense.
0: https://godotengine.org/article/whats-missing-in-godot-for-a...
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bee_rider|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] accrual|2 years ago|reply