The developer of superb action-roguelite Cult of the Lamb has threatened to delete the game on January 1 amid a row with game engine company Unity.
Oh dear. The only option left will be to pirate it… And in the new model, the dev might have to pay unity even for pirated installs.
Try to charge me retroactively for anything and see how fast I lawyer up.
Right? How the fuck is it legal to decide that your customers retroactively owe you money just because you unilaterally said so?
Only monetized games have to pay. If they stop selling the game, they shouldn’t be affected anymore.
Also
Does the Unity Runtime Fee apply to pirated copies of games?
We are happy to work with any developer who has been the victim of piracy so that they are not unfairly hurt by unwanted installs.
(source)
As far as I understand (someone correct me if I’m wrong) games that are free / non-commercial and have zero revenue are not affected at all by this, they still don’t have to pay anything regardless of the number of installs.
If the game is no longer being sold (and thus no longer commercial / having revenue), then I expect that even under those new rules Unity would also not charge the dev.
"Will games made with Unity phone-home to track installs?
We will refine how we collect install data over time with a goal of accurately understanding the number of times the Unity runtime is distributed. Any install data will be collected in accordance with our Privacy Policy and applicable privacy laws."
Sounds like they’re gonna add tracking data to the game, so probably pirated installs won’t count
“Will games made with Unity phone-home to track installs?
We will refine how we collect install data over time with a goal of accurately understanding the number of times the Unity runtime is distributed. Any install data will be collected in accordance with our Privacy Policy and applicable privacy laws.”They already do, and fuck you for asking.
What a joke of a response.