Basically don’t update existing games & stop using Unity completely & you’re good.
No, Unity is still saying they want a cut of old games if they’re ever newly installed.
I’m really hoping some of the bigger Unity devs, like the people that made Rust or Among Us sue, as most of us don’t have enough money to even stand a chance in court against Unity’s lawyers…especially once they have all that nice runtime money to spend. 😒
Does this mean that the “Report on install” feature is already in the old release? It’s a reasonable feature to already have, I assume Unity gives you a handful of statistics “for free” as part of using the engine.
However there is a difference between “installs” the number and “installs” the billing number. A website might have 1,000 page views. So 1,000 users? Well we need unique page views. What makes a page view unique? What if someone visits your website but leaves after 2 seconds, do we count those?
In addition to being a terrible decision I don’t think the company is prepared at all for this decision.
No, they have some magical “proprietary method” for determining those, with additional hand-waving for not counting “illegitimate” installs. Translation: they pull these numbers out of their ass, fuck you.
A pre-sale cut could be considered “reasonable” since there’s a paper trail with real numbers that basically everyone can agree on. Unity is just trying to muddy the waters.
“y’know, maybe Reddit and Twitter are on to something”
-Unity CEO, probably
Lmao when you’re trying to turn your company into a bloodsucking vampire but you forgot that long ago, you told your lawyer to chain the coffin in case this very thing happened.
Facebook (a long time ago), Twitter, Reddit, Google (they even removed the don’t be evil modo), now Unity. Apple being Apple… Arduino going closed source, Raspberry Pi becoming for profit. Samsung, at least never ever even tried to look nice.
“Hey bro, let’s go check out those sirens over there. I swear, bro… just plug your ears with wax and tie me to the bow. Bro, it’ll be so epic.”
Sirens arrive
“Bro, why the fuck did you tie me down?? Smash this goddamn boat against the rocks!”
Perfect analogy, just wanted to say I took this as air sirens at first at it did not make sense lol
I want to know who hired that fucking CEO and put him up to purposefully tank Unity.
This can’t be anything less than a blatant attempt to destroy a company so who would have a vested interest in destroying Unity? It can’t just be for money.
Sadly, there often comes a time when a critical mass of the business leaders decide “you know what, I want to cash out and no matter how disastrous this will be long term, I think short term this will milk some revenue out of some captive audience”.
In the IT industry, that time is usually when Broadcom buys you.
You’ve hurt me right in the vSphere.
What a lot of people at these companies don’t understand is that other options existing means people will find a way to continue without you… The more that happens, the larger the community… the faster you fail.
When Broadcom announced buying VMWare, literally all the IT subreddits in unison looked for other alternatives. We’re on Proxmox now, it’s been a better product than VMWare in literally every way.
It’s also called the trust thermocline. Once a certain level of exploitation is reached, customers leaving suddenly goes very quickly and usually unrecoverable. The straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Or in the case of unity, you smash the poor camel with a baseball bat and are very surprised it tries to bite you.
And this is why we shouldn’t have monopolies. People shouldn’t be held hostage by one or two companies. When they go full stupid like Unity is, the customers grumble, shrug, and get to work with a different system.
I remember at the time that a presentation circulated on a previous Broadcom acquisition, as a preview of what was in store for vmware. I never saw analagous material for vmware exactly, and I can’t remember what Broadcom acquisition it was.
Their analysis was that they predicted their changes would kill off any new business, and kill off 80% of the existing customer base. However, this was fine as the other 20% was so stuck that they could charge more than 5x to make up for it, and all without spending any money on R&D and reducing customer support load.
That’s what everyone is saying but this policy will only cost them from lawsuits, so it can’t just be about money.
It will cost them in future earnings… Companies won’t want to work on their platform if these policies are still in place… and many will never want to work with them again since they’ve shown their hand.
Oh, plenty of business “geniuses” make some pretty boneheaded moves, especially when they feel a need to try to produce huge growth after saturating a market, or if their business results somehow fall short of some need (either actually losing money, or some arbitrary self-imposed “goal” not being hit).
Currently there’s an epidemic of businesses making some pretty dubious long term decisions for the sake of trying to prop up numbers amidst a receding market reality. Recessions are, in part, a self-fulfilling prophecy, where whatever impetus exists, it’s exacerbated by every participant screwing things up further.
Its the same ethos of those CEOs that are demanding everyone must return to the office. No ifs, or buts.
They damage moral which takes years to build up, they further announce layoffs which destroys whatever moral was left.
These idiots never seem to be held accountable.
Honestly, these management types need to be case studied.
We have to start holding them accountable ourselves, because the system sure ain’t gonna do it.
He’s a VC CEO, he’s there to pump the company for everything it’s worth for maximum stock returns.
I just checked the stock ticker for Unity and it fucking tanked. So that can’t be it.
I wouldn’t put it past them to short their own stock while they make announcements then go long once things settle down…
Even though this is bad and many developers won’t want to use Unity, I think there still may be enough devs that will comply and generate more profit.
It is Big Godot pulling the strings to entice people to jump ship to their free and open source game engine. The plan is dastardly, but effective. Can’t use other game engines if there are no other engines left standing.
this means that if Unity sends you a bill, you don’t have to pay it, and if they take you to court, you prove that you’re acting within the terms of the license you agreed to, which keeps your lawyer fees to a manageable level because you already have all the documents you need: the contract and your source code.
I mean right? IANAL.
If it affects your rights then yes. It’s not just that they’re sending a bill. For example, if it is illegal to change a TOS to suddenly charge for something that wasn’t in your jurisdiction then it’s probably affecting “your rights”.
Even then, it only says the current calendar year. They’re making the pricing change on January 1st, right? If so then you’re probably out of luck.
Hm… does that mean that if you download Unity right now, you can use it until you can no longer stand the bugs?
No, because if you download it right now, you’ll be agreeing to the current terms which no longer gives you permission to ignore new terms as they are released.
Up until now, you could continue using the old engine and never agree to newer terms, and that would be defensible in court. Now, even if you do not update and do not click agree, they will still take you to court and send you a bill, which you probably will have to pay.
Use what, Unity or the ToS? Assuming you meant the ToS under the old version you could stop using an updated ToS only if it violated your rights. (Which is such a weird thing to even mention, if a contract violated your rights then it probably already doesn’t apply.) You can stop using Unity whenever you want though because you have free will. Not trying to be sassy about that last point, just explaining why I think I misunderstood you lol.
