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Unity backtracks slightly on plans to charge developers for game installs (www.eurogamer.net)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Game development engine Unity has U-turned on some parts of its hugely controversial plan to enforce fees on game creat…

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Every Unity developer is under the same agreement. The changes were not announced to be "moving forward". It's a change to existing licenses to use Unity. For everyone. Everywhere.

I don't know that licensing changes have been retroactive in the past. How do lawyers prevent companies from retroactively changing licensing? My guess would be to sue after the fact, which is probably why these developers are hinting that they're going to suffer economic harm if Unity follows through with this. This statement may be their lawyers doing the work they'd normally do in this kind of circumstance.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

A lot of those licenses are "subject to change" precisely to let the developers bait and switch like that. At best you have a specified time frame from announcement to enforcement, making it not legally speaking retroactive since the old license expires and gets replaced for all licensed material.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

I think that was one of the many issues with Wizard's original OGL debacle is that it was going to be retroactive.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 11 months ago

Then anyone using Unity is crazy. For commercial use, Epic pens deals with each developer as needed for Unreal. Terms include specific duration and royalties for the period, and the version used. All of this is agreed up front so there aren’t any surprises later. I can’t imagine signing an agreement which effectively gives control of revenue to Unity. At that point you don’t have a business. Unity owns your business.