this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Fees of up to $0.20 per install threaten to upend large chunks of the industry.

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[–] [email protected] 111 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I think the worst part of it all is the trust that is irrevocably broken now.
This is obviously a moronic scummy decision driven by greed, but it also goes directly against past decisions. As per this reddit post, Unity actually had a TOS in action that protected Developers against retroactive changes like this. Specifically, it stated that you could choose to continue using old versions of the engine and comply to the old TOS if an update to the TOS that you disagree with ever happened. This specific part of the TOS was deleted last year.

If they actually try to enforce this new crap on already released games (that accepted an older version of the TOS) then it would seem blatantly illegal (I'm not a lawyer though).

Even if they revert everything by tomorrow, the whole fiasco still shows where Unity's current interests are, and make the company a liability to deal with for any game developer.

[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Yeah, this isn't a "I'm never using Twitter again!" kind of fiasco. This has upset Capitalist™®© company heads, who now see Unity as a financial risk. Money tends to have more of a sway than morality.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Apparently Genshin Impact and some Nintendo Games are made in Unity, and there are even some plans to charge Microsoft for Game Pass installs.

I hope Unity's legal team is prepared.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 1 year ago

I hope Unity's legal team is prepared.

I really hope they're not, because this practice needs to crash and burn brightly as a warning beacon to other corpos' grubby fingers.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I hope their anuses are prepared.

Nintendo sure as fuck aren't bringing any lube.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Mental image of "it's a Me!" thrust

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

The only thing better is if Disney's legal department thinks there is a risk...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

Well I mean I wouldn't mind seeing Genshin Impact suffer. They're advertising and fanbase are insufferable. But I've never been a fan of Unity and it's nice to see everybody else getting on board now too.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Unity actually had a TOS in action that protected Developers

No it didn't. It just had words that pretended tk protect developers. TOS are meaningless for anyone other than the service when they can change at will.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Yea, they are useless when being changed at will, but what if the TOS specifically said "You can disregard future TOS versions and still abide by this old one under certain circumstances" ?
You would still be complying with the Terms of Service, by not honoring the new Terms of Service.

Obviously, this is still a terrible situation regardless, but I am thinking about if the old TOS won't give already released games a way out of this BS, or even better, may keep a usable Unity version alive for the future. Long term obviously, as many people as possible should ditch unity entirely, but for right now, it looks like a lot of developers will have big trouble starting in just 3 months.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 year ago

This specific part of the TOS was deleted last year.

Yeah that's fine, what could possibly go wrong?

the trust that is irrevocably broken now

Irrevocably for the next week or so, maybe. People not only put up with but eat up heaps and heaps of BS and never change, so the BS never changes. Oh, Unity's corporate shite. "Shut up, it's fine!" Oh, Unity's being evil. "Shut up, it's fine!" Oh, Unity hired the fucking EA guy. "Shut up, it's fine!" Unity removed protections for devs. "Shut up, it's fine!" Unity wants to charge the fuck out of everycritter per-install. "Oh woe!" ... but any day now it'll be back to "Shut up, it's fine! They just want money, that's what companies are for! It's just capitalism broooo gotta make money, they can't just give stuff away!" like that justifies literally anything.

Blah blah blah. I guess I'll never understand how people can think for-profit companies that repeatedly abuse them are their friends. Maybe that's just me being a clueless lefty free software hippie or whatever, unaware of the benefits of being exploited and shat on then going and white-knighting for the damn companies against real people anyway.

wanders off yappyranting into the void