this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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Why the ever loving fuck would any company willingly use a library or framework in their product that uses a subscription model instead of a licensing model? That's absolutely mind blowing. Having critical tools with subscriptions is bad enough, but at least those aren't shipped to customers.
If it's really true that Unity uses a perpetual subscription rather than a license I'm utterly flabbergasted that it ever got as popular as it was.
Companies love subscription pricing and customers keep it up. Lots of software went this route and proved people still want the product. It shouldn't be a surprise
Sure, for services or stuff used internally, but not for things that they're selling to their own customers. Unless a company is also using a subscription model for their software it makes absolutely no sense to use a subscription library in your product, you're putting yourself on the hook for recurring expenses on something you're only receiving income on once. Any way you slice it that's an absolutely braindead decision, and anyone that makes it should be terminated immediately for gross negligence.
Have you used Unity? If you haven't. You'd understand why if you did. Its incredibly easy to use with a vast public storefront people can sell things on. Extremely extensible. Before this bullshit anyway
There were no recurring expenses per-install under the old terms. The only expense was your own, per-developer expense. Als long as you had developer seats you could ship infinite units at no cost. Unity has often said that they were never going to change that. But that was just a pinky promise and wasn't actually in their terms.
I wasn't aware either, but the devs who use this in their product should have known this could happen. Now the question is: did they just not consider the possibility, or is it a known risk because all the engines require a license? In that case, Unity might just very well be the first one to do this, and others will follow suit in the coming years.
It's normal for a engine to have licensing requirements, but those are laid out up front and will typically be defined based on income. So like a pretty common thing would be something approximately like free for the first $10K earned, then 10% for up to $100K, and then 30% for everything past $100K. Importantly though, that's NOT a subscription, it's the terms of the license you agree to in order to use the software, you aren't paying a fee based on time, but rather based on money earned. You can choose to back out of the license at any time, you just need to stop selling the software, and as long as you keep paying the engine developer their cut you can keep on selling copies. Further the terms of the license are what they are when you download the library/framework, and they can't be retroactively changed. If tomorrow they decide to start charging you based on total downloads, you can choose to keep distributing the previous version under the previous license terms based on profits.
Unity on the other hand, has done two things. First they require an ongoing subscription, so if you stop paying for your subscription, technically you're no long allowed to sell your game. Secondly, and much more controversially, they're defining the license based on installs rather than based on earnings, which is tying your debt to actions of your customers rather than your own, which is a very precarious position to be in.
This whole thing reminds me of the D&D shenanigans a few months back where Hasbro tried to retroactively re-define the terms of their "open source" license, and the TTRPG community collectively told Hasbro where they could stick their new license. There are a LOT of parallels here.
Thanks, very comprehensive. So unity developers could have expected this to happen sooner or later. Not the retroactively charging for installs, of course, but the continuous subscription should have been a huge red flag.
Unreal licensing is explicitly tied to the version you use. So if you use Unreal 5.3, you are bound to the license attached to the code for Unreal 5.3.
If that license changes in Unreal 5.4 and you disagree with the new license, you don't need to follow the terms as long as you never move from Unreal 5.3.
Yeah, that sounds much more sane to me. With the Jetbrains IDE (my tools off the trade), you pay an annual subscription and when you stop paying you still get to use the last version you paid for. Apples to oranges, I know, but I sure did check that up front before I bought in to that ecosystem.
We got used to letting one company control everything
Licencing and subscriptions are generally the same thing.
When you get a subscription, you're paying a regular payment to have a licence to use the product. Stop paying? Licence revoked.
In a normal setup, you pay once for a licence.
The terms of the licence dictate how you can use the software, and what happens when you break those rules.
Because it is the best choice financially in the short to medium term and it's pretty much impossible for most businesses to make decisions based on any other factor. Which is why most companies will end up just swallowing this change.