Unity Editor software terms update: Runtime fee cancellation(unity.com)
40 pointsby vyrotek9 months ago9 comments
  • SunlitCat9 months ago
    That's why I'm really skeptical about relying on large game engines. Sure, they offer a lot for a relatively low cost, but being dependent on whatever the developers include in their terms of service—and especially on the things left unsaid or that could be decided in court—makes me hesitant to use one.
    • krapp9 months ago
      This isn't a problem if you use an open source engine that costs nothing and demands nothing. Cough Godot cough.
      • ganoushoreilly9 months ago
        But even that Engine has its own drama / issues surrounding it with devs being locked out of access etc..
        • krapp9 months ago
          That drama was overblown, but it isn't stopping anyone from downloading the engine and using it.
      • diath9 months ago
        Have you personally developed a game in Godot?
        • krapp9 months ago
          I have personally tried like the vast majority of people who use it and any other engine, including Unity, and have yet to succeed. Why?
        • singhrac9 months ago
          I think if you’re asking for games developed in Godot, Slay the Spire 2 will be in Godot (and it’s a pretty popular franchise).
    • wilg9 months ago
      what? nothing about the runtime fee drama was about somthing left unsaid or decided in court. it was a pre-announced change to the pricing that they abandoned after people complained.
      • tapoxi9 months ago
        It was a retroactive change. Suddenly people would have owed money for the runtime fee based on poorly defined per-install metrics that would have applied to demos, refunded copies, and subscription services like PlayStation Plus and Xbox Game Pass.

        They only backpedaled after people complained, but a retroactive fee was an insane breach of trust.

        • wilg9 months ago
          Oh, maybe I'm thinking of a second iteration, where it only applied to the next major version of Unity?
          • tapoxi9 months ago
            Yes after the intial blowback they fired the CEO and changed the terms so the runtime fee only applied to future versions. They also added an option to pay with 2.5% of self-reported revenue instead of a per-install fee, whichever is lesser.

            A month or so ago they realized the damage they had done and dropped the fee entirely, and bumped the cost of per-seat licenses instead.

      • Maxatar9 months ago
        The change would have applied the new fee structure even to games that were released before the change, which was absolutely scummy behaviour.
  • dang9 months ago
    Recent and related:

    Unity is cancelling the runtime fee for games customers - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41521630 - Sept 2024 (76 comments)

  • 0cf8612b2e1e9 months ago
    Huge fan of how Unity put the terms of service in a public GitHub repo. Do other organizations do this?
    • tapoxi9 months ago
      They actually did this when they had a public spat with Improbable and stealth-changed the ToS to forbid Improbable's use of Unity. When called out, Unity posted the ToS to GitHub as a promise of transparency going forward.

      They deleted the repo it a few months before rolling out the runtime fee and published it again after being called out.

      So it's great in concept, but we've already seen it completely ignored in practice.

      • labster9 months ago
        At least it worked as a ToS canary. The repo goes down, and you know shenanigans are incoming.
      • jarrell_mark9 months ago
        Finally a legit use case for blockchain
        • moron4hire9 months ago
          Git is a blockchain
        • stavros9 months ago
          Because they couldn't just also move off of the blockchain?
          • hollow-moe9 months ago
            Use legaleese to fight legaleese, just write in the ToS itself only the blockchain version is applicable. If they want to move off they at least have to update the blockchain version to remove the blockchain requirement for applicability.
            • theginger9 months ago
              They could of course just do that, so there is no benefit from it being in block chain compared with anywhere else.

              The only advantage block chain provides is you don't have to trust anyone. Eg you don't have to trust GitHub to not delete or modify the repo themselves, but they weren't any part of the problem here.

            • stavros9 months ago
              Why couldn't they do the same with Github, then? What problem does the blockchain actually solve that git (or just a website) wouldn't?
          • jarrell_mark9 months ago
            Blockchain history cannot be manipulated unlike in git. This was meant as a joke though. There’s other ways to achieve this besides blockchain. the internet archive way back machine can pull up the TOS on a certain date.

            Here’s some more info on file deletion using git and blockchain: https://chatgpt.com/share/67096e57-d6e0-8004-9f68-ae646bb471...

    • gmueckl9 months ago
      Not sure how much good that does. Git history is mutable.
      • karmakaze9 months ago
        It's also tamper-evident. Forks would detect the rewrite.
        • 0cf8612b2e1e9 months ago
          I have no idea how GitHub handles this. If I fork a repo through the GH GUI, the source repo rewrites history-is mine impacted? I assume GitHub does all sorts of tricks to minimize materializing data changes unless required. My “fork” could just be a pointer to the now mutated origin.
          • drpossum9 months ago
            If this changes in the source repo and you try to reconcile from your unmodified base you'll be in for some bad surprises (things like "no common history" errors in the worst of cases). This is the reasons why you have to be careful with things that change branch pointers like squashing merges.
      • Flemitplo9 months ago
        [dead]
    • rolph9 months ago
      i would like to see this work somehow. the whole modal click thru as part of bootup; install; or update is really old.
    • Citizen_Lame9 months ago
      [flagged]
  • gxd9 months ago
    Too little, too late. As the owner of a game company, I cannot trust Unity for my business, it's too much risk. A new CEO looking for a fat short term bonus could bankrupt me (as it there weren't enough risks as it is).
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  • Sabinus9 months ago
    Too little too late. Game Devs I know are too aware of enshittification trends to be baited back into Unity for their next game. Unity has shown their hand and I think it's a slow death from here.
  • the_gorilla9 months ago
    There isn't any real coming back from this other than waiting a decade for people to just forget about it. They went out of their way to do something that was highly unpopular, retroactively binding, with nebulous enforcement rules that unity decided. This was a massive unforced blunder.
    • 0cf8612b2e1e9 months ago
      It certainly gave Godot a huge boost in mindshare. If you are starting a greenfield project today and you are Godot compatible, are you really going to risk capacious Unity altering the deal again?
    • pnw9 months ago
      They fired the CEO who made that decision. That seems like a pretty solid signal?
      • tapoxi9 months ago
        They have made the right moves after this, but it was their second massive breach of trust after the Improbable debacle.

        The people invested in the Unity ecosystem will stay, but Unity drove a lot of people to Godot and Unreal. Unity now occupies a weird space where it's more expensive and harder to use than Godot, but not as powerful as Unreal.

        As someone who has taught middle schoolers game development, Godot will absolutely replace Unity for students not only due to its price and licensing, but the ease of getting it deployed on a fleet of machines without even requiring a separate IDE.

        • pnw8 months ago
          IMHO the Improbable 'debacle' was solely due to the Improbable CEO coming up with new use cases outside the scope and spirit of the Unity license. I'm no fan of Improbable (and history has proven my opinion accurate) and they were clearly abusing Unity's license which wasn't intended to be free for companies allegedly valued in the billions of dollars. Unity gave them more than a year and they refused to pay for a license.

          Has Improbable completely abandoned the game market now? Their website reads like a crypto venture fund and their CTO and CCO left last year.

        • gamblor9569 months ago
          Godot is only cheaper if you plan to make purely for the PC. If you have any aspirations of a console release, Godot is significantly more expensive.
          • tapoxi9 months ago
            The Switch support is free and community developed. For Xbox/PlayStation W4 has a plugin module for about $800/year, that's less than half the cost of a single Unity Pro seat.
      • the_gorilla9 months ago
        It's more the breach of trust and how systemically rotten the entire company must have been to make a decision like that. I don't really buy that one guy could be the cause, and it also appears to be the CEO's job to hit the eject button when the company needs a scapegoat. The board of directors decided that the president of EA should run unity, and I think they're all still around.
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  • whalesalad9 months ago
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