Wait, is Unity allowed to just change its fee structure like that? | Confusing, contradictory terms of service clauses leave potential opening for lawsuits.::Confusing, contradictory terms of service clauses leave potential opening for lawsuits.
But the underlying problem here is even bigger than unity’s shitty practices - it means you can change your ToS at any point, at any time, without notice, without the need of consent, and the user has nothing to do about it.
Basically, the user agrees to a certain contract, that the other party can just silently change at any time, and if this is applicable in court, we are screwed.
What if visual studio suddenly added a line in their ToS “we have full rights to any code you ever write in VS” and they suddenly own your 10 years old project? What if android just silently added “we can take pictures of you from your front camera and sell them to porn sites”.
How the hell is it possible you can change the ToS without any notice or consent?
That might be surprising for developers that released a Unity game back in, say, 2015, when Unity CEO John Riccitiello was publicly touting Unity’s “no royalties, no fucking around” subscription plans. Now, even developers who paid $1,500 for a “perpetual license” to Unity back then could theoretically be subject to additional per-install fees starting next year (provided their game is still generating sufficient revenue and installs).
This reminds me of a story from earlier this year from Wizards of the Coast, publishers of Dungeons & Dragons (and subsidiary of Hasbro). It hinged on exactly the same semantics.
The short version is that, in 2000, Wizards of the Coast released D&D under the “Open Gaming License (OGL),” which gave third parties explicit approval to make and sell their own material using most of the D&D content, under a perpetual license. Cut forward 23 years, and lots of major publishers got their start making D&D supplements, and continue to use the OGL because (a) it’s a cover-your-ass license in case they tread into a legal gray area, and (b) allows them to open up their own content to third parties. Plans for an update OGL leaked, with predictably dogshit terms that I won’t get into right now, but essentially killed the license as anything anyone would want to use. The malicious part was that they would be “de-authorizing” the OGL 1.0a, because while it was a perpetual license, that didn’t make it irrevocable.
(IIRC, it’s also a legal argument based on case law established after the OGL was written. Not a lawyer, though.)
Predictably, there was a huge backlash. WotC backtracked, and even gave up ground by releasing a bunch of stuff under the Creative Commons. However, the OGL is still dead, because third parties can no longer trust that WotC (or Hasbro) won’t try this ratfuckery again. (Sound familiar?) Lots of products were subtly rewritten to no longer need the OGL, and several publishers worked on an industry license amusingly called the Open RPG Creative License, or ORC.
The thing is, D&D’s going to survive this a lot better than Unity. The business model was to sell D&D and D&D supplements, they only indirectly benefited from third-party material, and people are still going to make D&D stuff because it’s D&D. Unity’s entire business model relies on licensing, so if people stop using it… that’s it.
Or be like me and abandon D&D outright in favour of Pathfinder.
Nice! I do love me some Pathfinder. When I want a superheroic high-fantasy game, I’d run Pathfinder over 5e without the slightest hesitation.
I decided to cut this bit for space (and I already ran long!) but part of the fallout of WotC’s shenanigans was that other publishers got a LOT of business. Paizo sold out of something like eight months of inventory in a matter of weeks, Goodman Games had similar record sales, and tons of others noticed a bump. D&D was synonymous with tabletop RPGs for a lot of people, but the backlash to the OGL changes put a huge dent in that market domination. I’ve never seen so many people talk about branching out and trying something new.
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Play stupid EA CEO games, win stupid EA CEO prizes.
Complete corporate collapsed. IT’S IN THE GAME!!!
There’s discussions about stopping the teaching of Unity in Universities too.
Link?
Zelda?
Donkey?
Psycho Mantis?!?
Lmao holy fuck. First I’ve heard about it. If that’s true, not only is that a very sensible choice for universities to make in this context, but also a pretty clear indicator to the entire industry that Unity has become a platform that is no longer feasible or acceptable to work with… and the industry is already reaching that consensus of its own accord.
Meanwhile wall st seems to be out of touch and unaware the industry is currently turning on unity because this article was released yesterday, bullish on unity. https://invezz.com/news/2023/09/15/unity-stock-price-forecast-bank-of-america-analyst/
Honestly the only way they could possibly give this recommendation is if they understand literally nothing about either the industry in which Unity operates or the legal implications of what Unity kicked off last week
Time to short the stock?
Lmao if this turns into a reverse GME that’d be hilarious.
I’m shorting $U. This is not investment advice. I just don’t like the stock.