Unity backtracks slightly on plans to charge developers for game installs - eviltoast

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

  • Pons_Aelius@kbin.social
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    25
    ·
    1 year ago

    My first thought was:

    This can only apply to games that begin development after this announcement…right? Otherwise it fells like a massive bait and switch.

      • JasSmith@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        11
        arrow-down
        4
        ·
        1 year ago

        Which blows my mind. So the developer, Massive Monster, had an open-ended agreement with Unity which allowed them to unilaterally increase prices. That’s easily one of the dumbest business decisions I’ve seen in the gaming space. How can they build a game around an engine which gives the owner carte blanche to take whatever share of revenue they wish? While I think this is a crazy pricing strategy, I’m struggling to sympathise with Massive Monster. At minimum they should have had a lawyer browse their agreement prior to signing. I wouldn’t be surprised if other gems were hidden in there about IP rights.

        • buddhabound@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          14
          ·
          1 year ago

          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.

          • Natanael@slrpnk.net
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            edit-2
            1 year 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.

          • JasSmith@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year 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.