Member since 24 July 2004 here. Doesn’t feel like 20 years, but it’s also hard to imagine having ~5Tb of installed games across multiple launchers just… available. Plus emulators and other resources. Steam was a pain in the arse at first, but they made it work, and they saw beyond the limitations of dialup tech. I was all for it at the time because I had one of the few Coax connections (NTL at the time, later taken over by Virgin Media) which at that point I believe was 10Mbit… Of course, nowadays we have Gigabit FTTP rolling out throughout the UK, so this seems really quaint, but it’s pleasing to see how far we’ve come.
The US coverage still sucks. Sort your shit out guys, you’re 20 years behind the UK, and we’re a good 10 behind Norway, Hong Kong and others thanks to Twatcher.
I’m always shocked at how behind the US is in some areas of tech despite having so many of the big tech companies located there. Like you say their internet coverage and terms of packages, like still having data limits in 2023. Also the fact that they still sign for card payments in shops, when we’ve been though both chip and pin and contactless since that method was common.
Yeah - I don’t even cary cards with me any more, it’s all on my phone. Including many store cards (Coop, Texaco, Shell, McDonalds…) which automatically pick up without me doing much - I scan, it works.
The only thing I can think is that the US is such a fractured environment with Federal, State and Local government, each with different jurisdictions, rules and taxation, that trying to get it to work would be beurocratically difficult. But at the same time, it’s so ruled by corporations that surely they’d want to push the easiest way - flip your phone out and wave it to pay, easy and secure, so make it happen :D
Because a lot of mobile games are made in Unity, and mobile has a higher rate of people who install and then uninstall without really playing the game. People also install things by mistake on mobile, thinking they’re something else.
So by charging based on installs, they’re able to squeeze developers a lot more (especially mobile game developers). Competitor engines like Unreal don’t run very well on mobile.
One of the really fun details about this fiasco is a few years back, after they had made a big PR fuck up like this, Unity stated they would make their Terms of Service version-bound. If you had Unity 2019 and continued to use it forever, you would only have to abide by the ToS for that version. Put simply, they could not retroactively apply new changes to you.
...Guess which segment got quietly removed last year!
I would think their public statements would significantly hurt the ability to do this, even if developers "agreed" to the terms without that clause.
I straight up don't think they could legally do it either way. But if they made public statements specifically addressing this particular thing, it has to significantly weaken their case.
That's the part I don't get. If I bought it in 2020 or whenever that was in the license, how can they decide to violate the license on the software you bought?
It's one thing of you go into the agreement knowing about the fees, but enforcing them retroactively against your own license agreement sounds like you're asking for a lawsuit.
Put simply, they could not retroactively apply new changes to you.
Sounds like they could though?
Jokes aside, this is another in a recent string of "let's pretend our ToS are legally binding documents as fool-proof as the law" actions by major companies because ... well, who's stopping them?
your customers retroactively owe you money just because you unilaterally said so?
John Riccitiello is Unity's CEO, you may remember him from being EA's CEO or for being the guy who said the devs who don't monetize (you know adding microtransactions, loot boxes and all that greedy stuff) their videogames are "fucking idiots". I think that explains all
Only monetized games have to pay. If they stop selling the game, they shouldn't be affected anymore.
Also
Does the Unity Runtime Fee apply to pirated copies of games?
We are happy to work with any developer who has been the victim of piracy so that they are not unfairly hurt by unwanted installs. (source)
As far as I understand (someone correct me if I'm wrong) games that are free / non-commercial and have zero revenue are not affected at all by this, they still don't have to pay anything regardless of the number of installs.
If the game is no longer being sold (and thus no longer commercial / having revenue), then I expect that even under those new rules Unity would also not charge the dev.
“Will games made with Unity phone-home to track installs?
We will refine how we collect install data over time with a goal of accurately understanding the number of times the Unity runtime is distributed. Any install data will be collected in accordance with our Privacy Policy and applicable privacy laws.”
Sounds like they’re gonna add tracking data to the game, so probably pirated installs won’t count
“Will games made with Unity phone-home to track installs?
We will refine how we collect install data over time with a goal of accurately understanding the number of times the Unity runtime is distributed. Any install data will be collected in accordance with our Privacy Policy and applicable privacy laws.” They already do, and fuck you for asking.
It would be a shame if they were forced to follow through with this threat. Cult of the Lamb is a great game. I'd be curious to know if this changes their plans for their next big content update, which they'd tentatively moved to late 2023 back in August.
It’s not about about money: corporate would spend more money when you’re in the office.
It’s not about productivity: shit has been getting done from home and then some, for literally years.
It’s not about team building: productivity requires focus, open space bullshit floor plans hamper that and most everyone is gonna wear headphones and try to block out the background noise and social distractions as much as possible.
It’s about control, power and obedience: butts in chairs are reassuring to managers who have no fucking clue what they’re doing, nor what you’re doing, nor what the company needs done.
Management usually has no idea what anyone is really doing, they’ve never figured how to measure actual productivity, so they equate butts in chairs with productivity.
I don’t work for Ubi, but I’ve been the one remote player of an in-office team for the last 15 years.
Nobody ever cared where the fuck I was working from until after covid, where suddenly some insecure execs fear we might all be wanking all day, probably because they think we’re like them.
I’m perpetually busy at work, mostly because we’re understaffed, but I know what needs to be done and I do it.
I don’t need a babysitter to do that.
Them? They’ve always been useless, but now it shows, because there’s no-one to boss around, shit still gets done, but they’re not around, so they can’t delude themselves into thinking their bullshit is what makes things work.
Since they no longer have anything to do, they fuck around at home all day.
Faced with their uselessness, they pull a Seymour Skinner… it’s everyone else who’s wrong and not them.
They extrapolate and think that if they’re fucking around, surely we’re all doing what they’re doing and thus need reigning in. They fail to realize they’ve never had a productive purpose even before.
It’s all just a symptom that your management is full of old useless farts.
Some manager usually chimes in with some remote lazy bitch they “caught”, as if these people didn’t exist in the office.
Having been the outsider remote guy since way before, I can say the rest of my team fucked around a lot more when they were on-prem than when they’re remote.
If everyone just… didn’t go back at all, what are they gonna do, for everyone and close the whole studio?
I keep telling them the same thing.
Our jobs involve working with people in offices on the other side of France and that’s no problem, surely. Therefore what difference does it make if a remote worker is at home rather than on a different site? None. It’s all bullshit to control people, just like you said.
You should see HR people squirming trying to justify that one…
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