I said it in another thread, but Unity has truly fucked the vendor-client relationship.
While it is a nightmare, you can work with a company that changes its prices and terms, but you absolutely can’t work with a company that pulls this level of BS.
It’s just not safe to have your company so dependent on a vendor that could tank it on a whim.
Pretty much the biggest mistake made due to greed is the decision to retroactively apply thr deals to already existing titles. Its one thing to neuter titles in the future, but another to fuck over everyone whose already committed to using it on a different TOS
Not a lawyer, but I feel like basing the fee on their internal guess on how many installs seems questionable. Surely some major jurisdictions would take issue with that and counting installs from before the new TOS towards the new threshold. Also their contradictory TOS terms at the very least would probably get them an expensive trial, even if they win it.
Yep. The insanity of thinking you could apply it retroactively to already licensed games was absurd.
If you tied it to a future main version release with features people wanted, you could absolutely get away with some light pushback that's the usual grumbling on price changes, and a lot of developers would suck it up and move to the up to date engine anyways.
But when you try to pull the rug on people for stuff they've already been developing under previous terms, they're going to seriously reconsider, and on stuff they already published makes it extremely hard to justify working with you again.
Yeah, that’s what burns the business relationship. Because now it’s not just “oh, Unity might screw me, and I’m investing in learning what could become a dead platform”, it’s “even if Unity doesn’t screw me now, they could randomly decide to screw me 10 years from now and retroactively charge me a king’s ransom”. That’s the stuff that has a permanent chilling effect on the whole platform.
The reason why Unity refuses to not make it retro-active is because they want money from Genshin Impact etc which already launched. If they don’t make it retroactive then the whole point of the change on their end is gone.
Core components... like operating systems and engines... this was the whole reason people open sourced in the first place. You start getting it in millions of devices and it is too much power for closed-source closed-license. The GPU drivers and WiFi drivers are often the ones who pave the paths away from open source.
DnD 5e had a license for use that allowed 3rd party companies to make stuff for the game following specific rules, and they did so which of course helped with increasing the popularity of the brand. This license existed due to the backlash from players and 3rd party developers who did not like the 4e licensing which was ridiculously restrictive.
Then WotC/Hasbro decided they wanted more control and put out a draconian revision and also tried to invalidate the existing license using questionable legal logic that wouldn't stand up in court, but would be cost prohibitive for the 3rd party companies to fight in court. This revision also included licensing costs that would drive 3rd party companies out of business. Then they did a revision that tried to make creating a virtual tabletop that could be used with DnD a violation to try and corner the market for WotC's completely non-existent virtual tabletop.
Basically they tried to stop doing the thing they had in place for like a decade to milk an unrealistically high amount of money out of companies that were working with them and tried to force this on extremely short notice. So same thing as reddit and now Unity are doing.
Expect the next version of DnD to be a walled garden again like 4e was and most likely fade out of the public view again.
The true irony here is that TSR went bankrupt because they tried to mess with the community content licenses that were basically gentleman’s agreements at the time, allowing WotC to purchase D&D in the first place with 3rd edition. I hope they sell the property to someone that understands how to run that golden goose, without expecting unlimited growth.
Probably enough people to keep Unity afloat. Let's be honest, who's going to reskill their gamedevs to learn Godot or some other game engine? Decision makers will probably spend more money on trying to find ways around the problem than actually solving it aka using another game engine.
It's what they do.
Regardless of any political machinations, this is Unity being given a choice between making more money and making less money. Unsurprisingly, they claim that they’re choosing to make more money.
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