Oh dear. The only option left will be to pirate it... And in the new model, the dev might have to pay unity even for pirated installs.
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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For real? That's crazy!
Try to charge me retroactively for anything and see how fast I lawyer up.
Right? How the fuck is it legal to decide that your customers retroactively owe you money just because you unilaterally said so?
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
Over a finished unavailable product and unauthorized distribution? They might as well sue Unity back for trying to profit over piracy of their works.
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)
"trust me bro"
“trust me bro”
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.
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.