Unity reveals plans to charge developers per game install - plans revoked and CEO fired, lol

[Crispy]

Once again Todd Howard outthinks them all.

Use a 100% proprietary engine that's nearly twenty years old, that no one else in the industry would use even if they could, then just keep slapping a fresh coat of paint on it every few years to fool your customers into thinking you're doing your job.

No wonder the man can do whatever the fuck he wants to.

 

[darkpatriot]

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/video-game-company-unity-closes-offices-following-death-threat-1.1971525

• TECHNOLOGY​

• Company News​

• News Wire​

1h ago

Video-Game Company Unity Closes Offices Following Death Threat​

Jason Schreier, Bloomberg News

(Bloomberg) -- Unity Technologies Inc. canceled a planned town hall and closed two offices Thursday after receiving what it said was a credible death threat in the wake of a controversial pricing decision earlier this week.
The company was “made aware of a potential threat to some of our offices" and has "taken immediate and proactive measures to ensure the safety of our employees,” a spokesperson said in a statement. Unity is closing offices that could be potential targets on Thursday and Friday, and is “fully cooperating with law enforcement.”
Unity, the maker of tools and technology for video games, set off a firestorm on Sept. 12 by announcing it will begin charging developers a new fee for games made using its software, called the Unity Engine. Beginning Jan. 1, makers of Unity games will have to pay per user installation after a certain threshold is reached.
Some video-game makers accused Unity of violating its own terms of service and lamented that the new charges could threaten their livelihoods. Many game studios put out harshly worded statements urging the technology company to reconsider.
Unity Chief Executive Officer John Riccitiello was set to talk to staff Thursday morning but instead said the meeting would be canceled as a precaution. Offices in Austin, Texas, and San Francisco were closed.
(Updates with company comment in second paragraph.)

 

[Athena]

They mad

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

Death threats now? Well it would be funny if someone actually gutted Cuntitello before he goes and ruins yet another company.

 

[Kev Inkline]

https://www.humblebundle.com/software/everything-you-need-to-know-about-godot-4-encore-software

Wonder why this bundle makes an encore??

 

[Spectacle]

The death threats aren't that surprising when you consider how many unhinged solo indie devs there are out there.

 

[Modron]

Leave prosper alone!

 

[negator2vc]

Death threats???!!
That's a nice way to change the subject
Beside who trust modern new sites???
And I though it was a "credible" threat of unspecified origin

 

[Fedora Master]

They mad

Who are these people.

 

[deuxhero]

A weapon to surpass Metal Gear those tweets with the wall of text appologizing for releasing a blatantly unfinished game.

 

[Trithne]

Most of these devs are just collateral damage anyway - Unity's targeting mobile devs with this. That's why it's about installs, and they got blindsided when people pointed out the issues with tracking installs on a pc. Mobile devices it's very easy to track installs from official channels.

This is tied to their ad provider service. Probably offer to waive the install fee as long as you only use their ad service, trying to shut out competition.

Unity doesn't care about all the people using their engine to make pc games. They don't care so much they straight up forgot about them.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

death threats mean nothing. absolutely nothing. i was receiving them 20 years ago for saying oblivion sucks. they're so common they lost any meaning. real killers kill, don't threat.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

That "death treat" was most likely staged and part of their damage control, but this is America, a place where any dude is one hair away from going Postal.

It's a shitshow. One single decision practically destroyed a company. And the funny thing is that this is an opportunity served in a silver platter for Epic, but they will manage to fuck this up somehow as well.

Good riddance.

 

[Gargaune]

I just can't see this in any way legally binding, you can't just suddenly change your terms of use without an agreement. If I am understanding this correctly. Will just have to wait for the first lawsuit in 2024 challenging this. Or possibly the EU will step in. Or possibly a complaint filed with the SEC.

Wait, wait, hold on... So they intend to apply this retroactively to titles that have already released "subscribed" to Unity on the prior terms? Like just for the sake of example, Pathfinder: Kingmaker - began development in 2017, by which point they presumably had agreed to a set of terms laid out by Unity, Owlcat raised and invested however much money it took and released it in 2018, it's been on sale for five years. Now Unity can just come along and say that starting 2024 Owlcat owes them an additional fee per new install?

I've been ranting about this sort of licensing model where the supplier can "change their mind" whenever and however they want in relation to individual customers, as a consumer rights issue, but now you're telling me actual businesses have been signing on to this shit? Investing tens, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions in some cacses on open-ended "trust me, bro" contracts? Is Riccitiello hallucinating license terms or has literally everyone lost their fucking minds in the past decade?

(Nevermind the implied phone-home functionality that's gonna come packaged for the end-user, fun!)

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

I just can't see this in any way legally binding, you can't just suddenly change your terms of use without an agreement. If I am understanding this correctly. Will just have to wait for the first lawsuit in 2024 challenging this. Or possibly the EU will step in. Or possibly a complaint filed with the SEC.

Wait, wait, hold on... So they intend to apply this retroactively to titles that have already released "subscribed" to Unity on the prior terms? Like just for the sake of example, Pathfinder: Kingmaker - began development in 2017, by which point they presumably had agreed to a set of terms laid out by Unity, Owlcat raised and invested however much money it took and released it in 2018, it's been on sale for five years. Now Unity can just come along and say that starting 2024 Owlcat owes them an additional fee per new install?

I've been ranting about this sort of licensing model where the supplier can "change their mind" whenever and however they want in relation to individual customers, as a consumer rights issue, but now you're telling me actual businesses have been signing on to this shit? Investing tens, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions in some cacses on open-ended "trust me, bro" contracts? Is Riccitiello hallucinating license terms or has literally everyone lost their fucking minds in the past decade?

(Nevermind the implied phone-home functionality that's gonna come packaged for the end-user, fun!)

Freedom ain't free and there's never such a thing as a free lunch.

 

[Gargaune]

With Unity you were basically at the mercy of the EULA, the change the EULA like they just did and good bye years of hard work. That's playing out right now. Unity's licensing was archaic as fuck and represented attitudes in the industry that were 20 years old. They got away with it for so long because their bread and butter was mobile where no one gave a shit.

Okay, I just read this... So they were really doing it. You had Unity-based developers running their commercial outfits off the back of an EULA...

That's nuts. They're nuts. Everyone. Crazy, bananas, cuckoo. We're living in the fucking Looney Tunes, you can't run a business this way. You can't run any sort of commercial agreement this way, you don't have a fucking contract when the terms are "I can change the terms whenever my bollocks are ticklish!"

Jesus Christ, imagine if landlords replaced letting agreements with End-User License Agreements.

Oh, my God, that's next, isn't it?!


P.S. But hey, if someone does take this shit to court, maybe we'll finally see the back of this ridiculous "whatever I want" non-contract EULA bullshit for individual consumers too. It's made it this long 'cause no one was gonna sue over changing the terms of a €60 videogame, but if there's big bucks involved... Oh, who am I kidding.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

With Unity you were basically at the mercy of the EULA, the change the EULA like they just did and good bye years of hard work. That's playing out right now. Unity's licensing was archaic as fuck and represented attitudes in the industry that were 20 years old. They got away with it for so long because their bread and butter was mobile where no one gave a shit.

Okay, I just read this... So they were really doing it. You had Unity-based developers running their commercial outfits off the back of an EULA...

That's nuts. They're nuts. Everyone. Crazy, bananas, cuckoo. We're living in the fucking Looney Tunes, you can't run a business this way. You can't run any sort of commercial agreement this way, you don't have a fucking contract when the terms are "I can change the terms whenever my bollocks are ticklish!"

Jesus Christ, imagine if landlords replaced letting agreements with End-User License Agreements.

Oh, my God, that's next, isn't it?!


P.S. But hey, if someone does take this shit to court, maybe we'll finally see the back of this ridiculous "whatever I want" non-contract EULA bullshit for individual consumers too. It's made it this long 'cause no one was gonna sue over changing the terms of a €60 videogame, but if there's big bucks involved... Oh, who am I kidding.

It's the thing that old dude was talking about here:

 

[pm_675]

Wait, wait, hold on... So they intend to apply this retroactively to titles that have already released "subscribed" to Unity on the prior terms? Like just for the sake of example, Pathfinder: Kingmaker - began development in 2017, by which point they presumably had agreed to a set of terms laid out by Unity, Owlcat raised and invested however much money it took and released it in 2018, it's been on sale for five years. Now Unity can just come along and say that starting 2024 Owlcat owes them an additional fee per new install?

I've been ranting about this sort of licensing model where the supplier can "change their mind" whenever and however they want in relation to individual customers, as a consumer rights issue, but now you're telling me actual businesses have been signing on to this shit? Investing tens, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions in some cacses on open-ended "trust me, bro" contracts? Is Riccitiello hallucinating license terms or has literally everyone lost their fucking minds in the past decade?

The only ones who have lost their minds is Riccitiello and Unity. It´s totally illegal what they are doing and any court would laugh at them if they tried to enforce it.

I mean, even a mediocre public defender would have this tossed out of court in a second, it´s that retarded.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Seems like we're close to the other shoe dropping. If the brouhaha continues we're all but assured that Epic will announce that Unity products will no longer be available for purchase on the EGS. And if that happens it seems likely that Steam and Apple will announce similar bans; I suppose there's a possibility that they take opposite stances for market positioning reasons, but given the overwhelming outcry against Unity over this that seems unlikely.

Riccitiello absolutely deserves to be unceremoniously sacked; at best he is guilty of gross incompetence through ignorance. Ditto for Unity's legal counsel. The manner and means by which they're framing and trying to enforce their new TOS is pretty much the definition of predation, and it's just... really not going to work out. I've previously waxed elegiac here on the failings of the US justice system (most of which stem from nominees to the judiciary who are either inept, biased, or apathetic), but this is one case where even the dumbest, most disinterested judge is not going to rule in their favor. This shit is cut and dry, and has been for 150 years.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

One single decision practically destroyed a company.

it's not a matter of "one single decision". it's "one absolutely retarded beyond human comprehension not even cthulhu could conceive something this impossible to understand decision".

 

[Fedora Master]

it seems likely that Steam and Apple will announce similar bans

 

[Zarniwoop]

Once again Todd Howard outthinks them all.

Use a 100% proprietary engine that's nearly twenty years old, that no one else in the industry would use even if they could, then just keep slapping a fresh coat of paint on it every few years to fool your customers into thinking you're doing your job.

No wonder the man can do whatever the fuck he wants to.

The paint isn't even that fresh.

Oh hi Mr Dragornborn uh I mean STARborn. Yes, Starborn, I definitely said starborn.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

Okay, I just read this... So they were really doing it. You had Unity-based developers running their commercial outfits off the back of an EULA...

Yep but they referred to it as a TOS which has now been removed to prevent people reading it. Its the same fucking thing. Its why I was so worried about it because I knew they could just rugpull us and there'd be some out there that spent 8+ years on a project who'd pay the ransom. Nasty shit. I never felt good about how unity did business, its bad enough that the asset store says assets are non-transferable even though they're just meshes most of the time, that's not how that should work every other group selling assets gives a universal license which is transferable regardless of engine. Epic needs to fix that shit too though, this is not how you do an asset store.


Unity is so fucked lol

 

[Dave the Druid]

Seems like we're close to the other shoe dropping. If the brouhaha continues we're all but assured that Epic will announce that Unity products will no longer be available for purchase on the EGS. And if that happens it seems likely that Steam and Apple will announce similar bans; I suppose there's a possibility that they take opposite stances for market positioning reasons, but given the overwhelming outcry against Unity over this that seems unlikely.

I mean never mind getting dropped from digital storefronts, I'm pretty sure the EU (and say what you want about them) are going to drop a fucking bollock once they get wind of this.

 

[Trithne]

Damage control and backpedalling has begun:

Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game, will that count as multiple installs?
A: We are not going to charge a fee for reinstalls. The spirit of this program is and has always been to charge for the first install and we have no desire to charge for the same person doing ongoing installs.
(Updated, Sep 14)

Q: Do installs of the same game by the same user across multiple devices count as different installs?
A: Yes - we treat different devices as different installs.
(Updated, Sep 14)

Q: How will we approach fraudulent or abusive behavior that impacts the install count (bombing, piracy)?
A: We won’t count fraudulent installs or “install bombing” either. As part of our model, we are creating solutions to address the problem of double-counting reinstallations.
(Updated, Sep 14)

Still very "Trust me bro". And it just shows that they didn't think this out properly, thought they could get away with it, and then realised they cocked up, particularly around games that aren't on fucking phones.

Edit: A helpful screenshot from before the edits, since corporations are allergic to accountability: