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How does this work retroactively on released products? Say five years ago, I paid a company to build a house, who hired a contractor to build it and it was com
by nomercy400 3y ago
How does this work retroactively on released products?
Say five years ago, I paid a company to build a house, who hired a contractor to build it and it was completed in a year. Nowadays, I open the door daily. Now the contractor goes to the company, saying that from January 1st, every time I open the door, the company has to pay a small fee to the contractor, because they built the house with the door five years ago.
How is that even legal, even in a B2B context?
As a company, you have no control over the number of installations. How can they even measure the number of installations for games released 5-10 years ago?
- kalleboo 3y agoIt works legally since you didn't buy Unity. You don't own anything. You're licensing the right to use it on an ongoing basis. It's like how I can't buy a Rolling Stones CD and then play it on the radio for millions of people without paying them. I never bought the music, just the right to listen to it privately.
- nomercy400 3y agoIn your example, it feels more like the distributor of the CD now has to pay the copyright holder 1ct everytime you play the CD, from January 1st next year. But it is license based? Wow, that is quite a risk to take as a gamedev, to tightly-couple your game with a third-party company's tooling, who can change their terms at will, so you can no longer use their tooling. I understand that you buy a license, but surely you can buy a permanent or fixed license for a lot more money, to take away the risks of having to pull your game from distribution due to licensing restrictions. It sounds like a dumb move from unity, to create so much uncertainty.