17 ms·

Unity has seemingly silently removed its GitHub repo that tracks ToS changes

682 points by agluszak 3y ago

bee_rider 3y ago
Bit late to close the barn doors.
- accrual 3y ago
  The cat is out of the bag, so to say.
  - mkoubaa 3y ago
    Can't put the booger back in the nose
    - CoastalCoder 3y ago
      Let's just hope that's an... untested claim.
rolph 3y ago
this is something they want to hide. https://web.archive.org/web/20220716084623/https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService https://web.archive.org/web/20220716084623/https://github.co...
- ivanmontillam 3y ago
  I bet their lawyers are pulling their hairs right now on it
  - w-ll 3y ago
    they are counting more than $0.25 per install
- EMCymatics 3y ago
  Haha yikes
- thaliaarchi 3y ago
  For source code, I prefer the Software Heritage archive over the Internet Archive, because it archives the git history, instead of the HTML UI. This particular repo was saved there[0] and was most recently visited 24 Oct 2022, which has two more terms updates. I have created a mirror of this more up-to-date version at https://github.com/thaliaarchi/unity-termsofservice https://github.com/thaliaarchi/unity-termsofservice. Here's how to “cook”[1] an archive from the vault, if you want to do it yourself: curl -X POST https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/vault/git-bare/swh:1:rev:28fdae008c61d98d0d9ec55b8cc016ce61809f58/ wget https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/vault/git-bare/swh:1:rev:28fdae008c61d98d0d9ec55b8cc016ce61809f58/raw/ --content-disposition tar xf swh_1_rev_28fdae008c61d98d0d9ec55b8cc016ce61809f58.git.tar git clone swh:1:rev:28fdae008c61d98d0d9ec55b8cc016ce61809f58.git TermsOfService [0]: https://archive.softwareheritage.org/browse/origin/directory/?origin_url=https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService https://archive.softwareheritage.org/browse/origin/directory... [1]: https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/vault/git-bare/doc/ https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/vault/git-bare/do...
janalsncm 3y ago
I posted this a few weeks ago, there’s already a project for tracking the TOS of many companies. This came up when people realized Zoom had done some funny business with their TOS as well. I see Unity isn’t there though, maybe someone should submit a PR. https://github.com/OpenTermsArchive/contrib-versions https://github.com/OpenTermsArchive/contrib-versions
- michaelteter 3y ago
  Perhaps you should repost this periodically. The worst case scenario is that your post is ignored. This idea could become something of a foundation for tracking companies.
- joshspankit 3y ago
  Another reply[0] notes something helpful: there is a copy of Unity’s git repo [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37517378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37517378
bhouston 3y ago
This could have been done in a much better fashion to achieve the long term desired outcome (more income) while also ensuring continued trust and transparency with their community. Simply, they could have not made this retroactive on existing released games. Rather just be clear that going forward, games build using the new Unity versions would have a per-installation fee. And they would slowly discontinue support for the older versions on a specific schedule. There are new devices coming out like the new Switch, the Apple Vision Pro, and then the new features Unity is adding like AI, just add those to the new versions that have the run-time fee. People will upgrade to it on their own terms! By making it retroactive and forcing it on everyone, they have basically screwed over their existing customers who shipped games expecting a certain cost structure and now it is higher. Deleting this GitHub license archive repo where they make it clear that their license changes are likely unenforceable is icing on the cake. EDIT: To remove the claim that Unreal Engine had a similar per-install fee, it doesn't.
- umpalumpaaa 3y ago
  The problem is that they did it retroactively and they also added a per install/download fee. So if your game has 1mio installs you pad the install fee x 1 Million. Unreal has no install fee like this. “A 5% royalty is due only if you are distributing an off-the-shelf product that incorporates Unreal Engine code (such as a game). Provided that you notify us on time using the Release Form, you will only owe royalties once the lifetime gross revenue from that product exceeds $1 million USD; in other words, the first $1 million will be royalty-exempt.” Some mobile games have a ton of installs and a very small amount of revenue per user. Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible.
  - bhouston 3y ago
    > Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible. Exactly. So if they did this in an upfront way, they would have said that starting with Unity 2024 there is this new cost structure. Then game devs can make informed choices if they want to build those types of games on the platform. This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users. Although I think I sort of answered my own question...
sn41 3y ago
Just a side thought related to this: can there be a community supported initiative to parse what TOS documents of different companies mean, and specifically, what to watch out for in each company's TOS vis-a-vis what is the norm in a certain industry? Right now, the "gotcha" power is entirely one-sided. A wiki-like approach towards documenting TOS might make the user better aware of what to really watch out for when using a particular software.
- xp84 3y ago
  The main problem with “what to watch out for” is that it seems like every TOS is full of the same BS so your options when you spot something to “watch out for” are pretty slim. (Unless you want to live like the Amish, which tbh is looking pretty attractive sometimes!)
- janalsncm 3y ago
  Typically that’s what a newspaper is supposed to do. With userbases larger than some countries, it could make sense.
- tagawa 3y ago
  I think what you're looking for is TOSDR (Terms of Service, Didn't Read): https://tosdr.org https://tosdr.org It's been going for several years and has very thorough analyses of various ToS, done by volunteers who are often legal professionals.
  - ekanes 3y ago
    That's fantastic. Thank you. If anyone is interested in supporting them, here's the link (so many clicks later!) https://opencollective.com/tosdr/donate https://opencollective.com/tosdr/donate
  - snvzz 3y ago
    Love how it shows Unity's rating going down[0] with every change. They seem to have attempted the "boiling the frog" strategy. 0. https://edit.tosdr.org/services/2768 https://edit.tosdr.org/services/2768
paxys 3y ago
I hate the word "silently" in headlines like these. How else are the supposed to do it? By throwing a press event?
- WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
  > I hate the word "silently" in headlines like these. Why hate reporting that fairly represents what they did? > How else are the supposed to do it? By throwing a press event? Sure. That's one way to uphold the standards of full transparency about what changes are happening and when - that Unity promised.
  - zeroimpl 3y ago
    Deleting things never makes a sound. The word silently is added entirely for the connotation that it was meant to be secret. Since such an action would never go unnoticed, it's obvious that it wasn't meant to be secret, so that word is clearly misplaced. If the author wanted to imply it was bad, they should just come out and say it, with a word like despicably.
    - akkartik 3y ago
      Here's the blog post where they announced they were creating a github repo: https://blog.unity.com/community/updated-terms-of-service-and-commitment-to-being-an-open-platform https://blog.unity.com/community/updated-terms-of-service-an... It's the easiest thing in the world to write another blog post announcing they're deleting the github repo.
      - snvzz 3y ago
        https://archive.ph/LZRFz https://archive.ph/LZRFz
    - ncallaway 3y ago
      Have they announced anywhere that this is being deleted? As you noted, deleting something doesn’t make a sound. So if they don’t voluntarily make a sound, then they have silently deleted it.
sharts 3y ago
Typical corporate shenanigans. What company wouldn't do this ever? Probably none.
zeroimpl 3y ago
I'm surprised they even had such a repo public in the first place. Every year Apple releases a new version of their Apple Developer Program License Agreement and Paid Applications agreement. I always download both as TXT files and diff against the previous one to see what changed. I practically don't even need to read any of the WWDC news to know what new things they are releasing.
- jamiek88 3y ago
  That's a great idea! It'd be awesome if someone automated that and threw it up on github but that's just me being lazy.
sleepybrett 3y ago
I got a bill from the guys that sold me my claw hammer. Apparently I have to pay a per nail charge on top of the $40 I paid for it.
gmjosack 3y ago
This video[1] talks a bit about this from a lawyer's point of view and is a really good overview. For people who are not paying as much attention to this I'd like to summarize the main points of frustration. 1. Unity has just shown they believe they are able, and they are willing, to change the terms on what you have to pay them. What are the bounds to terms like this? What if Unity is tight on money and decide to squeeze developers further? The risk to continuing business with Unity is very high as you have unknown future exposure. 2. The monetization model they've chosen is tied to installs, not revenue. On the initial day of announcement they even claimed re-installs would count but they've since walked that back (or "clarified a miscommunication"). Unity has been extremely wishy-washy on how they even plan to track this mentioning proprietary systems they can't elaborate on and your only recourse is to appeal if you think they got the numbers wrong. This is not a metric tied to your revenue and is difficult to plan around. There are a lot of people arguing against a strawman of people who don't want to pay unity but that is not at all what this is about. Unity chose a terrible model they can't even explain for how they want to bill people and apply it to all past games that use the engine for all future sales. This would be similar to if Microsoft said everyone who ever built anything on C# has to start paying a fee for every future install because it includes the .net runtime. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGMrebXypJo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGMrebXypJo
- readyplayernull 3y ago
  They might have well devised the first of its kind "ransom by installations" in the history of software, by making it possible for attackers to fake mass installations and get gamedevs into fatal debts. And they are taking the executioner role.
  - gmjosack 3y ago
    We've been calling it "Install Bombing" after the common abusive practice of review bombing. Unity claims they have anti-fraud systems in place and you can always appeal with their fraud team but I don't have an reason to blindly trust a black box that when fails makes Unity more money and puts the burden on me to prove otherwise.
downWidOutaFite 3y ago
Good use for git scraping https://simonwillison.net/2020/Oct/9/git-scraping/ https://simonwillison.net/2020/Oct/9/git-scraping/
cookiengineer 3y ago
Source of the reddit post [1] with the web archive link [2]. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/16hnibp/unity_silently_removed_their_github_repo_to_track/ https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/16hnibp/unity_sile... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20220716084623/https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService https://web.archive.org/web/20220716084623/https://github.co...
Animats 3y ago
"He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future." - Orwell.
matt3210 3y ago
The older versions should be subject to those original ToS, retroactive ToS changes are poor treatment.
- dschuetz 3y ago
  And possibly illegal.
zmmmmm 3y ago
What I hate most about this is that it puts unbounded liability onto developers. They can't control how often their game will be installed in the future. The outcome will likely be that the minute a game falls below a certain rate of sales they will be forced to make it unavailable because they can't risk the ongoing cost of the existing userbase continually reinstalling it. Every time a new platform or device is released, there will be a wave of people shifting their installs which will will generate cost for developers for no return, and windfall profits to Unity for doing absolutely nothing. They get the money even if the user never even opens the app, they just click the button saying "install all my apps from my old device on my new one". Which is what a lot of users will do.
- bhouston 3y ago
  > What I hate most about this is that it puts unbounded liability onto developers. And Unity can continue to raise the per-installation price as well. If they lose a bunch of customers but want to maintain their current income, why not raise it to $1 instead of just $0.27?
  - labster 3y ago
    I’m pretty sure that would be an unconscionable contract at $1, not a mere unethical contract. The latter is legal, the former is not.
    - Auracle 3y ago
      Wouldn’t that depend on the income of the developer vs. how many installs they get? Surely even $.20 for someone that has a hit mobile game that sells for $.99 would be unconscionable. After App Store fees and accounting for potential multiple installs it could halve their income.
      - labster 3y ago
        I didn’t actually make claim about the $0.20 case. Multiples of $1 is clearly too much for products that cost $0.99. But with America’s courts headed by an obviously illegitimate Supreme Court, who knows? The lesser amount could be pronounced legal.
awinter-py 3y ago
probably not as silently as they wanted
jauntywundrkind 3y ago
I struggle to think of a more well defined "burn the ships" moment in my lifetime. This company has lost all self respect.
pipeline_peak 3y ago
“Why leading development firms are leaving Unity for Godot” “Thinking of using Unity today? Think again!” “Unity hates puppies and babies”
blendergeek 3y ago
I'm a little confused here. If I released a game a couple years ago when the terms explicitly stated that Unity couldn't retroactively update them but now they changed the no retroactive updates clause, how can they try to apply this when that violates the terms I agreed to? This seems extremely shady.
agar 3y ago
An under-discussed aspect of this pricing structure is the number of older games that will simply be pulled from the (virtual) shelves. I've already seen a few and I fear more devs will follow suit. The ripples and unintended consequences of this move could really be significant for years.
- matkoniecz 3y ago
  See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37518453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37518453 they can continue using old terms of service if they do not upgrade Unity is trying to hide this.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
njsubedi 3y ago
We are making games in Unity, and paying per developer per month the highest subscription $180+ for any tool we use. The amount is already quite high and grants us license to use Unity. Their current move is either because they being extremely greedy, or because they're burning a lot of cash. We make simple games, and we're using Unity because of its community support and assets, not because we love Unity, the company. The community moves, we move. Now if they're changing the terms arbitrarily, and hide that behind the "I agree" button, it proves that they have turned evil. We, along with several other fellow game companies don't support evil, and already migrating our games to Godot. We were prepared for something like this, but didn't anticipate Unity will flip their face this soon. This move only promotes Godot or Unreal; a far more different result than whatever they expected.
- neop1x 3y ago
  There is also Unigine [1] but that has less community around it than Unreal. I am mentioning it because I think it should be known more. It was started by a single russian dev who was initially just writing online tutorials on various OpenGL and physics stuff (frustum.org). Then he decided to make a commercial engine and started a company. Of course their engine evolved a lot since and they have a team of devs now and are no longer based in Russia (and the original dev is no longer in their team I think?). I am impressed by what they have achieved (it must have been super-hard especially in the beginning) and that they continue developing it and the graphical output is quite competitive to the major engines. They are also known for various graphical benchmarks. [1] https://unigine.com/ https://unigine.com/
noobermin 3y ago
Sorry but I cannot help but blame developers again. Again you idiots put all your eggs into one basket, whilst forsaking alternatives, even open source ones because "unity is better." Well close gardens locking you in (or out) is always a risk and instead of calling people like me tinfoil-hat wearing lunatics for sounding the alarm for years, may be you should have heeded it. Same goes for youtube, discord, zoom, aws. Invest in the alternarives you idiots, don't wait until it's too late. You won't garner any sympathy when they tighten the strings.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- turquoisevar 3y ago
  What are you on about? Switching mid development is already prohibitively difficult and you’re talking about putting eggs in multiple baskets as if you could easily mix and match different engines. As for alternatives, there aren’t that many with feature parity (or close to it), especially not one that is FOSS. You can mock people all you want with your disingenuous “unity is better” quote, but the sad reality is that for anything serious it’s going to be either Unity or Unreal. Even Godot, which is arguably the most fleshed out FOSS option, isn’t viable in its current state and they themselves know it[0]. So spare me the ill conceived “I told you so” nonsense. 0: https://godotengine.org/article/whats-missing-in-godot-for-aaa/ https://godotengine.org/article/whats-missing-in-godot-for-a...
noduerme 3y ago
Adobe put a silent kill switch into Flash player, rendering 10 years worth of casual games I'd written immediately unplayable. As a result of Adobe's actions, a whole sector of lone devs and small teams turned to Unity to build games that would've otherwise been built in AS3. I'm glad I didn't end up going that route, but I really feel for the folks who are now getting screwed again.
- justinclift 3y ago
  What was the silent kill switch? Was it a time based thing that applies to everyone or something? Asking because a friend is playing a lot of ancient flash games recently using Ruffle (OSS flash player written in Rust), and doesn't seem to be having problems like that.
  - noduerme 3y ago
    The last few major versions of Flash Player had a time-based kill switch that made them stop functioning after a certain date. Adobe didn't announce this until well over 90% of people with Flash installed had been auto-updated to one of those death versions. When they announced it, the date was less than a year away, and plenty of people were in the middle of building large projects that would need to be totally rewritten. To be clear, Ruffle only [fully] emulates Actionscript 1/2, which was the Flash language prior to 2006. The games you see resurrected in Ruffle are mostly what people associate with the casual single-player Flash games and funky art projects from the early 2000s. Most of my work was in the Actionscript 3 language, which came out in 2006 and featured GPU support, networking via sockets, peer to peer RTMP messaging, and lots of other modern features to make fast 2D/3D gaming and multiplayer possible. With AS3 you could deploy a game with the browser plugin and compile the same code to iOS and Android "native" apps with Adobe Air, which basically shoehorned the plugin into the binaries. Air is still around, but the whole ecosystem is dead. When Adobe pulled the plug, I'd just spent almost two years building the second entire game engine I wrote in AS3, this one for open/endless isometric worlds with terrain generation, character spawning, physics, particle systems, 3D embeds, networking, chat, lobbies... and our 3-person team had only deployed our first game with it. The idea of rewriting half a million lines of code in Unity or TS+Pixijs or something else... I just gave up on making games after that. Ruffle is a great project for the older Flash stuff, and they've made some progress with coverage of AS3 now, but they don't support a lot of the critical things needed to run these games (particularly with networking APIs and Stage3D), and they probably never will. None of my advanced work runs under Ruffle, not even my old AS3 website from 2009. In theory I could rewrite that code to work around Ruffle's limitations, but I can't even run the Adobe tools anymore to recompile or modify assets unless I go back to an ancient laptop that never got the death-update.
lolinder 3y ago
IANAL, but I suspect part of what they're trying to hide is that the old terms [0] specify that while they can change the terms at any time, you may opt to use the old terms as long as you don't update the software beyond the current year (2023.x). That wording is changed in the new terms [1] to say "If the modified Terms are not acceptable to you, your only recourse is to cease using the Services." Just in case you were wondering how one-sided this new agreement is intended to be. [0] Section 8, "Modifications": https://web.archive.org/web/20201111183311/https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/master/Unity%20Software%20Additional%20Terms.md https://web.archive.org/web/20201111183311/https://github.co... [1] https://unity.com/legal/terms-of-service https://unity.com/legal/terms-of-service
- harles 3y ago
  That was my understanding. They did it (or least claim to have made the change, maybe they left in a loop hole) in response to the Spatial OS debacle. They tried to crush competition in their ecosystem through retroactive TOS changes that time too. Some of the community got rightfully up in arms about it, so they reversed and added these long term licenses. But it seems like that was all just lip service, because here we are right back where we were. Overview of the Spatial OS stuff for those that didn’t follow it: https://www.engadget.com/2019-01-10-unity-improbable-epic-games-spatial-os.html https://www.engadget.com/2019-01-10-unity-improbable-epic-ga...
Gembobo 3y ago
When I've made enough money, I would like to retire and just develop a free-2-play game. No intention of it making any money. I would happily pay a few thousand dollars for a good engine for that - like Unity. But I would not want to take the risk that my free game becomes wildly successful and suddenly costs me millions. It is very unfortunate, but I will now spend the weekend to learn Godot.

682 points by agluszak 3y ago

bee_rider 3y ago

Bit late to close the barn doors.

accrual 3y ago
The cat is out of the bag, so to say.
- mkoubaa 3y ago
  Can't put the booger back in the nose
  - CoastalCoder 3y ago
    Let's just hope that's an... untested claim.

rolph 3y ago

this is something they want to hide. https://web.archive.org/web/20220716084623/https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService https://web.archive.org/web/20220716084623/https://github.co...

ivanmontillam 3y ago
I bet their lawyers are pulling their hairs right now on it
- w-ll 3y ago
  they are counting more than $0.25 per install
EMCymatics 3y ago
Haha yikes
thaliaarchi 3y ago
For source code, I prefer the Software Heritage archive over the Internet Archive, because it archives the git history, instead of the HTML UI. This particular repo was saved there[0] and was most recently visited 24 Oct 2022, which has two more terms updates. I have created a mirror of this more up-to-date version at https://github.com/thaliaarchi/unity-termsofservice https://github.com/thaliaarchi/unity-termsofservice. Here's how to “cook”[1] an archive from the vault, if you want to do it yourself: curl -X POST https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/vault/git-bare/swh:1:rev:28fdae008c61d98d0d9ec55b8cc016ce61809f58/ wget https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/vault/git-bare/swh:1:rev:28fdae008c61d98d0d9ec55b8cc016ce61809f58/raw/ --content-disposition tar xf swh_1_rev_28fdae008c61d98d0d9ec55b8cc016ce61809f58.git.tar git clone swh:1:rev:28fdae008c61d98d0d9ec55b8cc016ce61809f58.git TermsOfService [0]: https://archive.softwareheritage.org/browse/origin/directory/?origin_url=https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService https://archive.softwareheritage.org/browse/origin/directory... [1]: https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/vault/git-bare/doc/ https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/1/vault/git-bare/do...

janalsncm 3y ago

I posted this a few weeks ago, there’s already a project for tracking the TOS of many companies. This came up when people realized Zoom had done some funny business with their TOS as well. I see Unity isn’t there though, maybe someone should submit a PR. https://github.com/OpenTermsArchive/contrib-versions https://github.com/OpenTermsArchive/contrib-versions

michaelteter 3y ago
Perhaps you should repost this periodically. The worst case scenario is that your post is ignored. This idea could become something of a foundation for tracking companies.
joshspankit 3y ago
Another reply[0] notes something helpful: there is a copy of Unity’s git repo [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37517378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37517378

bhouston 3y ago

This could have been done in a much better fashion to achieve the long term desired outcome (more income) while also ensuring continued trust and transparency with their community. Simply, they could have not made this retroactive on existing released games. Rather just be clear that going forward, games build using the new Unity versions would have a per-installation fee. And they would slowly discontinue support for the older versions on a specific schedule. There are new devices coming out like the new Switch, the Apple Vision Pro, and then the new features Unity is adding like AI, just add those to the new versions that have the run-time fee. People will upgrade to it on their own terms! By making it retroactive and forcing it on everyone, they have basically screwed over their existing customers who shipped games expecting a certain cost structure and now it is higher. Deleting this GitHub license archive repo where they make it clear that their license changes are likely unenforceable is icing on the cake. EDIT: To remove the claim that Unreal Engine had a similar per-install fee, it doesn't.

umpalumpaaa 3y ago
The problem is that they did it retroactively and they also added a per install/download fee. So if your game has 1mio installs you pad the install fee x 1 Million. Unreal has no install fee like this. “A 5% royalty is due only if you are distributing an off-the-shelf product that incorporates Unreal Engine code (such as a game). Provided that you notify us on time using the Release Form, you will only owe royalties once the lifetime gross revenue from that product exceeds $1 million USD; in other words, the first $1 million will be royalty-exempt.” Some mobile games have a ton of installs and a very small amount of revenue per user. Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible.
- bhouston 3y ago
  > Those 27cents per install are a lot of money for those type of games and will even make some business models no longer feasible. Exactly. So if they did this in an upfront way, they would have said that starting with Unity 2024 there is this new cost structure. Then game devs can make informed choices if they want to build those types of games on the platform. This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users. Although I think I sort of answered my own question...

sn41 3y ago

Just a side thought related to this: can there be a community supported initiative to parse what TOS documents of different companies mean, and specifically, what to watch out for in each company's TOS vis-a-vis what is the norm in a certain industry? Right now, the "gotcha" power is entirely one-sided. A wiki-like approach towards documenting TOS might make the user better aware of what to really watch out for when using a particular software.

xp84 3y ago
The main problem with “what to watch out for” is that it seems like every TOS is full of the same BS so your options when you spot something to “watch out for” are pretty slim. (Unless you want to live like the Amish, which tbh is looking pretty attractive sometimes!)
janalsncm 3y ago
Typically that’s what a newspaper is supposed to do. With userbases larger than some countries, it could make sense.
tagawa 3y ago
I think what you're looking for is TOSDR (Terms of Service, Didn't Read): https://tosdr.org https://tosdr.org It's been going for several years and has very thorough analyses of various ToS, done by volunteers who are often legal professionals.
- ekanes 3y ago
  That's fantastic. Thank you. If anyone is interested in supporting them, here's the link (so many clicks later!) https://opencollective.com/tosdr/donate https://opencollective.com/tosdr/donate
- snvzz 3y ago
  Love how it shows Unity's rating going down[0] with every change. They seem to have attempted the "boiling the frog" strategy. 0. https://edit.tosdr.org/services/2768 https://edit.tosdr.org/services/2768

paxys 3y ago

I hate the word "silently" in headlines like these. How else are the supposed to do it? By throwing a press event?

WarOnPrivacy 3y ago
> I hate the word "silently" in headlines like these. Why hate reporting that fairly represents what they did? > How else are the supposed to do it? By throwing a press event? Sure. That's one way to uphold the standards of full transparency about what changes are happening and when - that Unity promised.
- zeroimpl 3y ago
  Deleting things never makes a sound. The word silently is added entirely for the connotation that it was meant to be secret. Since such an action would never go unnoticed, it's obvious that it wasn't meant to be secret, so that word is clearly misplaced. If the author wanted to imply it was bad, they should just come out and say it, with a word like despicably.
  - akkartik 3y ago
    Here's the blog post where they announced they were creating a github repo: https://blog.unity.com/community/updated-terms-of-service-and-commitment-to-being-an-open-platform https://blog.unity.com/community/updated-terms-of-service-an... It's the easiest thing in the world to write another blog post announcing they're deleting the github repo.
    - snvzz 3y ago
      https://archive.ph/LZRFz https://archive.ph/LZRFz
  - ncallaway 3y ago
    Have they announced anywhere that this is being deleted? As you noted, deleting something doesn’t make a sound. So if they don’t voluntarily make a sound, then they have silently deleted it.

sharts 3y ago

Typical corporate shenanigans. What company wouldn't do this ever? Probably none.

zeroimpl 3y ago

I'm surprised they even had such a repo public in the first place. Every year Apple releases a new version of their Apple Developer Program License Agreement and Paid Applications agreement. I always download both as TXT files and diff against the previous one to see what changed. I practically don't even need to read any of the WWDC news to know what new things they are releasing.

jamiek88 3y ago
That's a great idea! It'd be awesome if someone automated that and threw it up on github but that's just me being lazy.

sleepybrett 3y ago

I got a bill from the guys that sold me my claw hammer. Apparently I have to pay a per nail charge on top of the $40 I paid for it.

gmjosack 3y ago

This video[1] talks a bit about this from a lawyer's point of view and is a really good overview. For people who are not paying as much attention to this I'd like to summarize the main points of frustration. 1. Unity has just shown they believe they are able, and they are willing, to change the terms on what you have to pay them. What are the bounds to terms like this? What if Unity is tight on money and decide to squeeze developers further? The risk to continuing business with Unity is very high as you have unknown future exposure. 2. The monetization model they've chosen is tied to installs, not revenue. On the initial day of announcement they even claimed re-installs would count but they've since walked that back (or "clarified a miscommunication"). Unity has been extremely wishy-washy on how they even plan to track this mentioning proprietary systems they can't elaborate on and your only recourse is to appeal if you think they got the numbers wrong. This is not a metric tied to your revenue and is difficult to plan around. There are a lot of people arguing against a strawman of people who don't want to pay unity but that is not at all what this is about. Unity chose a terrible model they can't even explain for how they want to bill people and apply it to all past games that use the engine for all future sales. This would be similar to if Microsoft said everyone who ever built anything on C# has to start paying a fee for every future install because it includes the .net runtime. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGMrebXypJo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGMrebXypJo

readyplayernull 3y ago
They might have well devised the first of its kind "ransom by installations" in the history of software, by making it possible for attackers to fake mass installations and get gamedevs into fatal debts. And they are taking the executioner role.
- gmjosack 3y ago
  We've been calling it "Install Bombing" after the common abusive practice of review bombing. Unity claims they have anti-fraud systems in place and you can always appeal with their fraud team but I don't have an reason to blindly trust a black box that when fails makes Unity more money and puts the burden on me to prove otherwise.

downWidOutaFite 3y ago

Good use for git scraping https://simonwillison.net/2020/Oct/9/git-scraping/ https://simonwillison.net/2020/Oct/9/git-scraping/

cookiengineer 3y ago

Source of the reddit post [1] with the web archive link [2]. [1] https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/16hnibp/unity_silently_removed_their_github_repo_to_track/ https://old.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/16hnibp/unity_sile... [2] https://web.archive.org/web/20220716084623/https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService https://web.archive.org/web/20220716084623/https://github.co...

Animats 3y ago

"He who controls the present controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future." - Orwell.

matt3210 3y ago

The older versions should be subject to those original ToS, retroactive ToS changes are poor treatment.

dschuetz 3y ago
And possibly illegal.

zmmmmm 3y ago

What I hate most about this is that it puts unbounded liability onto developers. They can't control how often their game will be installed in the future. The outcome will likely be that the minute a game falls below a certain rate of sales they will be forced to make it unavailable because they can't risk the ongoing cost of the existing userbase continually reinstalling it. Every time a new platform or device is released, there will be a wave of people shifting their installs which will will generate cost for developers for no return, and windfall profits to Unity for doing absolutely nothing. They get the money even if the user never even opens the app, they just click the button saying "install all my apps from my old device on my new one". Which is what a lot of users will do.

bhouston 3y ago
> What I hate most about this is that it puts unbounded liability onto developers. And Unity can continue to raise the per-installation price as well. If they lose a bunch of customers but want to maintain their current income, why not raise it to $1 instead of just $0.27?
- labster 3y ago
  I’m pretty sure that would be an unconscionable contract at $1, not a mere unethical contract. The latter is legal, the former is not.
  - Auracle 3y ago
    Wouldn’t that depend on the income of the developer vs. how many installs they get? Surely even $.20 for someone that has a hit mobile game that sells for $.99 would be unconscionable. After App Store fees and accounting for potential multiple installs it could halve their income.
    - labster 3y ago
      I didn’t actually make claim about the $0.20 case. Multiples of $1 is clearly too much for products that cost $0.99. But with America’s courts headed by an obviously illegitimate Supreme Court, who knows? The lesser amount could be pronounced legal.

awinter-py 3y ago

probably not as silently as they wanted

jauntywundrkind 3y ago

I struggle to think of a more well defined "burn the ships" moment in my lifetime. This company has lost all self respect.

pipeline_peak 3y ago

“Why leading development firms are leaving Unity for Godot” “Thinking of using Unity today? Think again!” “Unity hates puppies and babies”

blendergeek 3y ago

I'm a little confused here. If I released a game a couple years ago when the terms explicitly stated that Unity couldn't retroactively update them but now they changed the no retroactive updates clause, how can they try to apply this when that violates the terms I agreed to? This seems extremely shady.

agar 3y ago

An under-discussed aspect of this pricing structure is the number of older games that will simply be pulled from the (virtual) shelves. I've already seen a few and I fear more devs will follow suit. The ripples and unintended consequences of this move could really be significant for years.

matkoniecz 3y ago
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37518453 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37518453 they can continue using old terms of service if they do not upgrade Unity is trying to hide this.

deleted 3y ago

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njsubedi 3y ago

We are making games in Unity, and paying per developer per month the highest subscription $180+ for any tool we use. The amount is already quite high and grants us license to use Unity. Their current move is either because they being extremely greedy, or because they're burning a lot of cash. We make simple games, and we're using Unity because of its community support and assets, not because we love Unity, the company. The community moves, we move. Now if they're changing the terms arbitrarily, and hide that behind the "I agree" button, it proves that they have turned evil. We, along with several other fellow game companies don't support evil, and already migrating our games to Godot. We were prepared for something like this, but didn't anticipate Unity will flip their face this soon. This move only promotes Godot or Unreal; a far more different result than whatever they expected.

neop1x 3y ago
There is also Unigine [1] but that has less community around it than Unreal. I am mentioning it because I think it should be known more. It was started by a single russian dev who was initially just writing online tutorials on various OpenGL and physics stuff (frustum.org). Then he decided to make a commercial engine and started a company. Of course their engine evolved a lot since and they have a team of devs now and are no longer based in Russia (and the original dev is no longer in their team I think?). I am impressed by what they have achieved (it must have been super-hard especially in the beginning) and that they continue developing it and the graphical output is quite competitive to the major engines. They are also known for various graphical benchmarks. [1] https://unigine.com/ https://unigine.com/

noobermin 3y ago

Sorry but I cannot help but blame developers again. Again you idiots put all your eggs into one basket, whilst forsaking alternatives, even open source ones because "unity is better." Well close gardens locking you in (or out) is always a risk and instead of calling people like me tinfoil-hat wearing lunatics for sounding the alarm for years, may be you should have heeded it. Same goes for youtube, discord, zoom, aws. Invest in the alternarives you idiots, don't wait until it's too late. You won't garner any sympathy when they tighten the strings.

deleted 3y ago
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turquoisevar 3y ago
What are you on about? Switching mid development is already prohibitively difficult and you’re talking about putting eggs in multiple baskets as if you could easily mix and match different engines. As for alternatives, there aren’t that many with feature parity (or close to it), especially not one that is FOSS. You can mock people all you want with your disingenuous “unity is better” quote, but the sad reality is that for anything serious it’s going to be either Unity or Unreal. Even Godot, which is arguably the most fleshed out FOSS option, isn’t viable in its current state and they themselves know it[0]. So spare me the ill conceived “I told you so” nonsense. 0: https://godotengine.org/article/whats-missing-in-godot-for-aaa/ https://godotengine.org/article/whats-missing-in-godot-for-a...

noduerme 3y ago

Adobe put a silent kill switch into Flash player, rendering 10 years worth of casual games I'd written immediately unplayable. As a result of Adobe's actions, a whole sector of lone devs and small teams turned to Unity to build games that would've otherwise been built in AS3. I'm glad I didn't end up going that route, but I really feel for the folks who are now getting screwed again.

justinclift 3y ago
What was the silent kill switch? Was it a time based thing that applies to everyone or something? Asking because a friend is playing a lot of ancient flash games recently using Ruffle (OSS flash player written in Rust), and doesn't seem to be having problems like that.
- noduerme 3y ago
  The last few major versions of Flash Player had a time-based kill switch that made them stop functioning after a certain date. Adobe didn't announce this until well over 90% of people with Flash installed had been auto-updated to one of those death versions. When they announced it, the date was less than a year away, and plenty of people were in the middle of building large projects that would need to be totally rewritten. To be clear, Ruffle only [fully] emulates Actionscript 1/2, which was the Flash language prior to 2006. The games you see resurrected in Ruffle are mostly what people associate with the casual single-player Flash games and funky art projects from the early 2000s. Most of my work was in the Actionscript 3 language, which came out in 2006 and featured GPU support, networking via sockets, peer to peer RTMP messaging, and lots of other modern features to make fast 2D/3D gaming and multiplayer possible. With AS3 you could deploy a game with the browser plugin and compile the same code to iOS and Android "native" apps with Adobe Air, which basically shoehorned the plugin into the binaries. Air is still around, but the whole ecosystem is dead. When Adobe pulled the plug, I'd just spent almost two years building the second entire game engine I wrote in AS3, this one for open/endless isometric worlds with terrain generation, character spawning, physics, particle systems, 3D embeds, networking, chat, lobbies... and our 3-person team had only deployed our first game with it. The idea of rewriting half a million lines of code in Unity or TS+Pixijs or something else... I just gave up on making games after that. Ruffle is a great project for the older Flash stuff, and they've made some progress with coverage of AS3 now, but they don't support a lot of the critical things needed to run these games (particularly with networking APIs and Stage3D), and they probably never will. None of my advanced work runs under Ruffle, not even my old AS3 website from 2009. In theory I could rewrite that code to work around Ruffle's limitations, but I can't even run the Adobe tools anymore to recompile or modify assets unless I go back to an ancient laptop that never got the death-update.

lolinder 3y ago

IANAL, but I suspect part of what they're trying to hide is that the old terms [0] specify that while they can change the terms at any time, you may opt to use the old terms as long as you don't update the software beyond the current year (2023.x). That wording is changed in the new terms [1] to say "If the modified Terms are not acceptable to you, your only recourse is to cease using the Services." Just in case you were wondering how one-sided this new agreement is intended to be. [0] Section 8, "Modifications": https://web.archive.org/web/20201111183311/https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/master/Unity%20Software%20Additional%20Terms.md https://web.archive.org/web/20201111183311/https://github.co... [1] https://unity.com/legal/terms-of-service https://unity.com/legal/terms-of-service

harles 3y ago
That was my understanding. They did it (or least claim to have made the change, maybe they left in a loop hole) in response to the Spatial OS debacle. They tried to crush competition in their ecosystem through retroactive TOS changes that time too. Some of the community got rightfully up in arms about it, so they reversed and added these long term licenses. But it seems like that was all just lip service, because here we are right back where we were. Overview of the Spatial OS stuff for those that didn’t follow it: https://www.engadget.com/2019-01-10-unity-improbable-epic-games-spatial-os.html https://www.engadget.com/2019-01-10-unity-improbable-epic-ga...

Gembobo 3y ago

When I've made enough money, I would like to retire and just develop a free-2-play game. No intention of it making any money. I would happily pay a few thousand dollars for a good engine for that - like Unity. But I would not want to take the risk that my free game becomes wildly successful and suddenly costs me millions. It is very unfortunate, but I will now spend the weekend to learn Godot.