Basically don’t update existing games & stop using Unity completely & you’re good.
No, Unity is still saying they want a cut of old games if they’re ever newly installed.
And this clause will give unity some fun lawsuits for those old versions
I’m really hoping some of the bigger Unity devs, like the people that made Rust or Among Us sue, as most of us don’t have enough money to even stand a chance in court against Unity’s lawyers…especially once they have all that nice runtime money to spend. 😒
Thinking small there, there are several Unity games published by big dick AAA corps.
Like Hearthstone, most of Kings catalog, the Doom ports were wrapped in Unity. Plus there’s a lot of Unity games on Gamepass and that’s Xbox 's bread and butter right now so Microsoft could just slap the shit out of em or just buy em out entirely (might be smart just for the King purchase itself).
My guess is that AAA developers will just negotiate individual contracts that are more favorable for the developers. They’re not going to sue when they can just work out a special deal.
I really don’t want you to be right, but I’m super convinced that you are.
god I hate how right you are here
I’ve seen the “Microsoft should just buy Unity” argument a lot lately. And while I think it’s probably a better management than current, I imagine Microsoft is hesitant having only just come out of a, what, 6 month long legal battle in US and EU courts regarding acquisition of ActiBliz? So a good idea, but one I can imagine might not happen…
I honestly don’t think MS really wants to own Unity. Like, sure, there’s a small amount of synergy because some of their games use it, but owning Unity also means committing resources to support and improve it and competing with Unreal to an extent.
If anyone would be interested in buying Unity I’d think it’d be a Chinese corp like Tencent or NetEase or else a publisher that works with a lot of indies like Devolver or maybe Embracer.
Yeah, it kind of sucks that Microsoft being an even bigger unstoppable monopoly would have actually helped in these instances… at least in the short term… hopefully something less future terrible comes along to solve the short term problems instead at least.
Microsoft gaming is not even an industry leader, much less a monopoly.
Well yesterday, Unity decided they were gonna get Sony and Nintendo and Microsoft to pay the fees for smaller studios (lmao wat).
I don’t think Unity understands exactly how many top-tier lawyers those companies are going to bring to the table in the interest of legally curbstomping then.
“y’know, maybe Reddit and Twitter are on to something”
-Unity CEO, probablyMaybe a tiktok challenge for rich people?
Company bankruptcy speedrun any% no hacks
Egomaniac Category
Reddit, Twitter, Google, Twitch, Meta, you name it, they’re all having to find new ways to make money now that the decade-long bullrun of low interest rates and endless VC money is over.
“Your right Gary! The best way to endear our current users to us AND make more money is to take a big, heaping, smelly shit right into their mouths. While they are coping with that amazing gift we’ll just sneak off with their wallets. BAM! Money motherfucker!”
Looks like 2023 will be remembered as the year of big size enshittification. So many companies going to shit. Reddit with restricting API access, Twitter with…everything really, Google with its DRM and now Unity…great year so far, right?
Lmao when you’re trying to turn your company into a bloodsucking vampire but you forgot that long ago, you told your lawyer to chain the coffin in case this very thing happened.
Fuck Spez… oh wait…
Seriously, tech enshittiffication is feeling all too familiar.
Facebook (a long time ago), Twitter, Reddit, Google (they even removed the don’t be evil modo), now Unity. Apple being Apple… Arduino going closed source, Raspberry Pi becoming for profit. Samsung, at least never ever even tried to look nice.
Seems we’re in a time where the hopeful are hopeless so the greedy take charge
It’s a time where the kings are pulling as hard as they can on their rope until the day it breaks and their heads start flying. The people can be stepped on but only for so long.
what happened with raspberry pi?
deleted by creator
“Hey bro, let’s go check out those sirens over there. I swear, bro… just plug your ears with wax and tie me to the bow. Bro, it’ll be so epic.”
Sirens arrive
“Bro, why the fuck did you tie me down?? Smash this goddamn boat against the rocks!”
Perfect analogy, just wanted to say I took this as air sirens at first at it did not make sense lol
Quick shoutout to my prehistorical homies for passing down only the choicest and most salient of allegories. We meme on the shoulders of giants.
I want to know who hired that fucking CEO and put him up to purposefully tank Unity.
This can’t be anything less than a blatant attempt to destroy a company so who would have a vested interest in destroying Unity? It can’t just be for money.
Sadly, there often comes a time when a critical mass of the business leaders decide “you know what, I want to cash out and no matter how disastrous this will be long term, I think short term this will milk some revenue out of some captive audience”.
In the IT industry, that time is usually when Broadcom buys you.
You’ve hurt me right in the vSphere.
What a lot of people at these companies don’t understand is that other options existing means people will find a way to continue without you… The more that happens, the larger the community… the faster you fail.
When Broadcom announced buying VMWare, literally all the IT subreddits in unison looked for other alternatives. We’re on Proxmox now, it’s been a better product that VMWare in literally every way.
It’s also called the trust thermocline. Once a certain level of exploitation is reached, customers leaving suddenly goes very quickly and usually unrecoverable. The straw that breaks the camel’s back.
Or in the case of unity, you smash the poor camel with a baseball bat and are very surprised it tries to bite you.
And this is why we shouldn’t have monopolies. People shouldn’t be held hostage by one or two companies. When they go full stupid like Unity is, the customers grumble, shrug, and get to work with a different system.
Or not just monopolies, but companies in general have a dictatorship authoritarian structure where the c-suite has all the decision making power and employees or customers can go fuck themselves. Corporations should be made for the people by the people.
Aligning power over systems with stackholders impacted by those systems is usually good for avoiding hostile incentives which result in hurting people, yes. Plus to some it might axiomatically be morally good.
I’m forced to use VMware for cisco classes.
Sounds a bit odd… What networking class requires VM platform usage?
If I teach a class that needs a vm, I’m making damned sure everyone uses the same type.
The vm has “tools” preloaded and helps students experiment with configurations that don’t end up causing the host computer to be badly configured. The host PCs are pretty restrictive and have no admin privileges. The VM is fully capable of being “free to mess with” in a sense. The idea behind it is to prevent unauthorized bad actions on the host pc. Creating a separation of students’ abilities behind a vm. You can use your own PC, but that is cumbersome and unnecessary. The “forced to” is a bit loose, but it helps students start from a state where the teacher can help guide the students to what to do.
Good thing you’re not a teacher then!
Assuming this is college, requiring students to pay for software is part of the norm.
AdvancedAlgorithmicLigmaBalls201
In the software side of IT, this is usually when you start seeing layoffs and a mass replacement of talented developers with bottom-of-the-barrel offshore contractors. Beware the following fail cascade.
That’s what everyone is saying but this policy will only cost them from lawsuits, so it can’t just be about money.
It will cost them in future earnings… Companies won’t want to work on their platform if these policies are still in place… and many will never want to work with them again since they’ve shown their hand.
That is what makes me think there’s something more to this.
I think rival companies might groom CEOs that get hired by their competitors but whom, secretly, are paid by the rivals to destroy the companies from within.
Perhaps I’m wrong but that’s the only explanation I’ve been able to come up with that makes any sense to me.
Oh, plenty of business “geniuses” make some pretty boneheaded moves, especially when they feel a need to try to produce huge growth after saturating a market, or if their business results somehow fall short of some need (either actually losing money, or some arbitrary self-imposed “goal” not being hit).
Currently there’s an epidemic of businesses making some pretty dubious long term decisions for the sake of trying to prop up numbers amidst a receding market reality. Recessions are, in part, a self-fulfilling prophecy, where whatever impetus exists, it’s exacerbated by every participant screwing things up further.
Kicked me right in the Reddit.
Its the same ethos of those CEOs that are demanding everyone must return to the office. No ifs, or buts.
They damage moral which takes years to build up, they further announce layoffs which destroys whatever moral was left.
These idiots never seem to be held accountable.
Honestly, these management types need to be case studied.
We have to start holding them accountable ourselves, because the system sure ain’t gonna do it.
Yeah, it’s looking like 1776 time.
He’s a VC CEO, he’s there to pump the company for everything it’s worth for maximum stock returns.
I just checked the stock ticker for Unity and it fucking tanked. So that can’t be it.
I wouldn’t put it past them to short their own stock while they make announcements then go long once things settle down…
How the fuck is that even legal?
It isn’t. That would be Insider Trading.
But it doesn’t stop people from trying (and sometimes getting away with) it.
Even though this is bad and many developers won’t want to use Unity, I think there still may be enough devs that will comply and generate more profit.
If you were at the start of your journey right now and were trying my decide between Unity, Unreal or any other tool… Would you be choosing Unity?
Let’s hope not. We can’t be complicit in our own subjugation any longer.
Maybe it grew too big or the wrong way for their taste? Good reason to fire a few hundred and restructure.
It is Big Godot pulling the strings to entice people to jump ship to their free and open source game engine. The plan is dastardly, but effective. Can’t use other game engines if there are no other engines left standing.
You know, if Godot was actually a for-profit endeavor, I probably would believe you.
It’s not only the CEO, it’s all the board. Don’t think he can do this kind of shit alone.
It can’t just be for money.
Lol (litterally)
What is it with tech companies being too shitty lately?
The Venture Capital Well is running dry, tech companies are turtling up their data so other tech companies dont use AI to scrape all their content… its the 12th hour of the tech bubble and they’re all scrambling to become real companies that make, you know, money. Problem is they dont know how, and customers dont want to pay them for the garbage they used to tolerate when it was free.
The lack of “easy money”. A lot of companies have had accelerated growth due to an influx of investments which were mostly interest-free (or very low interest) loans . You didn’t have to have a good product - just overinflate your value till your IPO, then the value will determine stock price, everyone gets rich.
Now that interest rates are higher, investors want a lot more bang for their buck. Couple this with companies that no longer know how to make good products, now they’re just squeezing shit dry and scheming and scamming their customers to fulfill their one and only legal obligation: make more money for the shareholders.
If I could be certain this is true, I’d be optimistic.
It would mean (because of some things being more profitable than other) that after long labor pains (involving legal battles and IP laws changing for patents and anti-monopoly laws changing back to working state) these companies were going to die and the better ones were going to take their place.
The problem is that the kind of people that run these types of companies will first see the world burnt to ashes before losing profits and power.
So yes, they will fall, but they’ll be taking us down with them.
Greed and societal acceptance of greed.
And interest rates doing an uh oh and they can’t think of any more innovative a solution than to soak their paying customers
Not just acceptance. There has been a worship of the greediest people as the most “successful” and those who are “worth” the most.
Capitalism. While the average person is frustrated over their grocery bills being 2x, the corporate ghouls are trying to milk as much money as they can. Not to mention I believe they pulled out their shares before the decision was made so it seems like they were trying to just cash out before shit hit the fan.
Everything is being run on borrowed money, even major studios like Marvel or Blizzard take injections and answer to share holders / venture capital, instead of just making a better product.
Like I answered in another comment, this would be wonderful, as this would mean that they are going to crash hard. Better a horrible end than horror without end. I mean, every magnificent era of development started with a frustrating crisis of this kind. So let it go boom, I don’t care that much about any of the big tech around. Well, Sun was nice, but it’s dead.
IDK, but a lot of tech stock got a massive boost during Covid, then when that was over, and we instead got war in Ukraine, there has been a bit of a slowdown. So maybe they think the progress they had should continue, even if the economy doesn’t justify it.
The Ukraine stuff has nothing to do with it.
It’s the feds attempts to wrangle inflation (caused by dumping trillions into the economy during COVID)by hiking interest rates. Companies with barely profitable or even unprofitable business models used to be able to borrow money at stupid cheap interest rates. Now that it’s 7-8% they realize they have to figure something out.
It was this silicon valley “trade profits for scale and then we’ll figure it out later” approach. That only works when cheap loans could float you until you hit scale or figured something out.
But in Unity’s case I think it’s partially that (they aren’t profitable), but partially related to the stuff apple is releasing and doing lately.
I think unity is trying to get in front of a possible boom in Mac and apple gaming. Charge dev $.20 per install so you insure you get a piece of every game install and avoid a confrontation with Apple about app store rates.
I know Unity claim they can apply their new pricing to old versions anyway, but setting that aside, how practical is it to simply stay on Unity 2022 LTSB or earlier?
I’m not a software developer, I’m a CAD modeller. My company pays Autodesk a substantial amount of money every year for licence tokens which grants us access to new releases, but using the latest is pretty much unheard of.
For AutoCAD, 2022 is the default (2024 is current) although they don’t seem to have added much of interest since v2019. For the likes of Civil 3D and Revit there are useful updates in newer versions, but the version used is locked in at the start of a project, and upgrading mid scheme is only done in exceptional circumstances.
If Autodesk came out with some kind of scheme in their 2025 tos that said “if you model a bridge in Revit, we will charge 5 cents for every car that crosses or passes under it” then we could easily stick on 2024 for a decade, more than enough time to skill up on the alternatives.
You can’t do that in unity, because each version has somehow a major bug ruining your life or your project.
They usually only fix them after they introduce another bug that breaks another part of your project, so it’s a neverending race.
You don’t wan’t to reimplement everything yourself and they are always “working on it” so you trust them
If those were the terms you signed, those are the terms that matter.
Typically terms of service can and will be updated and if you don’t object to them you’re deemed to have accepted them.
Many people will be familiar with emails entitled “your terms of service have changed” or “updates to your terms of service”
If this is true, they’re really screwed. No one is gonna use the new versions.
Can someone help me understand? Maybe my understanding of contracts is too simple but in this example:
I’ve developed and published a unity game. The game is complete and will receive no future updates from me, but will remain on sale for the foreseeable future.
My understanding of the current situation is that unity is somehow claiming these new terms will apply to my game. But I don’t see how that’s feasible. Shouldn’t my relationship with unity be at an end as the product was completed? Would I have to de-list my completed game to avoid charges? How is that legal?
The game is complete and will receive no future updates from me, but will remain on sale for the foreseeable future.
That’s the sticking point. A game could be complete, and receiving no material updates, but still need to be “updated”. Sometimes the app stored require a re-compile and you will be bound by the new terms.
In the worst cases, a highly played but low earning game (like Flappy Bird) requires a recompile to update the minimum API level it supports in the Google play store. There are no gameplay changes what-so-ever. If you don’t re-compile and update it, Google will de-list the game. But you also can’t submit the update unless you accept the new terms.
So is this something that all companies deal with? For example:
If Google builds an app with an embedded library that costs a license fee, and the company that offered that license decides to raise is price by 10x for future versions and they only give 3 months warning. Now my app has to go without security updates or suddenly be subject to extreme charges. But I don’t have enough time to completely rewrite my app either.
I find it hard to believe companies would leave this sort of thing up to chance. If AWS suddenly decided to 100x it’s price structure would that actually fly legally? If so, why don’t they?
Unity has had over a decade to establish itself as the main game engine. They have passed the growth phase and are now in the exploitation phase.
AWS and Azure are currently in the growth phase. They charge more for worse performance than self hosting and traditional third party hosting, but it’s close enough execs on the hype train are switching as fast as possible so as not to be left behind by their peers. Once they have destroyed traditional hosting options, they will absolutely move into the exploitation phase and pull this same move, and the ramifications will be much greater than just gaming.
Well good luck to Unity in fighting massive games like FGO or Genshin.
Wait, is Genshin made with Unity?
Nintendo lawyers:omau wa mou shindieru
Fuckin hell, one of my favourite game was about to ditch flash (yea I know lol) for Unity and then that. They invested tons of money, idk what will happen
“I think we’ll just stay here, in the 90’s.” - that dev
Ruffle.rs allows you to run flash games using WebAssembly and doesn’t require any fees
What’s the game?
Not a game dev but I’ve had interest in using Unity for machine learning. I’m now trying out Godot since it does have quite a few ML libraries and it seems to be maintained better than Unity’s ml-agents.
Unity-ml-agents is quite a hassle to deal with but a few months ago I wasn’t able to find any altrrnatives. At least one good thing that came out of this is that I learned that there is an alternative to using Unity now.
I wonder if they realize the extent to which this disincentivizes upgrades to any newer form of Unity - and the newer license - even outside the rest of the recent drama.
It would take amazing changes to even consider giving this up - and at that point, it’s a hop and a skip to a platform shift.
Google app store requires a change, old version doesn’t have the capability to make the change. App gets pulled or you upgrade and make the change… boom that’s all it takes. And appreciate from other comments it happens semi-regularly.
Internet archive is awesome
I’m pretty sure there are open source alternatives to this?
Anybody care to shine some light on which projects would be comparable, and how they stack up against unity?
Godot, it’s the most mature of the bunch. It’s a little different than Unity, but it’s definitely very user friendly, really powerful and has an active community.
Godot feels nicer to work in than Unity. The object model is better designed and more intuitive. I hope this gives Godot a big boost.
Godot is probably the best choice for open source game engines. Its got funding and full time developers working on it.
Stride3D is probably the closest open source clone of Unity. It was developed by Silicon Studio as a commercial game engine but they eventually stopped and open sourced it. Its got a ton of modern features including vulkan and direct x 12 support. It has an active community too, but no full time staff making new features.
Godot Engine is a nice alternative.
