Picture taken from their Twitter

  • @Sanctus@lemmy.world
    cake
    link
    fedilink
    English
    2310 months ago

    I hope all the devs with weight followsuit. My little project moving won’t really disturb anyone but me. Sweeping and sudden policy changes like this are bullshit.

    • conciselyverbose
      link
      fedilink
      610 months ago

      What I’m hoping is that gamers take some of the big pocket publishers that use Unity and abuse the absolute fuck out of them so they send their lawyers after Unity for the obviously unenforceable terms.

      Unfortunately Unity will probably just settle with them for nothing to avoid them setting precedents.

    • @simple@lemm.eeOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      5710 months ago

      TL;DR of the situation is that Unity released a statement 2 days ago saying they want successful developers to pay up to 20 cents every time a user installs a Unity game starting from Jan 1 2024, even if your game was already released. This caused a huge ruckus in the game dev community and many developers want to switch away from Unity.

      • falkerie71
        link
        fedilink
        English
        6110 months ago

        Note that it’s “per install” (they clarified that reinstalling on the same device only counts as one install), not per unit sold. And Unity will also track pirated copies, so the devs would still have to pay the fee even if they didn’t sell it to you.

        • Wilker
          link
          English
          3610 months ago

          the tracking of pirated copies is even more fucked up. is that their way of imposing that “piracy = stealing”?

          • body_by_make
            link
            fedilink
            English
            28
            edit-2
            10 months ago

            It’s because they literally don’t know how to differentiate a download from legit and illegitimate. They’re going to track every time their bundler is downloaded and bill the developer for it, that would include pirated copies and legit copies alike.

            • Rentlar
              link
              fedilink
              English
              410 months ago

              The swashbuckler’s solution is then to make your own bundler installer!

              • @jayandp@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                English
                210 months ago

                That’s assuming pirates would go through the trouble of removing said functionality. Pirates hate trackers, so they might do it, but not necessarily, as often the priority is just to get the game working.

        • @Zeth0s@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          23
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          That’s a recent change. According to the faq on the official forum, initially the idea was to charge every reinstallation. Then they realized it was crazy. Now it’s every first installations:

          If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, 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 13)

          https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates.1482750/

          Note the “updated” yesterday. Initially every install in “different devices” counted. Even on the same device after reinstallation of the os

          • InEnduringGrowStrong@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            English
            2510 months ago

            I fail to see how they can guarantee it’s the first install.
            I game inside a VM with GPU passthrough and I’m pretty sure it would be trivial to install-bomb any game to rack up install numbers and costs.
            Moreover, would anyone even trust any number of times Unity tells you your game was installed?
            They could a magical 10% that would be hard to prove/disprove.
            Anyone with a half-competent legal team would stay the fuck away from any of this nonsense going forward.

            • @Zeth0s@lemmy.world
              link
              fedilink
              English
              10
              edit-2
              10 months ago

              It’s a “proprietary system” (quote). It must be clearly always correct. It’s not one of those open source stuff… /s

        • @breadsmasher@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          410 months ago

          Where did they add the same device reinstall clarification? Last I saw, same device reinstall is still a new install and thus chargeable

    • wia
      link
      fedilink
      English
      22
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      This.

      Basically changed their pricing model to fleece Indy devs. Some devs would have owed more money than they ever even made on their games.

      • Rentlar
        link
        fedilink
        English
        5
        edit-2
        10 months ago

        Fleece every Unity dev pretty much, even if big studios can afford it.

    • YMS
      link
      fedilink
      510 months ago

      The thing is they can’t even do this reliably. If you charge the customer once on purchase, but don’t know if they are going to install it once or ten times or if they are going to fuck with you and install it a hundred times, then how much do you want to charge?