That does not change anything for me. I will not be using Unity for any projects going forward, and will make an effort to boycott any new game purchases that use Unity. This wasn't a unilateral...
That does not change anything for me. I will not be using Unity for any projects going forward, and will make an effort to boycott any new game purchases that use Unity.
This wasn't a unilateral move by one guy, and it will take a lot more than one sacrificial lamb to get me on board.
I mean, that kinda sucks for the developers that were already stuck in the Unity ecosystem. I don’t think they should be punished just because they’re unable to switch engines.
and will make an effort to boycott any new game purchases that use Unity.
I mean, that kinda sucks for the developers that were already stuck in the Unity ecosystem. I don’t think they should be punished just because they’re unable to switch engines.
Any boycott of a company sucks for someone. Boycotting a restaurant means a server doesn't get tips. Boycotting a manufacturer means some guy on the production floor gets fewer hours. Boycotting a...
Any boycott of a company sucks for someone. Boycotting a restaurant means a server doesn't get tips. Boycotting a manufacturer means some guy on the production floor gets fewer hours. Boycotting a coffee company probably inadvertently hurts some poor farmer in Columbia. None of these people are likely in positions to have been involved with policies that caused a boycott.
Does that mean a boycott should never happen? I don't think that is the case.
I want to encourage people to leave Unity as quickly as possible. The only functional way to do that in my position is to spend money on people using alternative game engines.
I think this is more like boycotting Food as a whole becsuse a specific Wal mart sucks. Devs can't control what unity does. Regardless, this isn't much of a battle on the user end. Most people...
I think this is more like boycotting Food as a whole becsuse a specific Wal mart sucks. Devs can't control what unity does.
Regardless, this isn't much of a battle on the user end. Most people don't even know what devs work on a game, let alone what engine they use. Heck, they PAID to remove the Unity splash mark due to historical cruft.
Devs can't control what Unity does, sure, but they can control which game engine they use. For example, the folks at MegaCrit are now delaying their next game because they're taking the time to...
Devs can't control what Unity does, sure, but they can control which game engine they use. For example, the folks at MegaCrit are now delaying their next game because they're taking the time to migrate engines from Unity to Godot, and have confirmed that's still the plan even after Unity's CEO announced that he's stepping down. There's just far too much trust gone now to come back from.
In theory, this is true. In practice? It depends. If you have a small game where the main draw is assets, it shouldn't be too hard to switch. If you are a AA company making a complex game, you...
In theory, this is true. In practice? It depends. If you have a small game where the main draw is assets, it shouldn't be too hard to switch. If you are a AA company making a complex game, you realistically cannot switch. Cities: Skylines 2 comes to mind. The game has ~4 years of development and is the studios only big franchise. Switching now would mean at least half a year to a year of delay and would cause a huge hit to the profitability of the company and might mean the financial ruin of the company. "Just switch the game engine" is just too reductive.
Kinda. It depends on a lot of factors. And of course "devs" here usually mean a few specific directors who still need to talk with product managers about the monetization. So it's not unheard of...
Devs can't control what Unity does, sure, but they can control which game engine they us
Kinda. It depends on a lot of factors. And of course "devs" here usually mean a few specific directors who still need to talk with product managers about the monetization. So it's not unheard of for a company to mandate using a certain engine (EA). It's not a simple factor in large studios.
Smaller ones, sure. They can switch on a dime if needed. That's the advantage of being lean.
Also, another big factor is market. Most console gamers (at least the vocal ones online) already hate mobile, and mobile is where Unity really dominates. can't boycott what you never played to begin with. Unity could abandon the entire console market and still live off of Genshin money and ads.
Which circles back to the original comment response to boycott. The developers that might be "stuck" in the Unity system are those with enough resources to take the hit for a Unity boycott and can...
It's not a simple factor in large studios.
Which circles back to the original comment response to boycott. The developers that might be "stuck" in the Unity system are those with enough resources to take the hit for a Unity boycott and can afford to change engines.
Small studios can switch because they run lean, big studios can switch because they can afford the hit.
This makes zero sense to me and I don't think it bears out. Small studios running lean means they're ill-equipped to spend the time (and associated money for labor) to switch engines on a game...
Small studios can switch because they run lean
This makes zero sense to me and I don't think it bears out. Small studios running lean means they're ill-equipped to spend the time (and associated money for labor) to switch engines on a game that's in development. It's a huge added cost for them. Even if there's no cost to switching engines for their next game (there likely would be due to differences in familiarity with the new engine), the small devs are the ones least likely to have the extra runway needed to spend time porting their work in progress to something that isn't Unity.
Not necessarily. I'll be more specific: For small developers it's a factor of time and scale. As well as how strongly intertwined they were in Unity to begin with. Mega crit was mentioned as...
Not necessarily.
I'll be more specific: For small developers it's a factor of time and scale. As well as how strongly intertwined they were in Unity to begin with. Mega crit was mentioned as switching but it's a title that is not formally announced. They may not be too far in as a result, and it's scale of game (referencing slay the spire) isn't one that is performance critical per se. But I wouldn't necessarily say they have tons of resources.
Compare that to Silksong, 5+ years in, showcasing a few small vertical slices, has to manage hundreds of assets and it possibly has a lot of its action timings based in Unity's systems. It can "switch" easier than say, City Skylines mentioned earlier in the thread, but there's definitely going to be a difference in feel from the move give it's tight action gameplay.
Or it delays the game 2 mode years to get that polish/feel back and fans suffer from what was already a long wait. But this is all speculation.
There are several small to medium sized game design studios in my town. It's kind of a hub for it. I don't know anything about game design, but I've spoken to several developers who have lamented...
There are several small to medium sized game design studios in my town. It's kind of a hub for it. I don't know anything about game design, but I've spoken to several developers who have lamented what Unity is doing but are unable to change engines. One in particular said their game simply will not work on any other engine. It's not a matter of time, money, or desire, other engines do not have the infrastructure to run their game with it's current functionality. Many of these studios are fairly new or have been started by students and absolutely do not have large enough budgets to absorb the hit of a boycott.
That analogy would only apply if I decided that I was no longer going to buy any games. That is not the case. Now, on my list of criteria when looking at a game and deciding if I want to purchase...
I think this is more like boycotting Food as a whole becsuse a specific Wal mart sucks
That analogy would only apply if I decided that I was no longer going to buy any games. That is not the case. Now, on my list of criteria when looking at a game and deciding if I want to purchase it, I just have an additional bullet point of checking the game engine.
You're free to do as you want, I'm not trying to change your mind since I can't even give you a definite answer of what's "right". But maybe you should consider what the devs have to say? This...
You're free to do as you want, I'm not trying to change your mind since I can't even give you a definite answer of what's "right". But maybe you should consider what the devs have to say?
This whole debacle is between devs and Unity, it doesn't have a direct impact on the consumer (other than the effect it has on game releases/quality). If the devs were to invite consumers into a boycott, there wouldn't even be a question what's the right call.
The analogy is that people with no control nor strong relation to the perpetrator are being punished. Seems apt here and there's not much value in Micro-analyzing the analogy for correctness. So,...
The analogy is that people with no control nor strong relation to the perpetrator are being punished. Seems apt here and there's not much value in Micro-analyzing the analogy for correctness.
That is not the case. Now, on my list of criteria...
So, it is indeed the case (given my clarified analogy). I guess you can also check if the game has Perl in its code base as a criteria too, for how related it is to the actual product. Or if the game was made using a Scrum work flow.
People with no strong correlation to the perpetrator are always punished when someone chooses to not buy a product. But, for some reason, there isn't a big backlash about the lives of the people...
People with no strong correlation to the perpetrator are always punished when someone chooses to not buy a product. But, for some reason, there isn't a big backlash about the lives of the people at meat processing plants when someone decides to go vegetarian.
And I suppose I would check if the game was written with Perl or used Scrum if I had ethical concerns about either of those things.
If meat processing slows down that's an industry slowing down. There's enough levels of indirection that I don't blame the consumer for that meat processor losing their job. At the same time that...
People with no strong correlation to the perpetrator are always punished when someone chooses to not buy a product.
there isn't a big backlash about the lives of the people at meat processing plants when someone decides to go vegetarian.
If meat processing slows down that's an industry slowing down. There's enough levels of indirection that I don't blame the consumer for that meat processor losing their job. At the same time that can create more jobs processing plants to meet demand, so it can balance out. Former Meat eaters will still eat food so demands will shift, not diminish
Here, a dev is punished for the tech they can't easily switch out of (e.g. Silksong is an upcoming sequel to a 2017 Unity game. They are some 5+years into development) and Unity isn't even phased by it. The target is wrong and the intended target isn't even punished. The direct impact is much more intimate because it is a single product being affected by a consumer's decision.
The parameters don't make a consumer boycott effective here. This is where an additive approach would work better. Devs who want better engines should invest in tech they can better own. Invested consumers can donate to such initiatives and give them funding for more development. If you can't donate you can always help with awareness by following various social media (Godot has a Twitter and YouTube account).
Note that this is more of a mental/philiophical exercise than anything. Since I've long stopped trying to actively tear down big corporate and try to focus more on promoting the little guy. I at least want to throw that out for consideration, perhaps even in tandem with a boycott. 10k people boycotting Unity won't make a dent, 10k people engaging with some open source engine can give that engine its big break. You are of course free make your own decisions, but note that I've yet to see a successful game boycott on any level, and this situation with unity is already rapidly de-escalating (i.e. Reducing the need for boycott).
And a person that formerly played unity games will shift to games that aren't on unity. They don't just stop playing games the same way a person that stops eating food would diminish demand (clue:...
And a person that formerly played unity games will shift to games that aren't on unity. They don't just stop playing games the same way a person that stops eating food would diminish demand (clue: the person dies, the gamer still plays).
Consumers can do both things at once, refuse to play Unity games and support open source projects, which is what most of the response has been. It's not been "I guess I won't play games again" and the consumer is gone forever, they're educating themselves and moving toward supporting games that use a better engine. This is something that happens across industries constantly with consumer awareness of corporate greed, just a matter of where the tipping point sits for each person. There are places I simply do not spend my money due to their various policies or political donations, some have reversed their course on those actions, but I continue to personally boycott them as they have lost the trust required for me to give them my money.
The market in this case is game devs, not consumers. Devs leaving the industry leads to less games. Maybe not noticeably less games for consumers but it's talent leaving, not necessarily shifting....
And a person that formerly played unity games will shift to games that aren't on unity.
The market in this case is game devs, not consumers. Devs leaving the industry leads to less games. Maybe not noticeably less games for consumers but it's talent leaving, not necessarily shifting.
You are right that Unity can die tomorrow and burn every devs computer and games up on the way out and consumers would feel a bad sting at worst (at least on console. Mobile would go through a mass extinction).
Part of the argument for going vegetarian is for horrible it is to work at a meat processing plant. But it's a small part of the argument. The workers at a meat processing plant aren't the primary...
Part of the argument for going vegetarian is for horrible it is to work at a meat processing plant. But it's a small part of the argument. The workers at a meat processing plant aren't the primary victims of the horrors that go on there. Developers are the primary victims of Unity's actions. Your boycott would be more like going vegetarian even if that would have a major negative impact on the animals. (Not a perfect analogy since there are many reasons to go vegetarian that tend to overlap but could hypothetically conflict, whereas there's really just this one reason to boycott unity.)
It's not necessarily intended to punish Unity developers. The big thing we've learned is that Unity believes that they can apply terms retroactively to games you already own, and they also believe...
It's not necessarily intended to punish Unity developers. The big thing we've learned is that Unity believes that they can apply terms retroactively to games you already own, and they also believe that they can track your installations (and who knows else). This makes buying Unity games dicey if you are concerned about privacy.
I, personally, will not outright boycott Unity games. But I am a lot more wary of them now, particularly those with online features, and I will be a lot more choosy with Unity games going forward because there may come a point in the future where I permanently uninstall all of my Unity games and never play them again due to privacy concerns.
It really sucks for Unity developers because it's not their fault at all. My partner is working with a team making a Unity game right now, and they really wish they could switch engines now, but they just can't this late in development. (They are planning to cut ties with Unity after this, however.)
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that if the ToS change, you can refuse to accept the new ToS and stop using the product. In this case, it sounds like Unity intended for there to...
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that if the ToS change, you can refuse to accept the new ToS and stop using the product. In this case, it sounds like Unity intended for there to be no option for developers to reject the new ToS by ending their use of the product; even if they had already ceased all use of Unity years previously, Unity would still apply these changes to their previous games, even if those games were abandonware.
Of course, as a consumer of video games, I certainly never agreed to any Unity ToS whatsoever; I've never bought a game that came with ToS I had to accept or reject. I don't think software should be permitted to access my private data without my express consent.
I'm a little more optimistic. I did expect a sacrifice, but assumed it'd be some VP or such and such. A CEO step down (or more likely, being pushed..) does signal that at least a few people are...
I'm a little more optimistic.
I did expect a sacrifice, but assumed it'd be some VP or such and such. A CEO step down (or more likely, being pushed..) does signal that at least a few people are taking seriously just how big of a fuckup this was.
That said, I still wouldn't trust my future projects to it unless they can come up with some great wording on their deal that makes me feel safe.
I am highly skeptical as well. I doubt he came up with the pricing scheme in a vacuum and announced it without the board's approval. I think it is extremely likely that they will continue to push...
I am highly skeptical as well. I doubt he came up with the pricing scheme in a vacuum and announced it without the board's approval. I think it is extremely likely that they will continue to push in this direction; they'll just do it more discreetly and incrementally now to avoid triggering mass protests. They're learning that frogs must be boiled slowly.
Good riddance, though not sure this will be nearly enough to start rebuilding trust. Seriously, I'm still in awe at how horrible this debacle has been. It's the worst business decision I've seen...
Good riddance, though not sure this will be nearly enough to start rebuilding trust. Seriously, I'm still in awe at how horrible this debacle has been. It's the worst business decision I've seen in any industry. Still can't wrap my head around how the heck it made it to the public announcement stage, particularly because I'm 99% sure parts of it (retroactively applying the new terms to projects made with Unity before the policy was even conceived) were flat-out illegal.
I think they're at a point where the only way they rebuild trust is by doing a big open source push. Obviously on a long enough timeline of just not being shitty people will use them more, but...
I think they're at a point where the only way they rebuild trust is by doing a big open source push.
Obviously on a long enough timeline of just not being shitty people will use them more, but outside of open sourcing some of the engine, I don't see how they bounce back any time soon.
This whole situation is very reminiscent of the recent drama with Wizards of the Coast trying to update the OGL (Open Gaming License) for D&D with some nasty retroactive terms. There was a...
This whole situation is very reminiscent of the recent drama with Wizards of the Coast trying to update the OGL (Open Gaming License) for D&D with some nasty retroactive terms. There was a similarly huge backlash there, and the only way they could staunch the tide of people dropping them like a hot potato was by pendulumming the other direction and irrevocably putting everything under a permissive creative commons license in perpetuity instead. Open sourcing the engine seems like the appropriate analogue here.
Did I miss something? I thought they didn’t back down on the pricing changes, just the retroactive pricing for existing projects. This article makes it sound like they backed out of the new...
Did I miss something? I thought they didn’t back down on the pricing changes, just the retroactive pricing for existing projects. This article makes it sound like they backed out of the new pricing entirely?
Ok that’s what I read before, so they are keeping the runtime fee but adding a revshare option, and the main concession was making it not retroactive — not much of a concession, considering it was...
Ok that’s what I read before, so they are keeping the runtime fee but adding a revshare option, and the main concession was making it not retroactive — not much of a concession, considering it was probably not legally possible to make it retroactive even if they wanted to.
Most developers don't have the volume of sales where they would have seen an impact. I think the bigger issue is how the terms were rolled out. The new structure is still a strong incentive for...
Most developers don't have the volume of sales where they would have seen an impact. I think the bigger issue is how the terms were rolled out. The new structure is still a strong incentive for indie developers compared with Unreal. The goal wasn't to hurt smaller studios, it was to profit share with successful studios in a way which wouldn't break the bank. If that was/is a concern, Unity still has no intent to cause harm and would work with those studios to come to an agreement which benefits both.
Don't fully agree, since Unity went for the absolute greediest model at the starting point. Their explanations of how it would be implemented were vague at best, leading to justifiable concern...
Don't fully agree, since Unity went for the absolute greediest model at the starting point. Their explanations of how it would be implemented were vague at best, leading to justifiable concern about whether pirated copies would count to the install fee. Nor did they offer much reassurance that developers would be protected against fraud, such as malicious people running scripts to generate 10,000 installs per second.
By far the biggest issue though: they wanted to apply it to games made with previous versions of Unity. Those developers couldn't take a nonexistent policy into consideration when choosing an engine, but Unity wanted them to be on the hook for all future sales anyway. I genuinely don't think that's even legal.
Suddenly, every game ever made with Unity is a liability. I am amazed that's not an exaggeration. If they're willing to try to force some new policies and fees on people who never agreed to it (which, again, pretty sure that's illegal), then what else are they willing to do?
It's not just a liability for developers, but anyone involved with the games. I'm 99% sure they didn't consult with Microsoft and Sony before publicly announcing they expected them to pay the fee for any games downloaded from GamePass or Playstation Plus. That's pretty good incentive to NOT allow games made with Unity on your service. Publishers won't want to risk being on the hook for it, and I doubt investors would like having this threat of unpredictable policy changes dangling over their potential returns either.
The new structure doesn't make up for the lack of trust. I can't emphasize enough how much this shattered any trust in Unity. We have no reason to trust Unity to value anything but greed and profit.
It's 100% not. They knew this which is why they tried to sneakily edit the "the terms are the ones in the license you signed" terms out of the licenses to pretend. None of it would stand up in...
By far the biggest issue though: they wanted to apply it to games made with previous versions of Unity. Those developers couldn't take a nonexistent policy into consideration when choosing an engine, but Unity wanted them to be on the hook for all future sales anyway. I genuinely don't think that's even legal.
It's 100% not. They knew this which is why they tried to sneakily edit the "the terms are the ones in the license you signed" terms out of the licenses to pretend. None of it would stand up in court cause you literally can't agree to a document that didn't exist when you made the agreement.
My guess is they were hoping obfuscation and cost of legal challenge would lead people to pay up just to make the problem go away in a manner that didn't require legal fees.
So is Photoshop. Do you think artists using Photoshop should pay Adobe some license fee for any product they make? Edit: Apologies if this seems snarky, wasn't my intent. Basically, the point is...
So is Photoshop. Do you think artists using Photoshop should pay Adobe some license fee for any product they make?
Edit: Apologies if this seems snarky, wasn't my intent. Basically, the point is that the Gaming studios/devs have already paid Unity for the product/service. In my opinion, Unity shouldn't get a piece of the success a game built on it's engine, because 1/ They were paid for their engine 2/ Apart from the engine itself, they had no contribution to the game.
Fair point. I use Affinity Designer regularly! But I think the "real answer" is... yes, if that's what the terms are. Font companies often charge based on views per month
Fair point. I use Affinity Designer regularly!
But I think the "real answer" is... yes, if that's what the terms are. Font companies often charge based on views per month
There were two main issues. The fact that it applied retroactively and that there was the possibility to literally lose more money than you make from the install fee. Both of those problems have...
There were two main issues. The fact that it applied retroactively and that there was the possibility to literally lose more money than you make from the install fee. Both of those problems have been fixed. It's no longer retroactive and there is a maximum amount that you can be charged in the install fee (I think 4% of revenue).
Developers weren't mad that Unity was changing the deal, they were mad that they were unable to do anything about it. Now devs can stay on their current Unity build and pay the price they originally agreed to, or upgrade to the new terms.
I wonder what Unity can possibly do now to earn the trust of future developers. Specific legally binding agreements with each individual party who uses the engine? Otherwise how can you be sure...
I wonder what Unity can possibly do now to earn the trust of future developers. Specific legally binding agreements with each individual party who uses the engine? Otherwise how can you be sure they won't try to pull the same thing again in the future?
The problem there is they previously had a "you can keep using the old license with the old version" term and silently deleted it about a year ago. So I think even if they re-added such a clause,...
The problem there is they previously had a "you can keep using the old license with the old version" term and silently deleted it about a year ago. So I think even if they re-added such a clause, they'd need to also require specific steps to update it (like out of band email with explicit opt in via a designated contact, not a clickwrap in a minor version update no one reads) and to make such a move optional.
Swap out the board and bring in some people with good community rep could be a thing. Not sure if that's enough in itself, but I think it would be a big step in the right direction. Then those new...
Swap out the board and bring in some people with good community rep could be a thing. Not sure if that's enough in itself, but I think it would be a big step in the right direction. Then those new people could do things to establish trust further and people would trust them more than if the old guys did it.
Do an internal investigation how this decision came to be and publish it publicly is another idea, needs to be done in sync with actions making sure it can't happen the same way again.
Riccitiello has championed some of the singular worst trends in this industry, hopefully this debacle has sufficently poisoned his reputation where large companies will be concerned about their...
Riccitiello has championed some of the singular worst trends in this industry, hopefully this debacle has sufficently poisoned his reputation where large companies will be concerned about their stock price and think twice before hiring him.
That does not change anything for me. I will not be using Unity for any projects going forward, and will make an effort to boycott any new game purchases that use Unity.
This wasn't a unilateral move by one guy, and it will take a lot more than one sacrificial lamb to get me on board.
I mean, that kinda sucks for the developers that were already stuck in the Unity ecosystem. I don’t think they should be punished just because they’re unable to switch engines.
Any boycott of a company sucks for someone. Boycotting a restaurant means a server doesn't get tips. Boycotting a manufacturer means some guy on the production floor gets fewer hours. Boycotting a coffee company probably inadvertently hurts some poor farmer in Columbia. None of these people are likely in positions to have been involved with policies that caused a boycott.
Does that mean a boycott should never happen? I don't think that is the case.
I want to encourage people to leave Unity as quickly as possible. The only functional way to do that in my position is to spend money on people using alternative game engines.
I think this is more like boycotting Food as a whole becsuse a specific Wal mart sucks. Devs can't control what unity does.
Regardless, this isn't much of a battle on the user end. Most people don't even know what devs work on a game, let alone what engine they use. Heck, they PAID to remove the Unity splash mark due to historical cruft.
Devs can't control what Unity does, sure, but they can control which game engine they use. For example, the folks at MegaCrit are now delaying their next game because they're taking the time to migrate engines from Unity to Godot, and have confirmed that's still the plan even after Unity's CEO announced that he's stepping down. There's just far too much trust gone now to come back from.
In theory, this is true. In practice? It depends. If you have a small game where the main draw is assets, it shouldn't be too hard to switch. If you are a AA company making a complex game, you realistically cannot switch. Cities: Skylines 2 comes to mind. The game has ~4 years of development and is the studios only big franchise. Switching now would mean at least half a year to a year of delay and would cause a huge hit to the profitability of the company and might mean the financial ruin of the company. "Just switch the game engine" is just too reductive.
Kinda. It depends on a lot of factors. And of course "devs" here usually mean a few specific directors who still need to talk with product managers about the monetization. So it's not unheard of for a company to mandate using a certain engine (EA). It's not a simple factor in large studios.
Smaller ones, sure. They can switch on a dime if needed. That's the advantage of being lean.
Also, another big factor is market. Most console gamers (at least the vocal ones online) already hate mobile, and mobile is where Unity really dominates. can't boycott what you never played to begin with. Unity could abandon the entire console market and still live off of Genshin money and ads.
Which circles back to the original comment response to boycott. The developers that might be "stuck" in the Unity system are those with enough resources to take the hit for a Unity boycott and can afford to change engines.
Small studios can switch because they run lean, big studios can switch because they can afford the hit.
This makes zero sense to me and I don't think it bears out. Small studios running lean means they're ill-equipped to spend the time (and associated money for labor) to switch engines on a game that's in development. It's a huge added cost for them. Even if there's no cost to switching engines for their next game (there likely would be due to differences in familiarity with the new engine), the small devs are the ones least likely to have the extra runway needed to spend time porting their work in progress to something that isn't Unity.
Not necessarily.
I'll be more specific: For small developers it's a factor of time and scale. As well as how strongly intertwined they were in Unity to begin with. Mega crit was mentioned as switching but it's a title that is not formally announced. They may not be too far in as a result, and it's scale of game (referencing slay the spire) isn't one that is performance critical per se. But I wouldn't necessarily say they have tons of resources.
Compare that to Silksong, 5+ years in, showcasing a few small vertical slices, has to manage hundreds of assets and it possibly has a lot of its action timings based in Unity's systems. It can "switch" easier than say, City Skylines mentioned earlier in the thread, but there's definitely going to be a difference in feel from the move give it's tight action gameplay.
Or it delays the game 2 mode years to get that polish/feel back and fans suffer from what was already a long wait. But this is all speculation.
There are several small to medium sized game design studios in my town. It's kind of a hub for it. I don't know anything about game design, but I've spoken to several developers who have lamented what Unity is doing but are unable to change engines. One in particular said their game simply will not work on any other engine. It's not a matter of time, money, or desire, other engines do not have the infrastructure to run their game with it's current functionality. Many of these studios are fairly new or have been started by students and absolutely do not have large enough budgets to absorb the hit of a boycott.
That analogy would only apply if I decided that I was no longer going to buy any games. That is not the case. Now, on my list of criteria when looking at a game and deciding if I want to purchase it, I just have an additional bullet point of checking the game engine.
You're free to do as you want, I'm not trying to change your mind since I can't even give you a definite answer of what's "right". But maybe you should consider what the devs have to say?
This whole debacle is between devs and Unity, it doesn't have a direct impact on the consumer (other than the effect it has on game releases/quality). If the devs were to invite consumers into a boycott, there wouldn't even be a question what's the right call.
But I recognize you mean well.
The analogy is that people with no control nor strong relation to the perpetrator are being punished. Seems apt here and there's not much value in Micro-analyzing the analogy for correctness.
So, it is indeed the case (given my clarified analogy). I guess you can also check if the game has Perl in its code base as a criteria too, for how related it is to the actual product. Or if the game was made using a Scrum work flow.
People with no strong correlation to the perpetrator are always punished when someone chooses to not buy a product. But, for some reason, there isn't a big backlash about the lives of the people at meat processing plants when someone decides to go vegetarian.
And I suppose I would check if the game was written with Perl or used Scrum if I had ethical concerns about either of those things.
If meat processing slows down that's an industry slowing down. There's enough levels of indirection that I don't blame the consumer for that meat processor losing their job. At the same time that can create more jobs processing plants to meet demand, so it can balance out. Former Meat eaters will still eat food so demands will shift, not diminish
Here, a dev is punished for the tech they can't easily switch out of (e.g. Silksong is an upcoming sequel to a 2017 Unity game. They are some 5+years into development) and Unity isn't even phased by it. The target is wrong and the intended target isn't even punished. The direct impact is much more intimate because it is a single product being affected by a consumer's decision.
The parameters don't make a consumer boycott effective here. This is where an additive approach would work better. Devs who want better engines should invest in tech they can better own. Invested consumers can donate to such initiatives and give them funding for more development. If you can't donate you can always help with awareness by following various social media (Godot has a Twitter and YouTube account).
Note that this is more of a mental/philiophical exercise than anything. Since I've long stopped trying to actively tear down big corporate and try to focus more on promoting the little guy. I at least want to throw that out for consideration, perhaps even in tandem with a boycott. 10k people boycotting Unity won't make a dent, 10k people engaging with some open source engine can give that engine its big break. You are of course free make your own decisions, but note that I've yet to see a successful game boycott on any level, and this situation with unity is already rapidly de-escalating (i.e. Reducing the need for boycott).
And a person that formerly played unity games will shift to games that aren't on unity. They don't just stop playing games the same way a person that stops eating food would diminish demand (clue: the person dies, the gamer still plays).
Consumers can do both things at once, refuse to play Unity games and support open source projects, which is what most of the response has been. It's not been "I guess I won't play games again" and the consumer is gone forever, they're educating themselves and moving toward supporting games that use a better engine. This is something that happens across industries constantly with consumer awareness of corporate greed, just a matter of where the tipping point sits for each person. There are places I simply do not spend my money due to their various policies or political donations, some have reversed their course on those actions, but I continue to personally boycott them as they have lost the trust required for me to give them my money.
The market in this case is game devs, not consumers. Devs leaving the industry leads to less games. Maybe not noticeably less games for consumers but it's talent leaving, not necessarily shifting.
You are right that Unity can die tomorrow and burn every devs computer and games up on the way out and consumers would feel a bad sting at worst (at least on console. Mobile would go through a mass extinction).
Part of the argument for going vegetarian is for horrible it is to work at a meat processing plant. But it's a small part of the argument. The workers at a meat processing plant aren't the primary victims of the horrors that go on there. Developers are the primary victims of Unity's actions. Your boycott would be more like going vegetarian even if that would have a major negative impact on the animals. (Not a perfect analogy since there are many reasons to go vegetarian that tend to overlap but could hypothetically conflict, whereas there's really just this one reason to boycott unity.)
It's not necessarily intended to punish Unity developers. The big thing we've learned is that Unity believes that they can apply terms retroactively to games you already own, and they also believe that they can track your installations (and who knows else). This makes buying Unity games dicey if you are concerned about privacy.
I, personally, will not outright boycott Unity games. But I am a lot more wary of them now, particularly those with online features, and I will be a lot more choosy with Unity games going forward because there may come a point in the future where I permanently uninstall all of my Unity games and never play them again due to privacy concerns.
It really sucks for Unity developers because it's not their fault at all. My partner is working with a team making a Unity game right now, and they really wish they could switch engines now, but they just can't this late in development. (They are planning to cut ties with Unity after this, however.)
Their ToS is entirely irrelevant as to what they legally can and can't do. That's what laws are for.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but my understanding is that if the ToS change, you can refuse to accept the new ToS and stop using the product. In this case, it sounds like Unity intended for there to be no option for developers to reject the new ToS by ending their use of the product; even if they had already ceased all use of Unity years previously, Unity would still apply these changes to their previous games, even if those games were abandonware.
Of course, as a consumer of video games, I certainly never agreed to any Unity ToS whatsoever; I've never bought a game that came with ToS I had to accept or reject. I don't think software should be permitted to access my private data without my express consent.
I'm a little more optimistic.
I did expect a sacrifice, but assumed it'd be some VP or such and such. A CEO step down (or more likely, being pushed..) does signal that at least a few people are taking seriously just how big of a fuckup this was.
That said, I still wouldn't trust my future projects to it unless they can come up with some great wording on their deal that makes me feel safe.
I am highly skeptical as well. I doubt he came up with the pricing scheme in a vacuum and announced it without the board's approval. I think it is extremely likely that they will continue to push in this direction; they'll just do it more discreetly and incrementally now to avoid triggering mass protests. They're learning that frogs must be boiled slowly.
Good riddance, though not sure this will be nearly enough to start rebuilding trust. Seriously, I'm still in awe at how horrible this debacle has been. It's the worst business decision I've seen in any industry. Still can't wrap my head around how the heck it made it to the public announcement stage, particularly because I'm 99% sure parts of it (retroactively applying the new terms to projects made with Unity before the policy was even conceived) were flat-out illegal.
I think they're at a point where the only way they rebuild trust is by doing a big open source push.
Obviously on a long enough timeline of just not being shitty people will use them more, but outside of open sourcing some of the engine, I don't see how they bounce back any time soon.
This whole situation is very reminiscent of the recent drama with Wizards of the Coast trying to update the OGL (Open Gaming License) for D&D with some nasty retroactive terms. There was a similarly huge backlash there, and the only way they could staunch the tide of people dropping them like a hot potato was by pendulumming the other direction and irrevocably putting everything under a permissive creative commons license in perpetuity instead. Open sourcing the engine seems like the appropriate analogue here.
Did I miss something? I thought they didn’t back down on the pricing changes, just the retroactive pricing for existing projects. This article makes it sound like they backed out of the new pricing entirely?
Yes, they made some major concessions a couple weeks ago.
Ok that’s what I read before, so they are keeping the runtime fee but adding a revshare option, and the main concession was making it not retroactive — not much of a concession, considering it was probably not legally possible to make it retroactive even if they wanted to.
Most developers don't have the volume of sales where they would have seen an impact. I think the bigger issue is how the terms were rolled out. The new structure is still a strong incentive for indie developers compared with Unreal. The goal wasn't to hurt smaller studios, it was to profit share with successful studios in a way which wouldn't break the bank. If that was/is a concern, Unity still has no intent to cause harm and would work with those studios to come to an agreement which benefits both.
Don't fully agree, since Unity went for the absolute greediest model at the starting point. Their explanations of how it would be implemented were vague at best, leading to justifiable concern about whether pirated copies would count to the install fee. Nor did they offer much reassurance that developers would be protected against fraud, such as malicious people running scripts to generate 10,000 installs per second.
By far the biggest issue though: they wanted to apply it to games made with previous versions of Unity. Those developers couldn't take a nonexistent policy into consideration when choosing an engine, but Unity wanted them to be on the hook for all future sales anyway. I genuinely don't think that's even legal.
Suddenly, every game ever made with Unity is a liability. I am amazed that's not an exaggeration. If they're willing to try to force some new policies and fees on people who never agreed to it (which, again, pretty sure that's illegal), then what else are they willing to do?
It's not just a liability for developers, but anyone involved with the games. I'm 99% sure they didn't consult with Microsoft and Sony before publicly announcing they expected them to pay the fee for any games downloaded from GamePass or Playstation Plus. That's pretty good incentive to NOT allow games made with Unity on your service. Publishers won't want to risk being on the hook for it, and I doubt investors would like having this threat of unpredictable policy changes dangling over their potential returns either.
The new structure doesn't make up for the lack of trust. I can't emphasize enough how much this shattered any trust in Unity. We have no reason to trust Unity to value anything but greed and profit.
It's 100% not. They knew this which is why they tried to sneakily edit the "the terms are the ones in the license you signed" terms out of the licenses to pretend. None of it would stand up in court cause you literally can't agree to a document that didn't exist when you made the agreement.
My guess is they were hoping obfuscation and cost of legal challenge would lead people to pay up just to make the problem go away in a manner that didn't require legal fees.
But why should a Studio share their profits with Unity, when they've already paid Unity for the product itself
It's sold more as a service than a product, no?
So is Photoshop. Do you think artists using Photoshop should pay Adobe some license fee for any product they make?
Edit: Apologies if this seems snarky, wasn't my intent. Basically, the point is that the Gaming studios/devs have already paid Unity for the product/service. In my opinion, Unity shouldn't get a piece of the success a game built on it's engine, because 1/ They were paid for their engine 2/ Apart from the engine itself, they had no contribution to the game.
Fair point. I use Affinity Designer regularly!
But I think the "real answer" is... yes, if that's what the terms are. Font companies often charge based on views per month
There were two main issues. The fact that it applied retroactively and that there was the possibility to literally lose more money than you make from the install fee. Both of those problems have been fixed. It's no longer retroactive and there is a maximum amount that you can be charged in the install fee (I think 4% of revenue).
Developers weren't mad that Unity was changing the deal, they were mad that they were unable to do anything about it. Now devs can stay on their current Unity build and pay the price they originally agreed to, or upgrade to the new terms.
I wonder what Unity can possibly do now to earn the trust of future developers. Specific legally binding agreements with each individual party who uses the engine? Otherwise how can you be sure they won't try to pull the same thing again in the future?
Open source the whole thing.
The problem there is they previously had a "you can keep using the old license with the old version" term and silently deleted it about a year ago. So I think even if they re-added such a clause, they'd need to also require specific steps to update it (like out of band email with explicit opt in via a designated contact, not a clickwrap in a minor version update no one reads) and to make such a move optional.
Swap out the board and bring in some people with good community rep could be a thing. Not sure if that's enough in itself, but I think it would be a big step in the right direction. Then those new people could do things to establish trust further and people would trust them more than if the old guys did it.
Do an internal investigation how this decision came to be and publish it publicly is another idea, needs to be done in sync with actions making sure it can't happen the same way again.
Can we just ban John Riccitiello from ever working in the games industry again?
Riccitiello has championed some of the singular worst trends in this industry, hopefully this debacle has sufficently poisoned his reputation where large companies will be concerned about their stock price and think twice before hiring him.
I think he should get into the gambling industry. Or maybe the tobacco industry.