Apparently Unity’s CEO isn’t backing down from his greed. Not even once.
Things are looking grim.
The funniest thing about is was the CEO who sold 50k+ shares of unity 1 week ahead of the changes.
I don’t think contracts that change past agreements are leagal anywhere. If Unity said this beginns in 2024 okay but afaik every unity game ever made is all of the sudden counted and to be payed out of the blue. I can’t think of anything that makes this leagel.
No they aren’t, obviously (I never said they were). But if a contract includes a section reserving the right to review/amend the pricing then you can’t say it’s illegal for them to review/amend the pricing structure.
Probably because you (& I) haven’t read the contract that a dev signs to enable them to use Unity.
I’ll be clear, I’m not saying this is “customer friendly” or wise or anything like that, but to say something along the lines of “ppppft Bruh thats, like totes illegal Brah, I’d, like, ignore it and they could suck my salty ballz lolzor” is juvenile at best.
I’m sure Germany has strong customer protection legislation, like most places in Europe, but they’re probably also quite hot on respecting contract law as well. So don’t just assume that because something sounds like a company/person is being a massive bellend that it’s illegal.
Its not just the install tarif that company’s like EHG have to worry about a lot of people dont seem to realize there is publisher fees and then there is Steam fees per sale and then paying employees and then paying install tarif towards the amount of times the game is installed. Not just that but there is also the pirate / torrent installs that will count towards the tarif.
I personally install and remove ARPG games all the time to save space on my computers, probably over the last 6 months to 1 year I think ive installed Last Epoch about 6 or 8 times to try out certain patches. Im also part of the beta which I have also installed multiple times so ill have to assume that counts towards a unity install.
The only people who are left to fact check the amount of installs is unity and you will be expected to pay the fees for certain thresholds. Its really a worrying time for any game that is using the unity engine.
Unity will also check a games life time installs to check if that games eligibility meets the threshold and EHG will be charged based on a games lifetime installs no matter if your game was created before the 1st of Jan or not. They do the maths then bill your runtime fee based on your total amount of installs even prior to the 1st of Jan.
They are going to backtrack this fee and im bringing this up because above in the topic mike mentioned that they are free of this because EHG launch the game before Jan 1st. Wrong, you have made a profit from this game already and unity will expect money from installs that count towards the threshold as mentioned above it will be backtracked.
Mike said he was glad that 1.0 was coming out before 1st Jan, which would be reasonable assuming they get most (or a lot) of their 1.0 installs before this comes into play.
So while the lifetime installs/revenue is important in determining whether they hit the threshold, only new (unique) installs would be billable, not all of the lifetime installs.
Kind of how Netflix changing their pricing/model every few months isn’t illegal…
So if you provide a service you think you should never be allowed to revisit your pricing strategy? If you read your contract with Netflix, you’ll find a section that deals with pricing & inevitable price rises. And that’s ignoring offers like “6 months free” or whatever since I’m sure you’re not referring to that.
No, I was saying because the contract says they can increase the pricing, that it’s not illegal, even though it was at a certain price/pricing model when you signed up. Applying a practical example, that everyone has dealt with, to the issue 
The legality of this has nothing to do with them changing their pricing structure. The issue is that either:
a: they’re planning on adding a way for unity games to ping their servers when someone installs, which violates privacy laws in most countries, or
b: they’re using some metric to estimate number of installs, which violates consumer protection laws in most countries (the only legal metric for making this estimation would be number of license sales, which wouldn’t include f2p games…).
Ah, sorry, I read it with my usual sarcastic inner-voice.
…which, I’m fairly certain, is the same as your sarcastic outer-voice. I know mine are the same.
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Surely with a f2p game you still have a license, you just paid 0 (up front, ignoring any mtx/in-app purchases bleeding you dry) for it.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they required the developers to report sales/installs (based off license keys used), or somesuch. Most of the ‘per user’, ‘per server’, ‘per install’ licensing I’ve dealt with in the past has gone off the honor-system, backed with a hefty fine structure in place, if you’re ever caught trying to under-report your usage.
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Another issue that’s been mentioned (not relevant for last epoch) is that this new pricing model applies to games that are “complete.” Since you’re no longer doing business with them, they can’t legally change the contract without your consent.
But Netflix isn’t changing the pricing model since you first used it to today and you have to pay 10bucks a month in retrospective because reasons. They can increase the price for future months as much as they want to.
Unitys announcment makes you pay if had a unity game years ago that had high numbers no matter how the numbers are today. Imagine you made a banger of a game in 2005 and they want money for it in 2024 ^^.
Ive always disliked Unity, as most of the games ive been interested that are made in it, suffer from numerous issues, often performance related. While much of this comes down to the devs using Unity not using it efficiently/properly etc, the fact that it happens so often (for the many games ive played) is upsetting.
Huge props to the Last Epoch team for finding continual ways to work around things. From past patch notes and dev comments, it seems that the team has created a LOT of custom things for the game that Unity didnt initially do or handle out of the box. I almost wonder if enough custom things have been done if going with Unity really was the best choice in the first place. At a certain point developers have to wonder “with as much work as we have done, could we have just made our own engine instead?”
I hope the team can continue to work on and support the game despite whatever Unity does.
Main problem is: Unity found a way to commit suicide by making mental descisions and announcing them to the public. If the developers of this planet have anything that reasambles a backbone there will be no new unity projects anymore starting 2024.
They dug their own hole, choose their coffin and and put it in a comfy place. I don’t think they can come back from the K.O. they hit themselfs with.
shrugs redemption is a thing you know. The world would be a much less pleasant place to live in if we couldn’t learn from our mistakes and were punished for them forevermore. This is a concept some of the more virulently intolerant people online (not you) could do with learning.
The solution is as simple as it is impossible. Fire the CEO and his accomplices, revert their stupid inventions, get rid of IronSource, and start the actual communication with the devs on both sides (Unity’s own and all Unity users out there) to figure out how to form a proper symbiotic relationship with mutual respect as one of the cornerstones.
Let’s be realistic here. Unity is done for.
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I have not read a lot of this thread, but can Unity actually legally retroactively take money from dev’s per download? Shit like that is why so many places dont hold EULA’s as the end all be all. This would literally bankrupt many indies. They can expect a class action lawsuit if they continue down this path.
Not to even mention the sort of abuse this bullshit can cause by bad actors downloading/uninstalling ad infinium just cause. Fuck Unity, isnt the head honcho the same asshole who ran EA when it was seen as the worst of the worst a while back?