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Hi, you owe me 10 billion dollars now (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by hypertown@lemmy.world to c/196@lemmy.blahaj.zone

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[-] Neato@kbin.social 27 points 1 year ago

So here they just send an email saying they have changed terms of service and that you can accept these new ToS or not use the product.

So publishers are paying to develop games on Unity and publish them for sale. And Unity can unilaterally decide to change their ToS that impacts how much publishers have to pay for already-published game, and the only recourse publishers have is to pull games from stores?

Is this standard for game engines like Unreal? If so, that's absolutely unhinged. I'd never, ever sign a contract like that, specifically because of the bullshit Unity is pulling now. It's typical for these ToS changes to prevent new development or uses of the engine, but to affect sales of already-published media is...really out there.

[-] BloodSlut@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Yeah, that's where I think there's room for developers to have some sort of legal footing.

If youre a dev and you just stop updating your game after the changes go into effect I think you might be able to make a legal argument that you are no longer using Unity to develop your game, you just don't accept the new contract and you keep everything the same under the old license. I don't know how well this would work though since I don't know how Unity has defined "use" of their engine in prior.

Amd this might be fine for a few devs, but if you are still developing or actively supporting your game things could be more difficult. You would have to make the same argument, start converting your game to another engine, and hope your game's sales from whatever version it is currently in can hold you over until then. You wouldn't be able to make any more changes to the game under Unity without accepting the new terms.