Pretty much the biggest mistake made due to greed is the decision to retroactively apply thr deals to already existing titles. Its one thing to neuter titles in the future, but another to fuck over everyone whose already committed to using it on a different TOS
Yep. The insanity of thinking you could apply it retroactively to already licensed games was absurd.
If you tied it to a future main version release with features people wanted, you could absolutely get away with some light pushback that’s the usual grumbling on price changes, and a lot of developers would suck it up and move to the up to date engine anyways.
But when you try to pull the rug on people for stuff they’ve already been developing under previous terms, they’re going to seriously reconsider, and on stuff they already published makes it extremely hard to justify working with you again.
Not a lawyer, but I feel like basing the fee on their internal guess on how many installs seems questionable. Surely some major jurisdictions would take issue with that and counting installs from before the new TOS towards the new threshold. Also their contradictory TOS terms at the very least would probably get them an expensive trial, even if they win it.
Yeah, that’s what burns the business relationship. Because now it’s not just “oh, Unity might screw me, and I’m investing in learning what could become a dead platform”, it’s “even if Unity doesn’t screw me now, they could randomly decide to screw me 10 years from now and retroactively charge me a king’s ransom”. That’s the stuff that has a permanent chilling effect on the whole platform.
The reason why Unity refuses to not make it retro-active is because they want money from Genshin Impact etc which already launched. If they don’t make it retroactive then the whole point of the change on their end is gone.
Pretty much the biggest mistake made due to greed is the decision to retroactively apply thr deals to already existing titles. Its one thing to neuter titles in the future, but another to fuck over everyone whose already committed to using it on a different TOS
Yep. The insanity of thinking you could apply it retroactively to already licensed games was absurd.
If you tied it to a future main version release with features people wanted, you could absolutely get away with some light pushback that’s the usual grumbling on price changes, and a lot of developers would suck it up and move to the up to date engine anyways.
But when you try to pull the rug on people for stuff they’ve already been developing under previous terms, they’re going to seriously reconsider, and on stuff they already published makes it extremely hard to justify working with you again.
Not a lawyer, but I feel like basing the fee on their internal guess on how many installs seems questionable. Surely some major jurisdictions would take issue with that and counting installs from before the new TOS towards the new threshold. Also their contradictory TOS terms at the very least would probably get them an expensive trial, even if they win it.
Yeah, that’s what burns the business relationship. Because now it’s not just “oh, Unity might screw me, and I’m investing in learning what could become a dead platform”, it’s “even if Unity doesn’t screw me now, they could randomly decide to screw me 10 years from now and retroactively charge me a king’s ransom”. That’s the stuff that has a permanent chilling effect on the whole platform.
The reason why Unity refuses to not make it retro-active is because they want money from Genshin Impact etc which already launched. If they don’t make it retroactive then the whole point of the change on their end is gone.