Comment by blueboo | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blueboo | Hacker News Reader

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Unity's statement today certainly adds some context: https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/01/10/our-response-to-improba...

> More than a year ago, we told Improbable in person that they were in violation of our Terms of Service or EULA. Six months ago, we informed Improbable about the violation in writing. Recent actions did not come as a surprise to Improbable; in fact, they’ve known about this for many months.

> Two weeks ago we took the action of turning off Improbable’s Unity Editor license keys. This is a unique case — and not a situation we take lightly — but Improbable left us no choice. This was the only course of action to protect the integrity and value of our technology and Unity developers.

Yikes. Not exactly what Improbable was claiming...

And then Improbable's statement today: https://improbable.io/company/news/2019/01/10/an-update-on-t...

> But honestly, we don’t believe that today was about Unity or for that matter Improbable.

Yes, let's change the subject. Quickly, now!!

So Unity alerted them that where in breach, they had an ongoing discussion in which unity finally came to the conclusion that they where in fact not in breach... and then they changed the conditions and punished them. Is that how that is to be understood? I mean otherwise why alert them if being in breach before the license change, or why no punish them under the old license but change it first and then punish them?

No, they were in breach before hand, and Unity attempted (poorly) to make it more clear why Improbable was in breach with the ToS update. According to devs knowledgeable of Improbable's tech, Improbable has been in breach of the Unity ToS for more than a year. Negotiations on licensing probably broke down (as in, Improbable refused to pay the fee Unity was asking for a license), and so Improbable decided to publicly vent and mislead devs.

Regardless, the ToS are incredibly vague on what is/is not allowed, even for developers that have nothing to do with Improbable.

Finally, the $25M comes from the already established Unreal dev grant fund - it's not "new" money, they just rebranded a portion of the fund in a PR stunt.

Um, it was an ongoing negotiation. It stands to reason that Unity had made it abundantly clear how and why they were in violation many many months ago

Because they said "overnight" it make everything they said invalid? Because Unity contacted them a year ago make this an non issue?

Don't you agree that based on the EULA, that this:

> Projects that are currently in production or live using SpatialOS are not affected by any actions we have taken with Improbable.

Is false?

> If a game developer runs a Unity-based game server on their own servers or generic cloud instances (like GCP, AWS or Azure), they are covered by our EULA.

This too?

This is merely saying that they will selectively apply their EULA, which from the beginning is extremely vague, even more so before the previous update.

What's even a year in game development? Could you abandon your whole game source code in a year based on Unity deciding to apply their EULA to you specifically? I don't think so.

Could you force your whole user base to stop using your whole system because Unity decided to apply their EULA to you specifically? That's what they asked them a year ago and overnight made more clear in their EULA.

What Improbable said is true, the issue Improbable raised, is true. Whether they have been told this a year ago, or today, doesn't change that this practice from Unity is extremely awful and put in danger EVERY SINGLE entity that Unity may not like in the future. Personally I think what Improbable did by waiting a year was extremely generous, they gave Unity a year to change their stance and not start to apply their EULA selectively like that.

Overnight, Improbable showed to the world the true nature of Unity.

I agree, but you have the wrong takeaway.

Improbable's knowing, selective omission of the pertinent fact that they'd been in negotiation for over a year shows the true nature of Improbable.

I really think Unity went above and beyond, here. And the fact that Improbable ran to their competitor to do a rapid PR stunt shows that they had their knives sharpened and ready to go. Tsk, tsk!

Improbable stated, up front, that they were in negotiations with Unity. The disagreement seems to be that Unity claims they were in violation of the TOS the entire time, while Improbable claims the recent changes to the EULA are what they now violate.

> I really think Unity went above and beyond, here.

Nonsense. Unity likes to portray itself as the "open" alternative to other gaming engines, when in reality they have an iron-fisted grip on everything distantly involving their platform.

They never said what part of the EULA they were in breach of, so I don’t have enough information to know if Improbably are selling misinformation or Unity.

Improbable's statement says clause 2.4 [0].

Here's [1] what it says now:

> 2.4 Streaming and Cloud Gaming Restrictions.

> You may not directly or indirectly distribute the Unity Software, including the runtime portion of the Unity Software (the “Unity Runtime”), or your Project Content (if it incorporates the Unity Runtime) by means of streaming or broadcasting so that any portion of the Unity Software is primarily executed on or simulated by the cloud or a remote server and transmitted over the Internet or other network to end user devices without a separate license or authorization from Unity. Without limiting the foregoing, you may not use a managed service running on cloud infrastructure (a “Managed Service”) or a specific integration of a binary add-on (for example, a plugin or SDK) or source code to be integrated in the Unity Software or Your Project Content incorporating the Unity Runtime (an “SDK Integration”) to install or execute the Unity Runtime on the cloud or a remote server, unless such use of the Managed Service or SDK Integration has been specifically authorized by Unity. Additionally, you may not integrate the Unity Runtime with a Managed Service or SDK Integration and offer that integration to third parties for the purpose of installing or using the Unity Runtime on the cloud or a remote server. For a list of Unity authorized streaming platforms, Managed Services and SDK Integrations, click here.This restriction does not prevent end users from remotely accessing your Project Content from an end user device that is running on another end user device. You may not use a third party to directly or indirectly distribute or make available, stream, broadcast (through simulation or otherwise) any portion of the Unity Software unless that third party is authorized by Unity to provide such services.

Here's [2] what it used to say:

> 2.4 Streaming and Cloud Gaming Restrictions.

> You may not directly or indirectly distribute the Unity Software, including the runtime portion of the Unity Software, or your Project Content (if it incorporates the runtime portion) by means of streaming or broadcasting so that any portion of the Unity Software is primarily executed on or simulated by a server and transmitted over the Internet or other network to end user devices without a separate license from Unity. This restriction does not prevent end users from remotely accessing your Project Content from an end user device that is running on another end user device. You may not use a third party to directly or indirectly distribute or make available, stream, broadcast (through simulation or otherwise) any portion of the Unity Software unless that third party is authorized by Unity to provide such services.

Whether that's a change or clarification of Unity's intent is rather subjective.

[0]: https://improbable.io/company/news/2019/01/10/unity-blocks-s...

[1]: https://unity3d.com/legal/terms-of-service/software

[2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20180616042117/https://unity3d.c...

Thanks.

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