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Comment by Clubber | Hacker News Reader

>This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users.

If I understand you correctly (I haven't really been following this), they changed the contract and are trying to retroactively collect license fees for installs done prior to the change in contract? I don't think this is legal. When you change a contract, it's on a go forward bases. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It's definitely a money grab. If it's deemed illegal, i.e. fraud, I hope there is jail time. Gotta send a message.

Did Unity recently get acquired, new investors or new management?

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> Did Unity recently get acquired, new investors or new management?

EA's former CEO, John Riccitiello took over last year. He inaugurated himself with quite a few statements, one of which was discussed here:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32097752

When it comes to games it's always EA, isn't it? Isn't this CEO the one also responsible for some of EA's notoriety?

EA and Activision/Blizzard doesn't have a great track record either. Megacorps are usually bad for everybody except ownership.

Yes, he is the brain behind the 2013 SimCity disaster.

Forgive my ignorance, what disaster are you referring to?

It was a very dumbed down attempt to reboot the franchise, when what the fans wanted was what Cities Skylines would later deliver.

> when what the fans wanted was what Cities Skylines would later deliver.

For me personally, C:S goes in too much on building a nice looking city and not enough on the simulation aspect.

Fair, but I think SC2013 was all of that and worse (as well as having glitches and being a massively multiplayer always-online affair).

SC2013 had the horrible "agent" simulation. While I personally wished for more of the sc4 kind of simulation.

Under his rule, lootboxes were added to FIFA. He also famously mused about charging Battlefield players $1 for reloading their weapon, once they're immersed in the game enough to not want to break the flow

Riccitiello has been CEO since 2014. There were some good times at the beginning, but things seem to be falling apart.

How do these fuckers keep failing up?

Because it's a club and you ain't in it

Anyone can be a failure, but it takes a lot of work to be a real piece of shit.

Unity IPO'ed in 2020, which isn't super recent, but is probably the reason behind these changes. IPO'ed means they gotta report some quarterly improvements, every quarter forever under the totally unsustainable growth model.

Unity went public. Bombed, and merged with IronSource, a notorious malware spam mobile ad company. It’s always about milking their install base.

https://blog.unity.com/news/welcome-ironsource

It's not fraud. They are not misrepresenting anything, or getting any money that doesn't belong to them.

If it's illegal, it will just be invalid. What means that people could just not pay them. There's no jail time coming out of this.

> Did Unity recently get acquired, new investors or new management?

Nope. They bought Weta tools and the investment haven't paid out and probably won't be soon if ever, now they are desperate for money.

The terms have been changed so that all future installs can incur a fee even on older games that used unity even if the haven't been updated recently.

>The terms have been changed so that all future installs can incur a fee even on older games that used unity even if the haven't been updated recently.

They'll be able to get away with that then, the weasels. Sounds like they are trying to make a golden goose and kill it in one fell swoop. The latest Unreal demos look mighty fine. Sounds like we will be seeing a bunch of games use it in the near future.

I wonder if the older engines used by older games have any way to detect installs. I'd hate to see devs who abandoned their projects years ago but are still downloadable somewhere get caught up in this.

I have only been generally following this but I don’t think this is quite accurate.

It seems more like, starting in 2024 when you get more downloads the fee would be applied.

I see people talking here about apps that have a huge user base and a very low price per purchase. I admit that segment didn’t pop into my mind initially. And I see the problem there. I also imagine the Unity execs may have missed that scenario too.

From reading all of their public communication, and with just a hint of principle of charity, I suspect they are trying to do this in the most fair minded and developer friendly manner possible.

You have to meet both volume and revenue minimums to even be subject to this. All free apps are safe. All non-profits are safe.

I think it is good Unity is receiving public feedback.

I am sad so many people are jumping to the conclusion this is a corrupt money grab.

A public company with veteran leadership does not upend their revenue model without first playing out, in great detail, how it will impact all of their largest users. The segment you mention may not have popped into your mind, but it's certainly been on theirs. This was intentional.

What category of game has "a huge user base and a very low price per purchase?" Mobile free-to-play, that's what. How are those games monetized? Frequently with ads. And it's been noted elsewhere that if you use Unity's ad network, you will get a 100% discount on your per-install fees.

They knew exactly what they were doing. They merged with an ad company -- they are now an ad company. Their strategy is to make F2P games untenable on Unity if you're not getting advertisements from them.

I believe the whole point and plan is that you use the Unity ad network exclusively. My understanding is that you get exempted then. Unity makes the most money with its Ad provider and would love to kill other ad mediation frameworks to get a bigger slice of the pie.

I am pretty sure that they can't actually just *say* that. I suspect you are right.

Maybe. AWS had no problem saying "Use our Lumberyard engine for free, but if you rent gameservers, you must rent them from us."

I wonder how it'd have gone down if Unity had said, "From Unity version 2024 and beyond, if you have ads in your game, you must get them from us," and let that be the end of it.

> principle of charity

That goes out the window when they make the changes retroactive.

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