Any identifying information in Unity projects?

Hello everyone. Can anyone tell me if Unity projects hold any information about the creator, the machine they're on, email address, etc, and is there any information that gets uploaded to a server dealing with your Unity account? I need to know this for both the project files, and projects after being built.

I will be using the same PC to do freelance work for several companies, and I'm also going to use it to do my own personal side projects, some of which I will be sharing publicly in both source and executable form. The Unity account I currently use is an email from my main employer. I just want to make sure I don't create anything that inadvertently gets linked back to an employer, or even if I used a personal non-employer related email address, I don't want to have the same email on professional work, and my personal work, or any shared project history, etc.

Lastly, I'd also like to know in general what being logged into Unity does, if anything, or is it just a DRM thing?

Thanks!

 

I have not heard about unity embedding any data into compiled binary, but I can't guarantee that it doesn't do something like that.

Either way I'd recommend to setup separate email for unity-related activities.

Using work/company email for personal affairs and/or side projects doesn't sound like a good idea to me (but that's just my opinion), mostly because that kind of thing can get you fired.

As for unity account, it holds information about assets you purchased (download manager uses that info), so that should be something you can control.

 

Set up a free gmail account...

Using your work owned license to freelance is also a bad idea. Unless you have a specific allowance in your contract for this.

In general you can't trace an email from the build. But there are other issues to worry about.

 

Thanks everyone for your replies.

Even if I use my own non-work account, the question still stands, as I'd be more comfortable knowing what's traceable back to a project. If I use myRealName@gmail.com for both freelance and personal work, I wouldn't feel comfortable with every random off-color humorous little throwaway game I post online to be part of an involuntary portfolio representing my skill, quality standards, and maturity level, if someone were to happen upon something I created. Nor would I want project files I send to clients to have someRandomSillyPsuedonym@gmail.com in their project files.

If I have to switch every time I want to switch creator identities I will, but if it's just going to verify my license, and not affect project files, it's a small inconvenience I'd rather not have to engage in every time I open Unity for a different purpose. And even still, I'm curious to know generally what identifying information, if anything, is stored in project files, built games, and my online account.

@Tautvydas Zilys , both.

 

You're allowed to have multiple gmail accounts.

 

Way to miss the point. Please re-read the post you just quoted.

 

It worked for South Park. Joking aside if you don't want to be associated with any games like this then the simple solution is to never make them in the first place. It wouldn't surprise me if someone actually managed to connect a game you developed with your actual profile regardless of whether the game had any real identifying information or not.

 

Sound advice, but still no answer to the original question. I'd be interested as well. Since I'm using my real name here I'm obviously not overly concerned with it, but I'd still like to know.

 

I did a cursory search for my name and email address in the main project and published files. Nothing came up. That's not to say that there is absolutely no personally identifying information that gets included, but if there is, a person would have to really be digging for it.

So if you have no reason to believe people will be scouring the code of your games or projects in order to try and discover who worked on it, then you have nothing to fear. If you do have reason to think that may happen, you probably shouldn't be making games anyway, as you have other issues to sort out.

 

Does anyone even read through video game credits?
Yet other people even want their names in stuff best known probably for music with Creative Commons licensing.

Why would you not want your product to be associated with you?
Only two reasons come to my mind this quick:
Ashamed of the quality.
Or legally questionable stuff is involved.
(ok, read through the opening post again about switching back and forth)

Though i strongly doubt a compiled project contains anything that could be easily used to trace you. At most i could imagine a unity account id that was used in the editor to build the project. And only Unity could be able to do an internal database lookup to find data connected to that account you entered when registering, but I'm not sure that would be the case.

Other than that the eula states under "You May Not Use Unity Personal with Unity Pro or any Unity Pro Add-On Products" that unity tags files that were created with a personal edition to find out about unallowed combined usage with pro versions. So source files might somewhere contain account information, like an id, so in case you're doing things forbidden by the eula they could get your account.

So if anything it would be the account used to log in with the editor.

 

And I still wonder what that means for a situation where a dev used unity free for years and then through success of the games crosses the 100k limit and starts buying pro. Would he be forbidden to continue working on his projects that originally were created with the free edition? It sounds like that to me, but that would be crazy imho, so I doubt that was the intention. Yet I vaguely remember, that there was a case where a dev team that fulfilled the requirements to be allowed to use free licenses were advised by their lawyer to buy pro right away. But I might be totally misremembering that and I don't remember the name of the studio either.

For many people it's common to be ashamed of the quality of everything they did X years ago. It's just a question of personality and skill improvements over time.

 

@Martin_H
under:
2. Restrictions - 1. Unity Personal Restrictions.
it says:

 

Seems like I missed that part. Thanks a lot for clarifying!

Maybe it is something that was added to the license after some initial confusion about that issue came up. The phrasing might hint at that.

 

If you are concerned with someone from your past using your Unity game or some unbalanced person stalking you because of something they don't like about you there are much easier ways to do it than trying to extract personally identifying information from a Unity app. eg the only game I published has my home address in the store listing and my the pronunciation of my initials phonetically as my business name. eg. Someone called my county library and reserved a book in my name. It was supposed to be an insult to me but instead it was just unbalanced and stalking on the part of the person that reserved the book. From time to time I get these bizarrely stupid and obvious phishing emails that go directly to my junk folder. It's obvious a legitimate business has had their email database hacked or unscruplelessly sold to a 3rd party data warehouser or somebody has personally entered my email at some sites I've never heard of. I also from time to time get similar type phone calls that I waste no time in blocking. I have a good ideal who is behind those but I just use junk filters and call blocks rather than set up a dozen different email accounts and phone numbers. Eventually they'll be stopped because of illegality or be forced to spend their time actually working for a living.

As far as doing things online in extremely poor taste like those South Park guys well they are lucky aren't they? Ever notice how people or organizations get accolades for things you wouldn't get those accolades for? If you work or have worked for some of the organizations I've worked for you can bet some co-workers wouldn't applaud at my attempts at South Park humour while many of them applaud South Park. They couldn't get me fired for that reason but it's easy enough to find other reasons. Done a really embarrassing zombie game? Well given that Hollywood, the music industry and every big game manufacturer out there has really, really run this theme into the ground, you've a lot of company. I watched the Michael Jackson Thriller video for the 1st time since the 80s the other day and what surprised me was how really bad the video was despite the millions spent on it and how repulsive the words and imagery was in places to say nothing of the album, which wasn't even good and yes I bought the album in the 80s and didn't even listen to it once. Jr High & High schoolers do that type of thing. If you or I did such a work similar to that Thriller album today we'd be soundly ignored.

 

Thanks for the replies everyone.
@Schneider21 - thanks that mostly alleviated my concerns.

I'm not afraid anyone will be stalking me, and I don't plan to do anything illegal. Mainly, it's possible I may work on some nsfw projects, and I don't want any of it to be a factor in hiring me, in the same way I'm assuming many adults wouldn't want their browsing history attached to every copy of their résumé.

I haven't checked into detail whether or not your licenses reside on the machine or in the login itself, but I assume it's the latter, and so switching logins each time might not be an option in any case.

 

There recently was a forum mentioned where many devs of nsfw interactive content hang out and you might get some useful non-unity specific information about keeping identities separate there. I suggest to look into the recent posts of @Ony and you'll probably find it quickly, along with some more general good advice related to making nsfw games.

Edit: so easy to find I did it for you:
http://forum.unity3d.com/threads/is...-in-adult-oriented-games.378468/#post-2485218

 

I wonder about this also, for contracting purposes. The ambiguity in section 2.1 seems to be with the wording as always.
I guess it depends upon what the definition of the word 'IS' is.

If I as a Pro user who makes more than 100k per year hires a freelance programmer who makes less than 100k per year and is a personal edition user, to create a custom inventory system for the game I'm working on, under section 2.1 am I breaking the rules?
It looks like the answer is yes.

But - what about all those assets I bought off the asset store that were created in Unity Personal?


Unity Personal Restrictions. You acknowledge and agree that as an express condition to the license rights granted under Section 1, you are not permitted to combine or integrate in any manner any Licensee Content developed with Unity Personal with any Licensee Content developed simultaneously with Unity Pro. For the avoidance of doubt: (a) if you are a permitted user of Unity Personal, you may commence a project using only Unity Personal and subsequently upgrade all

 

There is a clause allowing content from third parties to be used, regardless of their Unity version.

 

@theANMATOR2b

If you hire someone, make sure the counter-party uses licensed UnityPro and not the free Unity.

The rationale or reason is, if you switch device to Android or iOS, that guy will ask you buy UnityPro to save on time when switching platform. It takes forever to switch platform for a moderately large project.

If the person asks you to buy, refuse to buy UnityPro unless he's a full-time employee where he goes to an office and you can supervise him on-site.

Any freelancer worth her salt would have UnityPro and most of the popular add-ons brought already, including Scaleform, 2D/3D game-engine re-rigging and animation re-targeting tools.

If you buy it for a non-employee, that guy will do similar to above, moon-light and you'll have to probably foot the bill for the next year for a copy of Unity you'll never use ... or end up using it yourself.

If they ask you to buy via entrapment, such as, you having UnityPro and they not having UnityPro, and you need to buy UnityPro for them, show them the contract clause as what @BoredMormon showed.

If they insist on you buying UnityPro, it's time to re-look at their art coding portfolio and I think you know the answer.

 

In addition to what @BoredMormon said, I would think the main distinction would be if you are hiring a freelancer to work on your project, versus hiring them to create and deliver assets/content that you will integrate into your project. If they have a checkout of your project and working directly in the project that would be mixing licenses. (Even if it is a discreet area/section of the project). Third party stuff is excluded, but you can't reasonably claim first party development isn't working on the project.

 

In the case what Zombie said, you have to ask the person work on-site, or is highly supervised.

Or you spec. it out and make it a freelance and don't supervise them, don't give them access to your version-control, and don't supervise them.


@theANMATOR2b, time to find a contractor with Unity3d? ...

 

The situation described above was just for example purposes.
I kinda switched roles in the example - in reality - I'm the contractor who is developing animation content.