Are Asset Store assets really this restricted in terms of use?

I was kinda surprised by this when looking at the Asset Store's end users rights and obligations:

Especially D-G seem super restricting as many games have fictive violence and illegal activities as their core elements.

Quote from https://unity3d.com/legal/as_terms

Where does one draw the line on promoting illegal activities? Is it enough to put a disclaimer on the loading screen that game doesn't encourage you to break the law despite gameplay itself has questionable things in it? If I read that literally, even having a open world racing game with ability to break speed limits could be seen as breach of Asset Store terms. That sounds absurd and not what was the original intent but I do read my licensing texts literally.

What is even more absurd, this Asset Store limitation applies to all assets you buy from the store, not just art assets. So if you have audio manager or any random code asset and have gameplay elements that can be seen offending to these terms, you can't use them on your game?

 

That's for the lawyers and judges to decide, case by case. I guess interpretation is loose though given all the games around that make you steal, and kill with impunity.

And if you want to be sure not to make a mistake, do not buy existing assets, make them yourself.

Also, you can create games that do not require using violence,, theft or anything that can be considered a criminal activity.

 

Well, like mentioned, Asset Store terms go to everything, not just art assets, it includes even small scripts. What I'm asking here is if this is some sort of a mistake because how I read current terms really feels like it forbids the use of paid assets in like 50% of the games on the market. It's not really a position Asset Store should take either nor do I think it's what people selling on Asset Store would want.

Lets take a quick example of FPS games and related assets on the Asset Store. Store is filled with gun models and FPS controllers and Unity promotes these things a lot, yet at the same time it's really hard to make a game where you don't kill people with these things in the first place...

I'd wish to get some actual clarification on these terms, not trying to bring up "make peace not war" kinda discussion as it's not really what the point here is at all. I do agree that nonviolent games are great but games are also about being able to do things you can't do in real world so breaking some boundaries is ok in that context from my point of view.

 

I was joking.

Anyway, it's pretty much like I said: up to the law people to decide if the use you make of an asset breaks the rules or not. This is why so many games, books, films and other "artistic" works get away with accusations of promoting the use of violence, criminal activities and so on.

 

But that's a horrible way to go about it, you shouldn't need to hire a lawyer to tell you if you can buy things from Unity's own store. If people were more widely aware of these terms, I bet it would affect Asset Store sales negatively.

Btw, Unity doesn't have this restrictive terms on the actual engine usage, it's only this bad on Asset Store's asset licensing.

 

Your rights as an end user aren't as restricted as your interpretation suggests. I'm cutting some words to make it shorter, but the gist it:

I bolded the important part. Unity is saying that if they discover that an Asset violates their terms, they can remove it.

They're not saying that you can't use the Asset in your own "electronic games and digital media" (see 2.2.1) in, for example, pornographic games.

(Standard disclaimer: I'm not a lawyer.)

 

This is not how I interpret that all. 2.8 I quoted is from this section of the EULA:

How I see that is that anything under that 2.x chapter applies only to the developer using these assets acquired through Asset Store, not to the people publishing on the Asset Store. Whole chapter is about what you as end user can do with these assets.

 

You may be right, since it's mentioned in 2.8. I was looking at section 3, which is about the store itself (e.g., Unity's right to remove inappropriate assets).

Unity is constantly tweaking the EULA. You might want to open a support case to bring it to their attention so they can emend or clarify section 2.