Recent ToS update blocks the use of SpatialOS to make games in Unity

It's not a conspiracy, it's poorly hidden shady buisness. I'd been okay with this if Unity hadn't messed up with multiplayer two times already. So there's not much hope in the next big "multiplayer" thing.

That's why it's weird to see services like this taken down because of their own one. And for the same reason it's not quite trustworthy. At least for me.

I'll leave it here, since I'm only concerned about current state of ToS. Which was changed probably just because of this case.

ToS wording used there is too vague.

 

Im not saying your points are invalid by the way, just voicing my personal position. Everyone here is entitled to interpret and feel about this in their own way, I dont want you to think I am trying to be the internet police

 

Does the restriction only restrict streaming? For example we have plans on using a unity docker container and host games on AWS. Classic server hosting, no streaming.

 

He is tweeting about our thread here, quoting some of the folks. LOL I would say that they are not very smart. Not sure I recognize some of their quotes though...weird. Anyway, impulsive tweets seem to be popular these days.

 

This might be the killing blow boys
https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/10/i...ove-to-more-open-engines-after-unity-debacle/

 

I doubt it.

Its also a pretty strange (and potentially unbelievable) thing to get set up overnight.

 

This is more whataboutery. Improbable's ToS is not what affects Unity users.

 

might be not really overnight, Improbable might looking for alternatives by the time Unity gave a written warning. It just they decide to publish the news right after unity made a move...

 

I was thinking about making a game using spcialOS glad I never did

 

Same here. I had discussions with someone there a while ago, but did not feel comfortable with the evasive answers. Glad I listened to my gut.

 

Thats the thing though, they claim they only heard about this over night and had no prior warning, so either one or the other is true.

 

As I said before, if cease and desist letters were sent, there is physical proof. A company the size of Unity is not going to just tell them this on the telephone. As @Ryiah said they probably use companies that send digital signatures and have all that backed up somewhere.

I am absolutely sure that Unity's legal team would not lie if all this proof exists. And since there is a very good chance it does, then there is no reason to think that Unity is lying.

As for Improbable and Unreal's 25M fund to lure Unity users, I seem to remember Unreal doing that at one time in the past..so nothing new and nothing really wrong about it. But doing on top of an accusation that Improbable violated another companies ToS just seems like revenge and a lack of responsibility on their part.

If I were a Spatial IOS user right now, I would be upset that Improbable did not reveal to me a year ago that this was going to happen. I would feel betrayed by them. Of course, I am not a loyal Improbable user so I do not have any skin in this. I totally understand that the users are feeling disappointed and frustrated. They are Unity users as well and I get that.

As for the ToS, which really is a different matter as said above, I hope the clarify. I remember they had to clarify other parts of the license in the past. Takes them time, but they usually came through.

 

Uhh

(emphasis mine)
(they also say that they also informed them in writing 6 months ago)

 

I did work for a company that had six unity developer licenses but eventually decided to move away from unity and let their licenses expire. Unity's licensing team came down on them like a bunch of agitated collections agents and accused them of breaking the law by operating without proper licenses and threatened legal action if they didn't renew their licenses (even though they were not using unity anymore). It took a few weeks to sort out the mess but the whole experience soured my opinion of unity. Now when I see licensing disputes like this I can't help but feel unity's version of the truth might not match with reality, and the disconnect the reason why Improbable was caught off guard.

 

Does anyone know whether spatialOS would work with this engine? It would solve all TOS licensing isues...

 

So sorry that happened to you. Unity sometimes has to clean up their messes it seems.

However, in this case, it is not that simple. Improbable was not caught off guard as they were told, in person as someone corrected me, a year ago, and then 6 months ago informed in writing. It is the users and the rest of us that were caught off guard, by BOTH companies. One for not revealing the cease and desist and the other for not making sure the change in the ToS was shown to the users of their product first.

 

Ask Improbable. They could help you I am sure.

 

This makes everyone look bad. In the end no one wins.

 

If we could end this thread on a piece of sanity, it would be this IMO.

 

Yes it will work with xenko, godot and other as long as you can use c, c++, c# or java for scripting so you can connect to the SpatialOS engine using provided c, c++, c# or java SDK. You will need to do more work however, as game engine specifics are provided only for unity and unreal currently. This means you will receive all information that unity/unreal would receive, however you will have to relay that information to the game engine yourself (assign which update belongs to which game engine entity etc.).

 

I'm perfectly fine with people moving to another game engine, but before anyone points at that fund and says it'll cover all the expenses you might want to look at the wording. It's a "combined" fund. It won't be $25 million per company. It will be $25 million spread across all the companies. If there are 25 companies working on games, that's only $1 million each.

 

I bet they have to vet each team that applies, just as they did when they offered to give money to people coming to Unreal back a while ago. Still, $1 Million is a nice bit of change for a small indie team.

 

I see Tim Sweeny's FUD campaign was quite successful.

 

The terms SDK and platform service are broad enough that it would allow Unity the right to exclude succesful developers or studios, once they start making a significant profit (Improbably anyone?) from the ToS.

I reviewed the ToS with my company's contracts lawyer and it was grossly over broad. I believe todays version is actually clearer but I will review with contracts again.

A suggestion to people writing multi-player games with Unity is to write the "terms" email for unity as suggested in their blog post. Clearly outline all aspects of your development and request a clear, unambiguous response that Unity authorizes your development as per the scope defined in your email.

That makes it crystal clear and can be argued as legally binding if some future change to the ToS further slides down the path of restricting developers to "authorized" server hosting like Unity's new play in the google server space.

I wish all developers luck in their projects. Always remember that rhetoric, blogs and forum posts are just drama, ToS is a legally binding contract. They can tell you 100 times "it's okay" in a blog but the ToS is binding and when it comes to a lawsuit, that is all that matters.

 

Yes, and I fully expect them to award amounts based on the needs of the company. A small indie team may see this and think millions of dollars but Epic Games may see them and only think tens to hundreds of thousands. It's important for people to prepare for the likelyhood it won't cover all of their expenses during the transistion.

 

And you believe everything that Improbable says?

 

Let's stop spreading things like Epic is pouring millions to indie teams to switch over. Most news sites are just replicating the news as well. The reality is, of that $25m, there is only concrete information about $5m which is from their Unreal Dev Grants program that has been available for years, in which they fund anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000 per game.

Not taking sides, just providing information I found from researching their announcement further.

 

Today's revision? Still says December 5th for me. https://unity3d.com/legal/terms-of-service/software

 

Especially since the Unity blog post did not point out how exactly the old TOS were violated. They for sure would explain that if it was water tight. So we can assume it is not that clear that the old TOS were violated.

So in me eyes this happened:
1) Unity: give us money, you violate TOS
2) Impr.: f*** off, our lawyers say there is no way we violate the current TOS
3) TOS is changed so now basically anything using servers is problematic
4) clown fiesta

The intended meaning of the new TOS is problematic (the actual text is much worse, but I assume it changes soon):

You are allowed to use cloud services, as long as they are not tailored to Unity. So any tools/SDK AWS or Google (or Steam or Epic Game store if you run in their cloud) may offer to help game developers can f*** you over if you use it. If you are successful at any point Unity could give you a ransom call.

This gets very muddy. What if I split SDK provider from cloud provider into 2 companies. Then it becomes magically legal? Will Unity change TOS to prevent that too?

This whole story sets a precedent that will prevent any business from investing into building a innovative service for Unity developers, because at any time Unity may say: it's mine now.

 

And right you are Kylo. I thought it had been updated. Thanks for catching that. (And that folks is why you always have lawyers review stuff and not amatures like myself.) - Pending the updated ToS but my recommendation to email the terms folks stands. I'll be doing that once the new ToS is out.

Thanks again for the catch Kylo.

 

Looks like UE does.
Their business practice experience is impeccable - strike the opponent at it most vulnerable moment and let him drown in S***storm. They did it by the book - they scored.

 

Legally, they may not be able to reveal the exact reason except through court documents. However, I think they were specific enough in the blog post to figure it out.

 

Sadly the epic thing didn't work:

https://twitter.com/SquaredApe/status/1083564255956398085


As for the TOS stuff, they were already in violation for well over a year and none of this came as a shock, just sad a company valued so high has to react with drama like a child blaming everyone but themselves.

Anyway you can all talk about nothing while I stare at UFOs and, well, do my game.

 

I feel exactly the same as I did before. FUD gets people all worked up about things, hides the truth, starts spawning conspiracy theories and such. But for me, Unity has acted in good faith and outside of some legal wrangling that they are fixing - if I was on vacation this week I would have returned to the same status quo on Monday that I had before I left.

 

I talk when I am waiting for stuff to load and update. I am not around as much anymore, but when I am, it is because I am actually working...and uploading, and downloading, and whatever.

Nice tweet, btw. Good ending for the saga.

 

Can you explain what exactly is the violation? From what I get from the old TOS and from what I know about how SpatialOS works I don't get what the violation is.

 

The new TOS is not a new TOS, it's just making the wording clearer so companies that can't be bothered to check can see even easier where the lines are.

SpatialOS hosts your executables as a service, rather than as a game server, which makes SpatialOS a platform like a console or content delivery thing. Basically it means that people can start wrapping Unity and calling it their own little engine of pwn and making money by doing nothing, if Unity does not defend it.

Unity tried for over a year to get them to listen.

As for me, I have to go and do some more UFO-ing, this thread is corporate boredom.

 

541 replies and it turns out the instigators of this forum noise were deliberately breaching Unity's TOS, their license got revoked, so they decided to hit back by spreading misinformation regarding the matter.

Seems to me they gambled, lost, got butt hurt and took to the internet to spread lies and mistruths regarding the matter.

Just fired up Unity and am still happy to do so. Bye!

 

Could you please try not to be dismissive of legitimate concerns over the ToS? I can be bothered to check, and I am very unclear on what the wording means. So are plenty of other people.

 

Unity says that but in my eyes the new one clearly covers more cases than the old one. It is not a clarification, it is an extension.

This sounds like a rather artificial differentiation. I provide my game build for hosting like with AWS, except they have some special gaming oriented magic. In the end they just host the build of my game. So if it would just be a plugin and I would have to publish to AWS myself it would not be a problem? Really?

I would understand if they deploy their Unity build to provide the service, but they deploy the one I created with my Unity version. How that is different from simple hosting is beyond me with the old TOS.

The old TOS does not talk about platforms. As I read it it prevents streaming/broadcasting the games graphics or providing my own version of Unity as a service. But that is not what SpatialOS does.

The important part is that they sell the wrapper without Unity. You make it sound like they steal and sell Unity. You as customer provide your Unity game build. At least in my juristiction I am allowed to wrap anything, no matter what TOS say because TOS cannot override law.

 

The brush is not the art, the painting is. When the brush is not doing what you want, just change it. That doesn't make you a bad artist.

 

Unity said they would revisit it and clarify the ToS. Now you just have to be wait...which I know is difficult. We are all waiting. I am sure they want to make sure they get it right this time.

 

Epic lost a lot of credibility for me now as it looks like that they dropped the ball on this one. They have usually been pretty neutral in many things and done positive things recently (eg. the store news, online services) but yesterdays PR stunt looks like a dick move.

They were announcing a strong partnership continuing with Improbable and handing out money literally in hours to get Unity devs to move to Unreal without waiting even a day to see whats going on. They either had some inside knowledge or some other non public info because else it would be very risky to partner with a company that might be the bad guy in the story.

I don't know what kind of setup Improbable was actually running on their servers but I assume Unity did. Some have speculated it has been some complex adaptive build system taking advantage of various Unity editor/engine and package manager features sold then as part of a service. Regardless of that if they were given a notice at least twice it means there are incapable persons running the company and their blog post lying to the readers. There was also written notice mentioned in the Unity blog post which usually means some kind of a formal legal notice that can be used in the court of law. Usually these are delivered in a way that someone must give a signature upon receiving it.

Epic should have stayed away from this issue for at least a while.

 

Agree absolutely. That is my motto. If something does not work for me, I will try something else. Maybe it is that time for some. Unity still works for me though. I stick with it because as a tool, I enjoy developing in Unity and I have learned too many engines in the past to want to switch again. I am comfortable and sometimes, especially in my soon to be old age, I like to be comfortable.

But...I get why some no longer feel that way and need more. It is okay to try something else. It is okay to jump ship because the drama is stressful. It is okay.

I hope people stay....

 

This post gives a clear diff between old and new TOS. It is not clarification, they just added new terms.

Recent ToS update blocks the use of SpatialOS to make games in Unity

I feel bad for people with projects depending on SpatialOS. Unity says on-going projects are allowed, but they cut off service owner. How can developers get support if SpatialOS licenses are terminated.

 

Did you read the blog post from Unity? They are reaching out to developers in this situation and allowing them to continue. It is all there. They even told Improbable this a while ago, promised to continue to support games in development and those already released.

 

They can't. No developer in their right mind would continue a project that depends on a middleware that can no longer be updated, improved on, or supported. It's just another way Unity is attempting to calm the masses and come out looking like the good guys.

 

Just wondering... You had money going toward a game in development with SpatialOS would you continue it now knowing SpatialOS could no longer be updated to newer versions of Unity, Bugs could no longer be fixed, Support could no longer be giving, ect. Would you continue pouring time and money into said project? I know I sure as heck wouldn't.

 

I read it but I really did not understand. If SpatialOS developers could not work with Unity3D as their unity editor licenses are terminated, they could not test their product with Unity or fix bugs ? Spatial OS released their source code under MIT license, maybe Unity decided to voluntarily fork and maintain it?

 

So here is my understanding of the situation. I hope someone will clear up any misunderstanding, as I have only a faint idea of what SpatialOS is and am not a lawyer.

SpatialOS is a service built using Unity that offers cloud based networking services. They sell licenseses to game developers to use said service. My guess is that Improbable was trying to treat their use of Unity in the same way the typical game developer would, paying a subscription fee or perhaps an upfront cost to avoid any revenue sharing.

However, they are not using it this way. They are basically offering the use of Unity as an engine (since that is what their servers are built on) to game developers. So, they are selling a service (SpatialOS) built on top of the service of another company (Unity). Now, if the end game developer is a Unity user, I could see this not being as much of an issue since Unity will get their cut in the end, however SpatialOS is also offered to Unreal users. Thus you have the potential for a customer to use the Unity engine without ever paying a dime to Unity.

Honestly, I feel like it is perfectly reasonable for Unity to take issue with this, especially when such services built on top of services are likely to be in direct conflict with some solution Unity puts out. I don't feel that it is shady, especially if it is to be believed that this has been an ongoing issue for a year. Is it good business practice? That's a different question entirely.

Now, when it comes to game developers using SpatialOS, I don't see why their use of it would be effected by this new ToS. Why should Unity care if you use some third party service for your networking? So long as you are paying the correct licensing fees to them for your use of the Unity Engine.

However, Improbable will still need to support Unity, which they may not decide to do. I think that would look very poorly on them, however. They would be screwing over a ton of customers for no other reason than spite.

Edit: As posters below have stated, the above information is wrong. It should also be noted that Improbable cannot support Unity developers as they do not have the licenses required to fix bugs and make improvements.