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

Well, rest assured, if we ever agree to get into a contract and you would publish such thing about my business, i would sue you out of your underwear, you can count on that. And I'm pretty sure that Improbable would have done the same.

Also it is very funny, that you're blaming Unity on this, not Improbable, whose job would have actually been to notify their customers about the expected problem. It's up to you. Good luck.

 

as I said, talking about, some Posters, that are bashing, others for worrying about it, WAY Earlier, Post. .cheers.. people are telling others to calm down.. and act like people should take this lightly, well, not going to happen, when it involved money, jobs, possible... earlier, post. was replying to. cheers

 

I understand what you were replying to, and I agree that some people have been dismissive of genuine concerns. However, that's not helped by making baseless accusations and being dismissive yourself.

 

Why exactly would you need an actor model that works across distributed simulation instances that solve zone-boundary problems to produce a seamless world? How is that not for MOGs (Massive Online Game) scale? Nothing about SpatialOS is needed for non-massive scale.

Isn't that the whole purpose of their software?

So true. People want to just spend money. It's really not possible. It takes so much effort and there will never be a one-size-fits-all solution. Things like SpacialOS were useful for solving SOME of the challenges though I guess.

You can significantly reduce the problem space if you go with a "floor" or "room" based approach though. I think that is how the Final Fantasy MMO works, explicit zone boundaries with a loading screen (and assumablely an instance/zone server transfer).

 

Nope!

 

Why don't you enlighten us all then.

Because according to Improbable's own website:

"SpatialOS is a cloud-based computational platform that lets you use many servers and engines to power a single world. The platform coordinates a swarm of micro-services called workers, which overlap and dynamically reorganize to power a huge, seamless world. The platform also lets you handle a huge number of concurrent players across different devices in one world."

These are needs encountered only in the MMO technical space. That is what MMO is about. A 16 player FPS will less than benefit from such a system.

 

Nah, I'm too lazy right now.

 

Well I went ahead and posted a quote directly from Improbable for you. Which highlights why what I said is pretty accurate.

 

You know what?! I did that too! Isn't that amaaazing?!

Because OBVIOUSLY if I want a car that can go at least 50MPH and a car can go 70MPH somehow it's not meant for me, right (?!?!??!?!)

Like if I do mobile games and Unity has a high end renderer (HDRP), it's obviously not for me, riiight??

That makes so much sense, it's insane.

 

Contract law requires notification and assent for modifications. You cannot waive that. Attempts to essentially write in forced assent don't always work as intended. Courts have ruled for example that in that case if you do not assent, the original contract applies but only to to the current product/service.

Our legal system works on precedent. The end affect of that is unless you can find a case that's almost exactly on point, you really don't know what will happen. It's a messy system but it allows for judges to use discretion and apply the spirit/intent of the law as well as the contract wording. This makes a lot of complex cases anything but cut and dried. Because the more complex it is the less likely it is to find a precedent exactly on point.

 

Wow, who would have guessed that a company that developed a solution exclusively for solving problems at scale in the MMO space would also try to market themselves for general or smaller use too. It's almost like they're a business with the interest to gain as large a customer-base as possible even if their service is not right or helpful for certain use-cases!

Foolish. You will only spend 3x as long developing your small 16 person FPS by using such a service. Just like it'll take a long time to hammer in nails with a screw driver.

 

Wow, who would have guessed that a company that developed a solution exclusively for solving problems at scale of the high end graphics would also try to market themselves for mobile use too.

 

I don't really understand how this applies to the fact that as soon as you publicly defame another company (even if what you say is true) they would sue you and more likely win (at least for damages). Because we were talking about that.

Yes, you can go to the court if you don't agree with a new ToS and in some cases you can win. But it didn't happen in this case. Ignorance and PR-stunt happened instead.

 

Yes, because a complicated to develop for distributed actor model that handles the issue of inter-node communication, addressing, events (problems encountered at scale) is comparable to an engine providing the ability to target multiple platforms or support a wide range of rendering abilities.

You would be a FOOL to use such a system to develop anything small scale. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Whether they try to market themselves as such is not relevant to what their software is actually useful for, what problems they are actually helpful in solving.

Of all the things I've seen you complain about on the forums over the years this may be one of the more ridiculous. Claiming they truly help you in developing anything BUT large scale/MOGs.

Might as well develop single players games with it too!

For example, I CAN write a webserver in Unity3D. That would be absolutely pointless though. It is not the right technology for that particular problem.

 

The point is, you people need to be LOYAL CONSUMERS (you don't want to be plebeian disloyal consumers, right?) and support Unity no matter if it makes sense or not. Unity is always right and we benefit if Unity benefits, ALL HAIL UNITY.

 

Well I don't benefit if Unity Technologies goes out of business tomorrow. In fact, I'm not even sure I could still open the editor if that happens.

Do you benefit if Unity Technologies goes out of business?

If not, then you probably benefit from their success just like I do.

 

Of course you can't, because Unity (who can do no wrong), decided that SUBSCRIPTIONS -> GOOD.

I'll land on my feet.

Who cares, I GOT MINE, right?

 

Does anyone here still have popcorn and willing to share with me? I'm out of mine...
I'll let you drink my soda pop for exchange...

 

I don't even know why I engaged in this conversation, I should have known better.

 

Sorry I was replying to a reply to a reply there, my intent was to address the fact that Unity is required to notify, and that even with a contract clause stating they can change the terms whenever they want, courts can and have nullified those clauses.

 

Popcorn, no. I still have some (really cheap) wine if you want.

 

Guys, this is getting really hyperbolic.

Unity wasn't going to go out of business if they didn't enforce/change this ToS. If them going out of business meant you couldn't open the editor (it wouldn't), that would be a case of them having done something very anti-consumer, so that's on them.

It probably doesn't make all that much sense to use SpatialOS for things other than MMOs.

It is conceivable that someone may want to do so nonetheless.

Must everything be in the extremes?

 

And Unity has never done that, right?

 

Yes, they arguably have. I'm largely on your side here. But flame wars, frankly, aren't going to get Unity to listen to our concerns.

 

I know they aren't going out of business. It was to propose an extreme to highlight that yes, Unity3D developers like us benefit from the success of Unity Technologies. Claiming the opposite would imply that they could go out of business and it wouldn't in any way affect us.

I was going for a "proof by contradiction" approach. We as Unity3D developers benefit from the success of Unity Technologies. That is all I was trying to say.

 

In my defence, I'm (close to) drunk.

 

That argument only works in the opposite direction. I.e. if someone was saying "Unity's success is never good for us", then pointing out a situation where that was false is valid. If someone is merely saying "Unity's success is not always good for us", pointing out an extreme case is basically a non-sequitur.

 

They already did. Just read back in this thread.

 

It is my sincere hope that Unity is, in fact, paying attention to this discussion and others like it. If they're not, well, that sucks and there's not much I can do about it. If they are, I'd rather present well-reasoned points than an all-caps brawl.

 

Perhaps it's worth thinking about some sort of petition or something at a slightly later date if it's still necessary (i.e. at least after the dust has settled, Unity have presented a reworded ToS etc). I'll admit I'm sufficiently worried about this whole thing that I don't plan on this thread being the be-all and end-all. I think there needs to be a larger discussion about all this.

 

For the record, I am not expecting anything more from Unity (at this point). They said they will make their ToS clearer, and that's good enough (for now). We may or may not have more to discuss once the ToS is revised.

 

What exactly are your concerns? Unity3D enforced their ToS against a company in violation of it for about a year. They were warned. This particular part of their ToS is going to be critical to the success of Unity Technologies as they make their specialized cloud play in partnership with Google Compute Cloud.

Yes, the success of Unity's service-based business largely depends on them offering services for developers. Without financial data it's hard to speculate, but I imagine their upcoming networking tied in with their cloud solution is going to critical for them and that does benefit me. If they can provide me with something better than AWS EC2 for hosting authoritative Unity instances then their success in this area benefits me. Even if they just generate more revenue that they can reinvest into development of Unity then yes that will benefit me.

Nobody is going to convince me otherwise. You'd have a hard time convincing me that the success of Unity Technologies in this case won't benefit me and I STRONGLY feel that this cloud situation, like many other companies, will be a critical turning point for Unity. I'd like them to win in this case.

Remember, Amazon spent 50-70 million dollars to aquire CryEngine specifically to create this sort of thing. We're talking about potentially hundreds of millions on the line here.

 

And that's all that matters.

 

Yes, all that matters is that a company provides value to its customers. Are you a customer of Improbable? A customer of Unity? Neither? Please, disclose your interests here if you want me to take anything you say seriously.

I'm highly suspicious of your posts after reading them for afew years now.

 

These posts together make it clear that they're aware that the EULA isn't clearly reflect their intention and they're working on it, what else do you want to discuss?
https://forum.unity.com/threads/rec...ake-games-in-unity.610447/page-4#post-4086469
https://forum.unity.com/threads/rec...ke-games-in-unity.610447/page-14#post-4092751

 

Of what?

 

As I've had to state before - I and others have detailed our concerns for the last 10+ pages. My concerns in particular are mainly about the ToS themselves, and their apparent volatility

As far as the Improbable/Unity spat goes, in all honesty we all have so little information that everything said thus far is basically speculation. Neither Unity's nor Improbable's blog posts have particularly clarified things. I'm not particularly interested in said speculation - it's he said/she said right now.

The contention of many posters is that Unity has specifically gone after Improbable to make their cloud service the only game in town. If that's the case, it's anti-competitive, which no-one benefits from in the long run. I'm not saying this is the case; again, it's all speculation at this point. What I'm saying is that the debate is not as simple as you're framing it here.

EDIT: Let me put it another way. Unity is looking to offer a cloud service, which is definitely good for us. The success of that, however, does not depend on their ToS specifically preventing competitors from doing the same.

You're edging toward arguing that Unity needs to make more money for you as a developer to benefit. That's far from clear.

All that said - I really don't want to get dragged back into these things. Once more, I'm mainly just trying to say - this isn't as simple as some (on both sides) are claiming.

 

I'm just not sure I completely understand what the intent is (because the ToS is vague, and the Blog post is also vague on this matter). I'm not saying what you're saying is wrong, but I feel it's jumping to conclusions a bit.

After all I've said on this today, I can give Unity the benefit of the doubt until they clarify their ToS. Then we can have a discussion again.

 

Is this how memes get started? By people regurgitating statements when they have nothing better to offer as an argument?

Unless some part of the process involved non-disclosure agreements... you know that thing that says if you spread info you don't have the right to spread they can sue your tail out from under you. I've never had to deal with a corporate contract from the perspective of another corporation but it wouldn't surprise me if one were involved at some step of the process.

 

This guy gets it!!!

 

Yeah. I guess then if Unity is only following, then you probably can tell me where can I find all of these modules in UE one by one.

 

I don't know how similar it is because I never reached the point I was using them... but there is a plugin menu.

https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Programming/Plugins

 

That wasn't the point. UE has quarter of the 2D capabilities for example. The base assumption was that UT never listens anyone, just blindly copies what UE does.

ps.: I really think this whole argument is utterly stupid, BTW. It's just very hard to not to throw some stones on those who say these things. And I really think both engines are wonderful and they have different weaknesses and different strong points. But both are very capable. But the argument, that UT does not listen to anyone and blindly follows the giant is simply not true. ECS and Burst anyone?

 

Wow, this is getting really out of hand. We are all waiting for news on the ToS. The rest has been said over and over again.

I think this thread has jumped the shark.

 

Let's call it megalodon. And you're right.

 

Yeah I basically stopped taking this thread seriously when they started saying people who disagreed with them have clearly never made a game, owned a business, etc.

 

For those who have read the current (not so clear) Unity ToS, there is a recent feature in UE called Pixel Streaming defined like so : https://docs.unrealengine.com/en-us/Platforms/PixelStreaming


I thought this is exactly the case that Unity ToS clause 2.4 is trying to prevent. (Streaming the engine, not the built game) if it is not, the term has to explicitly say and provide some example for the other cases. Starbucks's ToS about star expiration also contains example complete with date and time to visualize. It would not hurt to add some easier to digest example what you can and can't, in additional to concrete definition for lawyers.

 

So first off let me say that ive been using unity for a fair amount of time now, little over 6 years and i enjoy using the engine..
Its the only engine i know well. I like the progress they have made to keep up in graphics and performance..(is very close if not on pair with unreal) Even if these undates broke and depreciated alot of assets i have bought over the years.

I want unity to be a great option and have a strong future in game developement !
I do not wish ill will towards Unity..!

With that said i also believe Unity needs harsh feedback when they choose to go a bad direction. This is not to crap on unity... but the oposite, to say hey you guys are hurting your self with this.

Otherwise if the response was minimal they would not have even decided to do anything to the tos.

(EVERYONE ON THIS FORM THREAD KNOWS THIS TO BE A FACT)

when they make decisions that will in the future, hurt some if not many developers, especially when its just to cash in to make stock holders a few more bucks.. I along with many others wonder if unity is still the right engine to use? I dont want to jump ship but i wont support a company that acts like its ceo is from EA sports either... Their current writing of the tos doesnt seem to support the idea "democratizing game developement".

So to finish this up the general worry i feel most of us "whinny complainers" have here is the reason unity is doing this.. with all servers now being potential "platforms", with seperate "special case by case licences" , so any game using them "may" if Unity chooses (ie successful games, server solutions) will have to add an extra fee or get shut down...

 

Continuing down that line of reasoning, just because they have said that they didn't receive any communications from Unity for months doesn't mean they didn't. We're on the outside though meaning we won't likely ever truly find out unless a court case occurred and the results are made public. Which means continuing this path of discussion is basically pointless.

Yes, but there is another fact that quite a number of people don't seem to know and that is you can't make a sound judgement call without at least hearing both sides of the story. I don't know how many people used the term "whinny complainers" but there were definitely a lot of people "jumping to conclusions".

This thread would have been completely different (and the opinions people gave would have been treated in a completely different way) had the majority of the people giving their opinion waited to see what both parties would have said. I believe it's inevitable Unity would have responded regardless of how people behaved.

 

Unity stated that they made attempts at communication and Improbable followed it up with their third blog post that all contact was limited to the initial statement from Unity on Dec 5th followed up with the second response of Jan 9th when they shut down their keys.

How is that not them saying "they didn't receive any communications from Unity for months"? Yes, it's being inferred to some degree but they read the blog post from Unity. They know what Unity said. This was their response to that.

https://improbable.io/company/news/2019/01/11/improbable-a-final-statement-on-spatialos-and-unity