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

I totally agree, the issue is some people never released a game or ran a business. SO some people can tell us not to freak out, well, if you lost your jobs and tons of money, you have every right to be upset.. companies can go under, and people can be laid off... So Unity shouldn't be doing this when games already released..or any in development..So if they did plan to do it, it should be for any game that has NOT started development yet. ( Other wise companies could lose a lot of money and jobs as I said. (not attacking anyone. just stating facts.. This may force us to Unreal (we use already, but with our current game...…..So I plan to wait for a reply, but If its forcing us to use a service Unity WANTS, we are gone... after almost 10 years I would not want to touch Unity again...….. as yes we would lose a lot of time and money..

SO I agree with you.


but I will wait and see, I rather hear this from Unity before I get totally upset. by it.

 

Two issues - the business argy-bargy between Unity and Improbable - which I'm sure they can sort out as both have big money; and the clarification of the ToS in relation to headless server hosting using our own choice of hosting company, and distribution via 3rd parties like Steam.

 

Actually in this case it's a clause buried in most engines, and it's been in Unity for years. A few years ago, a tech company that won't be named, evaluated Unity as a potential thing to use for their customers to make standalone modded versions of their own game. They couldn't do it because Unity had a pretty common license condition where you can't use Unity's own product to compete with Unity.

That's exactly what would happen with Unity's new networking and SpatialOS, they would massively benefit from Unity ECS-ifying everything.... and Unity would not.

I think you trip this when you make something designed to actually compete with the something you use. And I think that's fair.

Photon doesn't fall foul because it does not use Unity's own technology to sell to their customers that use Unity at cost to Unity. It's perfectly reasonable for Unity to want to be paid for their own tech, within the same service industry.

 

Took the words right out of my mouth

 

Thanks for the update. I really hope that in their post they will address the bigger problem - that they are able to and willing to destroy entire projects (SpatialOS, Photon, and any game using them) just because they decided to launch their own service (or whatever other reason they may have). That is a breach of trust, and even if this TOS change does not hurt me personally, it makes me wonder if the next one might...

 

Soo...

Uhh... by that logic, if Unity ever releases a game, we're all suddenly direct competitors and can no longer use Unity?

 

"You must not have tried VR if you don't like VR". Sorry, but that's the way your post reads and it's definitely not true that people who are not freaking out haven't released a game or haven't ran a business any more than it's true that people who hate VR haven't tried VR.

 

I started using Unity in 2007, more than 11 years ago, and bought a Mac to be able to do so because I thought it was an awesome game engine and game authoring tool. Also, I really like the founders and how they participated in the forums (Joachim obviously still does, and I still appreciate it ;-) ). In fact, I love(d) Unity so much that I even wrote a book for people to get started with the engine and game development that was published in 2015.

I don't have a problem with Unity Technologies also offering services ... but ... I did not pick Unity Technologies for those services, and in fact, I will usually either roll my own or select another solution / partner. I'm really not happy that with my subscription, I'm paying for plenty of services that I don't even want to use (I really preferred the perpetual licenses, anyways - my subscription paying for services that I don't want to use just adds insult to injury).

The thing is: Now that UT has became this mega-corporation, even the dependency I have on the engine itself has become a little painful, so I'd rather not create even more dependencies by using their services ... and quite often, like in the case of multiplayer, other services are superior anyways.

Unity now apparently stepping in and telling me "hey, no, you can't use that kind of service with your game because, you know, your game uses our engine, so it's up to us to decide" is another big drop in trust and honestly makes me sad.

I'm not using SpatialOS, so this doesn't directly effect me as an individual. But hey, this is Unity - we are all one, don't you forget!

 

I left working for game developers quite a few years ago and started using Unity. A lot of professional developers I had worked alongside said I was crazy, they could change their terms at any time and you'd be left with nothing useable for all your hard work (or variations of that, such as they could go out of business, and you be left...). Some of those have come around and now using Unity as the benefits were greater than the risks. This situation has changed that balance for both current and potential users.

Today I have heard from developers I know who are freaking out, and others saying I told you so.

Currently it looks bad for Unity, not just in terms of these changes, but also the potential for other changes. I hope Unity do respond quickly and positively.

 

The issue is spending valuable time and resources determining the proper solution to develop a product, coming to the best combination for our needs (Unity and SpatialOS), and spending development time only to have it all ripped out. Even if Spatial can replace the "Unity parts" and resolve this I cannot justify spending more resources working with a product (Unity) that I cannot trust to allow me to do my job and wasting more resources in the future.

 

It's good to hear that Unity supposedly didn't *intend* to keep people from doing anything whatsoever on servers. But the wording is pretty clear that you can't be running anything built from Unity on any managed server at all (except for a few exceptions). So if they didn't intend that, they should definitely change the wording.

 

Imagine what kind of class action this could bring. "add a headless build option and once people invest years into it they prohibit the use of it"

 

Exactly

 

well it's already in the legalese of all the engines I've used, this one included. You can't use Unity to compete with Unity. The fact that Unity is now rolling out something the same, meant that they clarified the TOS a bit more. It was already in there and SpatialOS already knew that, and already had a dialogue with Unity.

But going to wait for ye olde blogpost.

 

Hope this happens relatively quickly to calm things down and clarify the points raised in this thread.

 

This assumes that you leverage features Unity is creating in the same area, ie networking and backend specific stuff. I doubt anyone making something like SpatialOS would care about that part.

But details aside Unity simply wants to bar competition in this area because they will be coming out with a similar service. It won't work. What will happen is what has happened in dozens of cases like this in the past. The industry will move to service models that Unity can't control. Which long term is good for users. What I don't get is why Unity doesn't understand that what they are doing only serves to hasten a paradigm where there is actually more competition then if they didn't do this. Just shows how otherwise smart people can do dumb things.

 

Their intent of that license section seems pretty clear. Bad on Unity's legal team for phrasing it so overly broad that there can be arguments that it bans virtually any dedicated server game or any distribution platform. This shouldn't have to even be in the discussion. There shouldn't be grey areas in the wording.

I'm currently building an MMO and am not actually concerned for my game here. Of course if you are using SpacialOS I'd be in panic mode, or planning any other streaming based delivery. It sounds like SpacialOS have been in discussions with Unity for over a month on this. I know people are saying this is somewhat of a PR with for SpacialOS, but why didn't they tell their users about a potential problem a month ago instead of waiting until it was too late?

 

It's been mentioned a few times in this thread and I will add my voice and studio to the mix. What has happened here as far as it impacts my developments and indies like me is a gross breach of trust between Unity and their customers. Despite whatever PR damage control they spin in a blog, the fact is a ToS is a binding legal document and anything else just doesn't matter.

What Unity has done here is shown that they have no problem destroying years of man hours of work and hundreds of thousands of invested dollars because they want to find a new revenue stream in a space they have Epically failed at for years. (Network Support). The real situation here is that the ridiculous (and based on my first pass with an enterprise corporate contracts person likely currently un-enforcable due to ambiguity) changes to the ToS show that all projects developed in Unity are at risk of being held ransom at a whim any time Unity wants to reach out and take.

Put some real clarity into section 2.4 and do it legally in the ToS not through some blog.

 

With respect, by that argument Epic Games should shutdown everyone using UE4 as they also publish games that might compete with them. In fact PUBG is one which they chose to compete with rather than attempt to shutdown. This clearly has been highly successful and everyone, even PUBG, wins from further engine improvements and strong competition.

There are any number of ways Unity could try to get a piece of the pie but an EULA change is the nuclear option on a community that is already besieged with competing game engines. Even just adding a license fee for running it on a server and publishing that figure would have been better than this. Additionally, how does Unity 'not' benefit from huge companies using their tools? There's still a cut from the profit, as always. If anything, the more developers using Unity and becoming successful, the better.

I really couldn't care less about SpatialOS, clearly this outrage serves their business interests, but the EULA change as written clearly can be read to impact perfectly normal, industry standard practices and the precedent it sets is chilling to developers and investors.

 

This. I found out on Youtube this morning, and I thought the very exact thing. I really wish people would use their heads more instead of just grabbing rusty pitch-forks. People like to feel like a victim and it is silly. But yeah, I'm still gonna wait for the Unity blogpost before I even begin to form opinions. I understand though, that for some developers, this is going to seem very annoying.

 

FYI: Improbable released a new blog post: https://improbable.io/company/news/2019/01/10/an-update-on-todays-events

 

This has come up in the past when people have considered using Unity to create a game engine. It is a stretch to say it would apply retroactively to any product/service that Unity might conceivably sell in the future.

 

People did use their heads, the legal terms of service make it clear that you cannot run anything built in Unity on an unapproved managed server, and they listed the approved servers, four specific ones (none of which are generic hosts like Amazon or Google). There wouldn't have even been a blog post if people hadn't realized what was going on and raised a ruckus.

 

I can't wait for this blog article, it must be a doozy if it took them all day to write it.

 

If Unity sees uses emerging that they feel they should get an extra cut on, I think ideally this should be done in an open and transparent way. So cases aren't simply killed years after the fact, and people with potentially similar use cases can see terms upfront and whether it makes sense to use Unity or not, rather than blindly going forward or going forward under a set of terms that works today, but may not tomorrow.

I wish there was one catch all trade we could make with Unity - be it a fee or a revenue share - that would cover any possible uses short of redistributing the editor. Games and game services are a space of innovation...it would be preferable not to be have to worrying if in innovating we might step on Unity's toes, present or future!

 

Reguardless who the new tos is ment to effect and no matter what unity says in blog posts. at any time unity could sue a developer because they broke tos by hosting the game on a dedicated server and it will be this way untill the words in the tos are changed. any game hosted on any server that is not on the authorized list is breaking tos with the current way the tos is written. so spare us blog posts and remove the "or a remote server" from the tos.

 

It should probably be said that Improbable almost certainly constructed their PR in such a way for us to react as we are, hoping for a public backlash and thus aid their negotiations, they're a bunch of smart folk, but in my opinion that was the right thing to do given the callous move of altering ToS for Unitys own financial gain at the direct expense of its paying customers.

If we focus on what we do know, in that Unity have been unable to provide a production ready Network solution for the past 3 years. Other companies came to fill this gap and for the most part did a better job of it. Now Unity have something in the pipeline to replace these and want to make these other options less desirable through additional licence fees which will undoubtedly trickle down directly to us, the developers using these services.

 

Wait! ;-) But people who don't like VR haven't tried VR. At least, most never did. The real problem with this is that things are called VR that really aren't VR, so some people think they have tried VR, didn't like what they tried, and now they think they don't like VR but they haven't even really tried VR.

And then Unity (and a few others) came along and started calling it all XR adding to the confusion.

True VR is f'n awesome!

This was a little off-topic, I'll admit, but I thought while we're all waiting for that blog posting, maybe we could at least have a little fun chatting about what is and what isn't VR, and how much fun VR is.

You know, go back to those days when the Unity forums were this amazingly fun social space where people shared their incredible joy of working with Unity (this literally is my all time favorite thread here on those forum, would be kind of cool to revive it ;-) ).

 

Very bad analogy. Unity gets nothing from SpatialOS (or at least not enough apparently), while PUBG is/was paying their 5% of everything to EPIC. Go figure.

 

It's not misinformation to point out that Unity's TOS conflicts with how Unity Technologies happens to enforce it now. Part of this clarification needs to be fixing the TOS so that it is more clarifying, not simply explaining that you won't enforce certain elements of the TOS.

 

This new post feels very much like a damage control post.

 

Are/were they? You can ask for a custom "pay upfront" license from Unreal and I assumed pubg had done that.

 

Why should Unity get something from SpacialOS just because it's used for multiplayer games? PUBG pays their royalty share just like single player games do because UE simply has different revenue model than Unity.

 

I don't see any evidence of that. They had to notify all of their users that their products were now in violation of Unity's ToS, there was a legit reason to sound the alarm.

 

Exactly, why are only a few people thinking like this?

 

And PUBG runs headless on Amazon servers, i'm almost certain Amazon don't have to pay Epic

 

No, I think the corporation I work for won't allow me to do anything against the TOS. If the TOS has legal problems, that creates problems for me.

 

I came from Unreal tweet about this and can only say - LOL. In near future we will discover that SpatialOS were trying to act as they're special and made someone mad enough. Also, negative kudos for UE warmongers lol.

 

I definitely believe now that we're about to discover that SpatialOS was in the wrong. You don't make a post with statements like "whatever the outcome of our misunderstanding" if you know you are in the right.

 

I'm obviously guessing here, because naturally I don't have any specifics (and if I had I wouldn't be allowed to write these post), but PUBG started to be a small fun project, I highly doubt they would put down a couple of million dollars for custom license... But everything is possible of course.

Because one is a service which built upon on Unity's technology the other a game. Just wait and see if someone will be delusional enough to try to resell UE as a service... What would Epic do?

For me it looks like they will announce their custom engine, probably built upon on Unreal and with a contract with Unreal. I may be wrong. But they are trying to keep that heat up and push all the blame to Unity while they are trying to be seen as someone who apologies. They have a very good PR person/team. Judging the writing.

 

Where are you getting this?

 

I feel like a whole lot of people aren't fully briefed on what SpatialOS does. That's the only reason I can see for this schism.

 

https://twitter.com/TimSweeneyEpic/status/1083414572885856257

 

What several people in this thread are completely ignoring is that regardless of Spatial OS, the current unity ToS in section 2.4 explicitly prohibit the execution of unity runtime on a cloud or remote server..

What is so hard for you to grasp about that?

 

Am I wrong?

 

why does anyone care what all these other companys are saying? did you agree to a tos with them? the only thing that matters is the new unity tos and the fact that it says anyone hosting a game on a server that isnt on the authorized list is in violation of the tos. stop talking about meaningless posts by other companys because none of that matters. what matters is those of us who invested years into our project are at risk of losing everything because of the new tos. BLOG POSTS ARE NOT A TOS... and a blog post cant save us from getting sued for breaking the tos. it needs to be changed and it needs to be changed now.

 

I don't know, are you? I asked where you got it. Were you just guessing? Because it didn't sound like you were guessing.

 

The point is that Unity can retroactively enter any market and update their TOS to match (UE for example specifically has terms that mean the license you agree to is the one that applies).

This power had always been there but now they have shown they are willing to execute on it. Not just against a direct competitor, but against a company which competes with Unity in only the vaguest sense.

The message is clear, Unity sees a future where Unity is ONLY used with services provided by Unity and they are going to aggressively pursue that vision.

 

https://blogs.unity3d.com/2019/01/1...-you-can-keep-working-on-your-spatialos-game/

 

What is so hard to grasp about wanting to hear from both parties before we make our conclusion? If you think about it it makes perfect sense that you would want to hear both sides of the story before you come to a conclusion. If you had to go to court over this matter would you want the judge to only listen to one side before he gave a verdict?