Unity 4 New EULA Restrictions

Please quote me the relevant lines?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embedded_system

And even if 1000 people DID go out of their way to make home arcade cabinets for a game (unlikely at best) that would not be in violation of the terms of the EULA unless the product was specifically intended and shipped like that.

 

Great... now find me a line in the EULA where UT restrict Embedded systems? Hint: They Don't.

Nope, the EULA clearly states: "You may not directly or indirectly distribute Licensee Content..."


Remember, these concerns aren't new and I personally brought them up with David Helgason. If UT decided that they didn't want to restrict these activities they could have very easily reworded the EULA as they made the other changes. They didn't.

 

Ok well I have sent an email off to David Hegalson specifically stating my position with kiosk making and asking how the EULA will affect me. So shall see how this goes. The company I work for is actually in a prime position to produce large quantities of kiosks running Unity so this does heavily affect me, and if there is any required additional licensing, I will be sharing how it goes.

 

The changes to the Embedded Devices clause don't actually change anything for me.

The issues with that clause are that:
- we have to pass on restrictions to our end users in our own licenses for all work we do (which means non-trivial licensing), and
- it still doesn't describe what is meant by "the user interface or primary functionality of such electronic device or system", and
- whether the limit is 5 or 50 or 5000 or 5 million, it's still a limit that has to be dealt with, and
- "directly or indirectly" potentially opens us up to liability in areas we have zero control over.

Edit: Actually, I'd rather not go into any more detail in an open forum. In short, the limit is irrelecant - failure to clarify what can and can't be done ad infinitum puts some of our work at genuine risk unless we start direct communication sooner rather than later.

 

Hey all.

I just got off a plane in Tokyo, so wasn't able to post until now. I wrote most of this on the plane.

When we released Unity 4.0, we updated our EULA. In this process we made a few mistakes: first off it was unacceptable of us to introduce changes in the EULA without notifying you, and we'll make sure that that doesn't happen again. Second, we should really have shared the EULA changes and solicited feedback on them before putting them into effect. We didn't, and it turned out there were major errors in them.

We just released Unity 4.0.1, and on top of a lot of bug fixes it also clarifies EULA points that we'd not made clear enough. But we also realized a mistake we'd made and decided to make sure that the embedded license definition only relates to large scale deployments – namely 1,000 devices at a minimum instead of merely 50.

At the same time I'd really like to make it clear that we're not banning embedded use or cloud rendering (Onlive style), we are already engaged with customers about these uses, and will be announcing more details on how this licensing works as soon as possible.

I also know that the updated EULA terms won't make everyone happy, but having interviewed several customers and spent a lot of time going over those projects we know off that might be affected, I think that very few people will be affected now – and those affected we are going to make sure that we don't unreasonably hurt your business.

Lastly I want to thank you all for being with us. We're on a journey through time, and for everyone who relies on Unity for their livelihoods – a group that includes both over 250 Unity employees and contractors as well as tens of thousands of developers – it's critical that Unity remains a vibrant product supported by a vibrant company. This includes both delivering solid basic functionality and lots of innovation, being ever more responsive to the needs of our customers, and adding support for new important platforms. But it also means that we have to always be worrying about how the technology landscape evolves, and making up new plans that react to a world that sometimes isn't there yet. This can result in what seems like strange decisions (and sometimes mistakes being made), but it's extremely important if we are to be here together 5, 10, and 20 years from now.

And that is the plan.



@techmage: I got your email and will be getting back to you after the weekend. Anyone else please feel free to drop me a note at david@unity3d.com anytime. About this or anything else.

 

Watch people still be unhappy. Watch it.

 

I'm glad the clarifications have been added and that multiplayer games are possible once more. That said, I'm still not thrilled with having usage restrictions at all. Banning OnLive still feels arbitrary. Having an Android and iPhone toolkit make sense since you actually sell tools that make publishing to those platforms easier. An "OnLive toolkit" wouldn't actually do anything; an OnLive release is the same as a PC release.

I agree that there aren't many of us selling our games on OnLive now, but it will affect us if OnLive gets more popular or another streaming service comes along and we want to sell our games there. After all, that's exactly the reason you guys are putting the block there: you are betting that OnLive-like services will become more popular and you want to use that to charge us extra. Unity should not be "remaining a vibrant product" by using legal tricks to surprise its customers with future lawsuits and hidden fees. If you want to remain vibrant, you should continue to update your product as new advances in technology come along. Trying to skim off of OnLive is not making your product or company "vibrant".

If you're really worried that in the future, indies will just publish to PC and rely on gamers streaming to their phones/consoles, then you should increase the cost of the normal Unity Pro. In theory, devs in this future would know they'd get the same extra sales on phones and consoles that they would get now by buying the separate platform licenses, so they would be willing to pay more if Unity continues to be a quality product.

Personally, I don't think you should worry that much about it. Console and phone makers are currently spending millions of dollars trying to figure out how to block streaming games and force everyone to continue to go through their own gated marketplaces. It will be quite a while before OnLive or some other company manages to bulldoze through the walls being built by Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Sony.

 

True and I have no problem with that if they offered additional support, features, etc to make the process easier or provided added optimisations, plus it becomes optional as an add-on, which also fits in with how they used to license stuff (beyond custom licenses), instead of this restrictive EULA.

One thing I wondered about was whether Apple would allow such a playback app to exist as it can circumnavigate their content control, though if you are able to do this within a browser then they can't stop it.

 

It is your responsibility and prepared to be sued.

If so... they aren't aware of their own philosophy. Kongregate, Steam, Ouya, Kindle etc. are also 'platforms' in terms of distribution. UT did not sell platforms, it only sold tools.

Again, it's impossible for streaming to bypass UT's iOS and Android licensing because UT does not license iOS or Android.

 

As npsf said, there were no restrictions on the other platform licenses. When you buy the iOS add-on you're not buying a license to sell on the Apple App Store, you're buying a piece of software that builds your game so that it runs on iOS. If you wanted to write your own software that compiles your Unity output into a valid iOS project then there was nothing stopping you from doing that. There's a big difference between selling a piece of add-on software that helps build for a platform, and selling a "license" that allows you to distribute your games through a specific online store or via a specific transfer method.

 

Sorry, David, I still don't get how this future streaming or embedded device affects Unity current revenue.I make a game with windows and distributes to millions PC. I deploy it on OnLive to million of users. I make a game that deploys on a watch and deploy millions. what difference does it make to Unity? I still buy a copy of Unity Pro, and upgrade it every 2 years. I'm still paying for the editor tool to create content, just like Photoshop/Visual Studio. They don't restrict where I deploy my creation, why should Unity?

If the concern is people streaming the editor, the current license states installed on PC can already covers that (or add clause to that). If it is about losing revenue from IOS/Android add ons due to streaming, well, you don't need to support those redundant platform anymore, so you can refocus your efforts on the next platform on that comes up, and charge that new addon/support. Hey, then you can even raise price for Unity Pro PC then since we can don't need to fork additional 3k. Remember we do upgrade, so you have means to adjust resources/prices based on the situation.

I do want to see Unity around for next five, ten years but this Eula is not a win/win for everyone and certainly puts me (and many others) off that future. To you, the Eula seems reasonable to protect Unity future, but to us, it sets a precedent for other unwanted things that can happen. Unity is a tool but the Eula makes it into a platform.

Unreal 3 was developed by a small team of 60 developers (10 programmers, the rest are artist/designers are working on Gears of Wars). Unity needs 250 staff, perhaps that's something to address.

 

There's a simple solution and it's already there. Free version must display Unity Logo, streaming or not.

 

Maybe David could answer this?

Why is it that you need these future revenues, when you already manage to support such a large staff? Furthermore... why with such a large staff are you still pretty feature poor - no 64 bit editor, no Visual Shader Maker, no new GUI [let alone a 2d system].... heck we're still missing basic API improvements like Object.Instantiate<>()!

TBH I think in practise all UT is doing is setting itself up to fail - if streaming did become popular UT will already have lost thier multiplatform abilities, and with these licensing restrictions they damage their royalty free licensing. Heck, imagine if some streaming platforms decided not to pay UT's fee's... then where would one be?

 

Because it's a business.

 

Why do people assume that streaming becoming popular will kill off native builds for other platforms?

 

So with the clarification we can now clearly see this is a simple money grab. There is no way they can justify the restrictions on streaming or embedded devices. In fact, with streaming, it would be the game developer that should be concerned because for every copy that onlive or whomever buys, they can "rent" each copy to X players (where X is a presumably large number) and the developer loses out on potential sales. Unity thinking they need to get more money for these types of deployments makes no logical sense. If they have a justification, I would love to hear it.

Interestingly, I remember a somewhat similar EULA change by Garage Games several years ago where they decided to limit the use of Torque 3D to games only and specifically excluded educational games and training simulations (both of which can be a lucrative business for small developers on a contract basis), apparently due to some company "taking advantage" of the Torque license and making a bunch of money off a government contract or something. That sparked several heated threads on their forums and many people looking at and defecting to other game engines, especially Unity because it didn't have such restrictions in it's EULA. Kind of ironic, I think.

For myself, I was planning on buying a Unity Pro license in the first part of this year, but now I think not. I don't say this as a threat to Unity, I know that my $1500 doesn't matter much. It's not that any of the EULA changes will probably affect me right now, but they may affect me in the future. I don't think I want to invest time learning Unity and developing games for Unity given the current and uncertain future licensing terms for projects. I thought Unity understood that they were providing a tool, a game engine, that could be used to create many different things, but they have exposed themselves as a greedy bunch that want's to profit off of your creativity. Unity can change the license terms at any time, and while it is not retroactive it does affect upgrading to newer versions.

 

It's not about streaming, it's about the intention of the new EULA. The way I see it is like this.

I buy a Car (Unity).
I add leather interiors(Android Export) and navigation systems(IOS Export).
I can drive my car anywhere I please. To work, to grocery stores, to the mall. Anywhere. No restrictions.

Now with the new EULA it's like this.
I buy a Car (Unity).
I add leather interiors(Android Export) and navigation system(IOS Export). The EULA states that I can only drive my car to work and to the mall. If I want to drive my car to grandma's house(Onlive or whatever new platform comes along) I have to call the company and see how much it will cost me. Driving out of state is not permitted either.

So, basically, you bought a Car(Unity) but can't drive it as you please until you call and check if your destination is permitted.

I don't mind paying for the features and extra. That's fine. But with the new EULA, the company is controlling my destination. That's unacceptable.

That's why a lot of developers are not very happy about this.

 

This is what I have been saying since the EULA was challenged. But as I see it, there is nothing they can do about it without a major structural change. With so many employees and so many bills to pay, the company coffers must be fed. Unlike Indies who often operate on their own or in twos and threes and on very small budgets these guys are on a massive money treadmill. Don't get me wrong, they seem to be very nice people just interfaced with a demanding financial system and they are desperately looking for ways to make it all work.

 

I'm sorry but this is way too far fetched. You cant ever be held liable by how your users install the game, and the fact that they may stuck a computer into a cabinet... not to mention, the package you sell is a game that requires to be launched. You are (in this case) not distributing a full system package that will boot directly into the game, bypassing all launching systems in the operative system. Any such configuration the user may come up with for their arcade is entirely on them.

I don't know in Australia, but in the United States you cant ever be held accountable to how some one uses the product you sell.

*before its noted: the recent case of a New York guy being prosecuted due to the actions of a client potentially money laundering are very sketchy to us, and so far from what i read the developer in question was giving active service maintenance to the potential money launders.

I don't know what they are doing, but just for argument's sake: what if they ARE working on a new streaming license? What if they are working on a version of unity (potentially a Unity Server) that allows for optimal use of distributed hardware to stream render as efficiently as possible without requiring separate instances of the game running on ritualized machines? Work on such a system would be rather large, AND the ideal way to support a future of true cloud rendered games. That would certainly justify them wanting to talk to people on the topic, even if just to see how they are using the cloud, or to discuss licensing of such a system (assuming it maybe already is being developed.)

This is just hypothesis. We can simply say "they are a business" and leave it there, as unsatisfactory an answer that may be, it IS a valid one.

As for the gambling bit, they already explained they have been seeing disproportional levels of support there.

In a civil discussion, insulting the other party is the perfect way to get them to ignore you. You may consider Unity to be feature poor, I find it feature rich, not only it has almost every feature I need, it has features that allow ME to add features I may need too!

 

No, but you are fully responsible for giving them the *rights* to do so even though the Unity EULA prevents you from doing so. You're confusing another legal scenario.

Good for them! But that's no excuse to restrict streaming on existing licenses. We've covered this many times over.

Is expecting a GUI system, long promised and long overdue an 'insult'?

UT are arguing they need the funds to support their staff to help improve UT, shouldn't the burden of proof then be on them to prove that those staff are providing value? Remember, they didn't say they simply like more staff, or want more revenue, but that this is to improve Unity for us.

 

Just to address this, as well as npsf3000 concern, that's 250 staff total globally, not 250 developers.

 

And when he says unreal 3 i'm expecting it's just the game, not the engine, which really isn't a lot programing wise. 250 staff doesn't sound crazy to me

Edit : i'd be curious to know how the 250 are split between dev/art/support/commercial/other

 

+1

 

When you sell a copy, you just sold a copy. You actually have to specify if you are going to give a user the right to redistribute, that's not an automatic right you must tell him he can't execute.

They didn't. They restricted streaming on a new license (4.x). 3.x licenses were not altered.

"Feature lacking" is an depredatory description that implies the product is either unfinished or does not meet minimum industry standard feature sets. It is also not equivalent to "Lacking a feature I want".

I don't think that’s what they claimed; I think they claimed the specific uses were taking resources out of regular support. If they want to support those uses without affecting regular support, they feel they need to charge for them (this is so far only embedded systems and gambling, no one has claimed anything bout charging for streaming YET.) Would be very interesting if someone that actually cares so much about that use actually called to see what the people at Unity say.

 

someone define CLOUD for me?!?!

the funny thing is the industry can't, people who really understand about p2p systems understand what it means but since the systems have existed before the term "cloud" i cannot see how anyone can put restrictions on "cloud" technology



so I would assume unity may be planning to offer some "cloud" services of their own, what I would help is they try to monetize the smaller guys working on unity, the guys who are not gonna pay for a support contract we are too poor and will just simply work until the morning

basically unity you gotta help me make money to make money xD

 

Cloud is generally defined as "that trendy thing these past few years, yknow, this month's version!". Ah buzzwords, gotta love em

 

Actually, it's rather easy: Cloud = remote.

Cloud storage? Remote storage. (ftp, WebDav, whatever.)
Cloud computing? Server side processing.
Cloud rendering? Server side rendering.

Etc etc.

Cloud Services is an umbrella term for all things that offload a task from your computer and handle it remotely. There is no defined way to how this will be handled other than it will not be handled in your computer and/or device.

*There is one vague gotcha: WebApps (websites that behave like apps, example being Google Docs) can be also considered Cloud Apps, regardless if they are entirely implemented in JavaScript (that runs entirely local), purely server side technologies, or a combination of both.

 

It is the team for the game engine and the game when they first shipped Gears of War, and Microsoft started licensing UE3.

 

I don't think Unity claimed that. Even if they did, the solution is to have support packages and charge on that. Years ago where I was under employment, the company paid USD 40k annually just for email support for a game engine.

This Eula changes the definition of Unity as a tool into a platform. As a platform ( in future), Unity can say all Unity authored content must run on Unity cloud or unity wmware. Not that they will, but they can, so why allow it now? Still think it does not affect you?

 

Unity, in fact, HAS great GUI system. It's very robust and making GUI for your game is done in minutes. If you talking about GUI *editor*, well this is other thing and isn't really needed as even using pure code it is easy to setup GUI of your liking.

What Unity really needs is visual shader editor/generator as shaders are one of more complicated things out there. Also it should move some things from Unity Pro to free version. For example dynamic shadows.

I have nothing against making newest, say DX11, graphics things Pro-only, but dynamic shadows? Come on, that was even in Doom 3 (i.e. ~10 year old technology).

But for me, it's solved, although some things in streaming clause are still unclear for me, for example "low level render commands".

Does "move player character from pos a to pos b" (in pseudo-code thing, actual communication over network would be of course different) or "destroy car with id 222 using particle effect 333" qualify as "low level render commands"?

 

Well what an anti climax the new revised EULA is. I was hard pressed to see how it had changed! I for one wont be upgrading to 4 any time soon with a Eula and license conditions that don't make it clear up front what the extra costs will be for the new excluded targets.

I wanted to use Unity in embedded gambling machines, just how much is that going to cost me and what do i get for that extra money?

 

Sorry for the Delay, been away.

Great... but we're talking about how ones client uses the software you've already given the rights for, not redistributing without permission.

No, I'm talking about UT's GUI system which simply isn't up to par. Not to be confused with GUI editor [which is also expected at this level].

 

Yeah, GUI sucks... no way can you put it any other way...

 

Basically, Unity wants more money off you if you make more money. Why don't they just switch to UDK's way of licensing and be done with it?

 

What you say makes no sense.

 

Because Epic makes their most income with in-house games and real UnrealEngine licenses. UDK is just a trimmed down version of UE, mostly used by modders and 3d artists for showcase purposes.

UT on the other hand lives off of the license sales from Unity. That's their main business.
If they would give it for free and bet on revenue share from the games done in Unity, they would be out of business real quick.

 

That's the most insightful comment in this thread, actually the new EULA is "You need to pay royalty if you do Internet streaming, gambling, embedded. You want to know how much? Talk and work with us." XD

 

Actually in light of these restrictions and statements given by UT staff one would have to wonder how important UT consider the standard licensee's.

 

That is not anything like what is in the EULA....

 

Explain the difference

 

It doesn't say royalties does it?

Ok, just looked up royalties and maybe it does come under that word.

 

Royalties mean money, and in fact, the EULA didn't mention how much extra charge and how UT charge you is even worse then a royalties with fixed rate.

 

So far, the license actually states once: "Licensee Content; and (ii) if you have licensed a version of the Software other than a trial or educational version, to distribute the runtime portion of the Software, on a royalty-free basis"

What Unity MAY ask is an additional feature license fee. So far we heard 100k for gambling use. That’s not royalty, that’s a one-time sale of the license. Them asking for royalties would be "if you do streaming, you must give us a percentage of your income."

 

I guess UT is just trying to take some precautions from cloud computing.

 

Still no word back from UT about how much it will actually cost if my company goes over 1000 deployed kiosks.... ??

 

Yeah, that is what I thought royalties was.

 

If you are concerned that your company may break the EULA then contact you account manager, this is handled on a case by case basis.

 

Who is my account manager and what is their email?

I am in Portland, Oregon.

 

english is possibly the most structured/ mathmatical language... just saying.