Unity 4 New EULA Restrictions

I'm not sure what the difference between a "server" and an "end user device serving content" would be in that case... having more than one client? OnLive actually uses one machine instance per client, though I believe that the CPU/GPU for each instance is within one big rack, so maybe multiple rack mounted machines are a server... either way, it should probably be cleared up.

 

To be fair, it isn't entirely about UT growing and changing. Gaming, distribution and connectivity have radically changed since Unity was first launched. Back in the day, a "game" was a piece of software you downloaded (or purchased on a CD) and played on your computer. Today games are connected, updated, streamed both content and core game, and are being put on every piece of electronic equipment under the sun and deployed via a wide range of methods.

It isn't surprising that UT is updating their usage agreement.

 

People, dont get too worked up with EULA's.

I spoke with many a lawyers specializing in the software area, and their consensus is that while EULA's are fine and dandy, they hardly are the end all and be all. You can put "by clicking OK to this agreement, you agree that you forfeit your house and all possessions to the developer of X software" in a EULA, but in a court of law, legal preceding, or legal judgement .... it means nothing. Literally, means nothing.

EULA's can have some weight, or absolutely no weight depending on the; country, county, circumstances, wording, conflict with existing laws, or lack of specified law, etc etc. It can even be as finicky as a EULA written in one country meaning absolutely nothing in a different country.

At best, EULA's are a crap shoot, and will only be enforced or battled by those who have either lots of money or lots of time to waste, with no guarantees of it holding up in the eyes of a judge.

 

Good point, QFS, but there are also things like honor or just being plain fair. Plus I don't know if EULAs are enforceable in Poland, country I live in and even if they aren't, games being world-wide business are subject to laws in whatever country you are selling them, even through electronic means (like Steam).

 

Maybe UT could narrow the Streaming Clause to cover just OnLive technology by requiring end users to only view content though Unity built clients (eg web player, Unity flash builds, iOS builds etc. but not streamed video or html5 or whatever craziness). Or maybe limit the ratio of server to client GPU processing. Of course I would much rather they just remove the Streaming Clause all together.

By the way, if UTs intentions with were anything like as bad as some suppose, they could have pulled a million simple invisible tricks. They could have put in a few lines of code that check for the presence of a display device and if none was found then just exit. They could have charged a large flat fee for a "run headless addon" and just remove those lines of code from that build.

They could have done this because it is _not_ like using Photoshop; all the serious code in your game is UT's hard work. If they did this, virtually no one would figure it out, let alone care. And this would block or seriously impede all possble dedicated server activities but with no public stink.

They did _not_ do this because they are _not_ sleazy. Instead Kaspar Daugaard said they do not intend to block authoritative servers etc, David did not contradict that statement. AngryAnt and Aurore said they are going to sort out the confusion.

Even this simple project from 5 years ago uses servers, databases and a "primary" functionality not on the end users machine and seems to violate the EULA. It's unimaginable that UT secretly wants to suddenly restrict that kind of project.

 

Yeah, I think they should narrow it to OnLive-like services, so we will be able to make games with authoritative servers, like in my WoW example.

If you are too lazy to click link, in a nutshell, current EULA wording forbids you from making MMO game that are using model where server doesn't trust clients and calculates their positions, etc. for them, then sends those data to them for display to remove any cheating means (even if both server and client are Unity apps).

 

The EULA changes are new, only affecting Unity 4, so things from 5 years ago aren't affected.

Also, it doesn't really matter what the devs say the intention is if the EULA still says you can't use servers. If they're not planning on suing people who have servers, then they should change that part of the EULA. So while I agree they probably aren't trying to ban all server-client games, they can't just say they won't, they have to change the EULA.

 

This . The problem is this all makes Unity a bit unpredictable . The next logical step would be a wealth fee on company's with an excess of 5mil a year .


In fact I think now might be the time for Unity to revise its licensing structure . All the basic licenses should be free( or at least available for a nominal cost ) .

 

The gambling situation in the world hasn't changed so why would unity try and screw more money out of gambling companies? I know a lot of you don't care for gambling much and thats a fair position, but to try an use the lame excuse that they need to do more work to carter for people that use if for gaming/gambling is just such a lie. I know from being in the gambling industry that by and large we employed some of the best programmers in the world to work on our embedded gaming machines and never in all my working life did we ever put any extra work towards our middleware suppliers. We were able to sort it all out ourselves. When you need to get your game approved by a gaming authority they don't need anything from the middleware suppliers and if they do need something it was always something we could supply ourselves.

Also the lame excuse that unity needs to somehow protect themselves from gaming legislation is frankly bollocks, if a gaming company fails to comply with some legislation it is them and not the middleware or editor suppliers that cop the flak.

Guys, Unity sees money in gambling and so want a slice of that extra money, I would suggest they get a few gaming licences and create their own gaming machines to make money that way and not try and screw gaming companies with what amounts to an extra tax. To give you some perspective at my last gaming company we had about 240 development staff all that would have needed unity had we used it, this cost plus the yearly updates must surely be enough!

(Pissed off with unity and thinking of writing my own engine now!)

 

Bravo. I think there are a few others who would like to do the same. In a way with the new EULA, Unity have despoiled the word 'Unity'.

 

Good luck with that. I've seen huge, well-funded companies go bankrupt trying to build an engine.

Unity is not your fairy godmother. They are a company, and they are interested in making money. Its that simple.

 

And?

I don't understand why Unity being a company is some sort of excuse?

Are you under the impression that we're Cinderella?

 

The problem is Unity is becoming unpredictable. What are they going to do next?

The partnership that we thought we were building on appears to have changed. With this new EULA, developers are being treated like mere consumers. In some cases, whether intentional or not, we are being treated like fools.

The principal that made Unity great appears to be secondary to profiting from as many different angles as possible. If Unity started out this way they would not be where they are today. I'm not sure what happened...

1) Did they grow in overhead at an unsustainable, and therefore irresponsible, pace and are now desperate?
2) Are their investors driving them in a different direction against Unity's will? Its like someone flipped a switch.
3) Are big customers driving this behavior in an effort to defang indie developers
4) Did Unity have a 5 year plan that included this shift?
5) ...

My Project is on hold while we wait for an official announcement. Depending on the response we get. Unity will either be just another tool in my toolbox, or a one stop shop that is worth investing my valuable time into.

 

While none of this new EULA applies to me currently, I do sympathize with the visual studio analogy, Unity is a tool to create content, Visual studio is a tool to create content, however if visual studio suddenly did not allow you to make integrated apps or gambling apps I too would be quite frustrated.

 

Very, very wrong. Online gambling has radically changed, and is constantly changing. It has gone through massive changes in the last few years alone. Not only have laws regarding gambling directly changed, but laws that affect it have changed (interstate/international commerce). On top of that all the changes in tech and communications that enable it. And is growing very rapidly, and expanding well beyond what people traditionally consider gambling. (poker/slots/lottery/etc...). And it is very complex, much more complex than regular gaming. It is actually moving forward faster than the regulations/laws that govern it can keep up. For example, some companies were in development over a year in advance of the Wire Act change last year.

My guess is that the new licensing is more of a protective issue. The amount of money involved with online gambling can very quickly get very big ($30billion last year in just the US/UK). It is not hard to imagine that if a company like UT wasn't pro-active or paying attention, could easily find itself on the wrong end a multi-million lawsuit. With traditional gaming, class action suits are rare, because the stakes are low. With online gambling's growth, you can bet there are hundreds if not thousands of lawyers out there drooling over the potential of class actions.

The thing is, that when the stakes get really big in lawsuit, the people doing the suing will target everybody in the chain (from investors to developers to tech providers) because the potential is huge. If UT isn't actively on the ball, they run the risk of being found negligent. The separate licensing helps ensure that UT is in the loop and won't be blind-sided. The flip side is that if someone uses unity for a gambling app/game/site and doesn't properly license it, that also could help protect UT from being named in a suit.

I understand the concerns over some of the other changes (streaming in particular), but the panic and silliness over gambling is really a non-issue. If you are indie, you aren't doing online gambling. Anyone actually involved with online gambling has serious resources, and whatever additional fee unity may charge is still going to be less than developing your own engine/tools, and ridiculously small compared to all the other costs associated with it that it is a non-issue.

Personally, I see it as a good thing. Look at it this way, UT has the potential to increase revenue (which ultimately funds the additional/increased development of Unity3D) by getting additional funds from those who are making tons of money and to whom the additional fees will be insignificant. While those of us who are doing more traditional gaming will get the benefits of increased development at no extra costs. Ideally. I want UT to make more money. More money == more/better Unity. And if they can do it in way that doesn't impact indies or small developers, then all the better.

 

Actually they are pretty different. VS is an IDE, it is a tool to aid in development of any language or framework that supports it. (for example Unity/C#). Unity is a game engine. It has an IDE, but the game engine is the core. When you make a Unity app, your code and assets are essentially content pumped into the engine, which is either wrapped up in the package or middleware like the web player.

You are correct that VS is a tool to create content, but Unity is primarily a content player with tool(IDE) that allows you package your content for that specific player.

 

Unity isn't preventing anybody from building anything. Its also far less expensive than any other engine of comparable quality.

The point I was making about them being a company, interested in making a profit, is that people here seem to think that, because they can use Unity for free, that somehow this means Unity owes them something; that you should be able to do whatever you want without ever paying anything back to the people who made it possible.

 

If you add DirectX SDK to Visual Studio then they are exactly the same. Using VS you can add libraries etc and use it to create content, Unity just hides a lot of the process. Back to the gambling argument, as a holder of a Class one gaming licence in one of the most difficult gaming jurisdictions in the world I can assure you that it doesn't matter how the world changes and now has online gaming, Unity as middleware is immune to any prosecution, as I said before it's the licence holder that deals with the authorities.

Oh if you don't like the VS v Unity comparison how about flash authoring tools? if they started to restrict where you could put your flash content they would soon die out.

 

No, the reason I'm pissed is that I don't use unity for free, I paid for a pro licence, now 18 months later to start having potential doors closing or needing more expensive licences just to use your content in a different way is well... annoying!

 

So you're not using Unity Pro 4? So you're not bound to the new EULA? So...?
You still have exactly what you paid for.

 

Nope. It isn't the same. VS is just a tool to write code for DX and and those other libraries. (and of course DX is not a game engine). Additionally any "libraries" may have their own restrictions/licences. The point is that VS is a really, really fancy code editor. It relies on whatever sdks/apis/etc that you add too it. It is strictly a middle man in the process.

Unity does't "hide" the process, it is the software that does all the heavy lifting. The ide and any scripting you do via CS#/JS/Boo is just telling the engine what to do. And that engine is what is wrapped up and distributed with the packages.

There is no such thing as immunity from lawsuits. If one party can make a reasonable argument the other was in some way responsible for loss or damages, it will go to court. Probably unlikely they would lose, but process alone could cost them millions. And the increasing scale of gambling online means they need to look at protecting themselves.

I too have experience building online gambling apps, with some of the biggest brands and casinos, and at that level and that amount of revenue on the line, nothing is taken for granted and there are a lot of parties involved. And laws are still very much in flux and subject to interpretation by actual trial cases. Unity being proactive is a smart move.

Definitely a much more accurate comparison. And yes, there are restrictions on flash. Tools that are available only on the pro version, and restrictions on tools used to create flash content. (or rather fees required). Not only that, the flash content ide has no free version.
And yes, adobe requires separate licensing for embedded devices. http://www.adobe.com/licensing/

 

I'm not in the category you mention. I've been using Unity since 3.0 Beta and hold licenses for 3 platforms as well as their Asset Server. When I bought upgrades for the 3 platforms to 4.0 I thought I was getting the same product and agreement. I have dumped countless hours into this tool learning their libraries knowing that all of the time that I invested into this product would pay off in the long run. With the 4.0 EULA it puts me back to considering and testing other technologies that could meet my requirements. They may prove to require more effort; however I don't have to worry about this issues raised in this thread.

The thought of consulting Unity every time I want to work on an Authoritative Networking project (or anything that might fit in their vaguely defined streaming clause) is absolutely ridiculous. Where is this going? What's around the corner? I would personally like to see a detailed 5 year plan now that all of this uncertainty has been injected into the relationship.

Unity deserves credit and payment where it is due. The new EULA goes to far however. This approach leaves me with the feeling of being taken advantage of. Was all of this part of a calculated plan or reactive response to who knows what? Which is worse? I would have never bought and invested my time into this product under the current EULA's restrictions. I'm somewhat committed at the moment; however that can change over time.

Just to be clear: I love the way Unity was. I had a high level of respect for the company and really got on board with their philosophy. I really trusted that they would take care of their developers. I'm now in a wait state for an unknown length of time while I see a potential train wreck coming for both the company and the community. It's not a good position to be in.

One last thing: If anyone thinks my small post count indicates that I have not been following these forums for the last 2 years and/or that I have little overall investment into this tool, you are mistaken.

 

Well said. And much much less expensive than creating your own. Unity pro with all the fixins' is crazy cheap when you consider that you have the potencial to build a very successful business out of couple of grand or less. It is less than a used hot dog cart.

You are right, they are business and need to profit, and that is not a bad thing. If they make a profit, they stay in business and grow. I want unity to grow, I want it to become more of a standard tool. It isn't my primary dev platform, but I would love for it reach that point. But they will need more revenue streams to grow beyond what they are now. They are going to have start catering to the big boys more to continue to support the hobbyists and indies on a tight budget. More revenue supports that goal.

 

Unfortunately that is seems to always be the case in this industry. Tools/agreements change, tech grows or disappears (papervision). Or worse, a product's marketing paints a different picture than reality (unity's flash exporter). It's not so much a unity specific issue, it is just life in the tech industry. Over the years I have just learned to embrace constant-non stop change (it was either that or go nuts)

I am hoping soon they clarify that soon.
My belief (hope?) is that the streaming restriction is intended as method of preventing developers from bypassing platform licensing. For example if you made a simple-ish rpg or 2d game, and have the whole game running in Unity on a server, and just push all the movement and world space information downstream, you could, for example make an XBLA game where the front end is a super simplified "puppet-show" in C or some other lang/tool. Then you wouldn't need to licence Unity for the console. Something along those lines.
At least I hope that is the case, because if it does apply to just an authoritative server scenario, well, that would suck for many, many reasons. Not the least of which is driving developers like yourself away from unity.

I have friends that have worked at Unity, and met a few others on occasion. And I have a hard time accepting any evil plans or simple greed or other nefarious motivations. All the ones I have known/met are passionate about the product. I think (hope) that the communication and details about the changes was just handled in a... uh... less than optimal way. And that once it is all made clear, it won't be so bad. (hope).

 

Sorry, I completely disagree. Unity isn't nearly "doing all the heavy lifting" compared to .NET, DirectX, Mono, PhysX, iOS, Android, Windows, Beast, Substance, and all the other pieces that Unity relies on. And VS is not just "a fancy code editor", it also includes a ton of tools and libraries that are all used to create apps. Unity doesn't have some kind of special status above all other tools and middleware.

That said, they CAN do whatever they want. There are photo apps that don't let you distribute your photos; they just all died when faced with competition like Photoshop that does let you distribute your photos. People have made IDE's that attempted to take a cut of anything you made with them, and they all died out when faced with competition that let you have the rights to your creations. One of the only things that convinced me to come to Unity instead of the competition was that I wanted to have all the rights to my own game and not owe royalties or anything like that. Without that, Unity loses a lot of its appeal.

 

I should clarify, the "heavy lifting" I was referring to was specifically 3d game development compared to VS. The unity player/engine is a framework of all the core elements typically associated with creating a game, and specifically a 3d game. Certainly everything in unity can be done in VS either by writing all from scratch, or leveraging existing libraries. However unity is composed to handle all that stuff right out of the box. A few scripts and some assets and you can have a playable FPS up and running in about 15 minutes. Starting with just VS the process is much more involved and requires a lot more knowledge just to even start, and no specialized tools for working a 3d space. By the same token unity is only of use for that type of thing, and subject to the limitations of the engine.

What I said was VS was a "really, really fancy code editor". And it is. Maybe I should have used one more "really". The point is that VS is a pretty open ended tool for generating code in a really powerful and efficient way. Not specific code for a specific purpose, but a wide range of langs/frameworks/etc for pretty much any purpose.

The post I was responding to claimed that if you add the DX SDK to VS it is "exactly" the same as Unity. Which isn't remotely accurate. I was trying to illustrate the difference. Which it appears I didn't do very well.

Unity is the absolutely the best tool ever created for producing and integrating content for the Unity Player/Engine. No, unity doesn't have "special" status, but it is a very specific unified tool set. VS is a very broad and powerful all purpose tool.

 

It is profoundly ridiculous because anytime you touch any of Unity's own built in networking, you are in danger.

Indeed, even for any LAN game, some users will want it run on a remote server. When that happens you will have "indirectly distributed" content that is on a server that is not an "end user device".

Assuming the server handles the bulk of the game world (which is the only sensible thing for a server to do) then perhaps it is also "primarily executed"

In effect the letter of the Streaming Clause means you can never make any practical use of any of Unity's inbuilt networking API. While it certainly excludes streaming, I can not believe they will leave it that broad. Especially since networking is one of the features promised on the product comparison page prior to purchase.

Maybe they could say the user facing front end must be a Unity built product or mention the server side GPU or something.

 

Just to put it into context, Unity does very little 'heavy lifting' for me - I usually treat it as a convenient cross-platform renderer and mono installation. Most everything else that makes a game is done outside the 'engine' - the game logic, level design, GUI, networking, AI, sometimes physics, story, textures/art, databases etc. are all done outside the runtime.

To go to the earlier point of creating your own engine - it's an increasingly valid option - the functionality that I use 95% of the time could probably done in 2~3 months with a very small team. While I'd much prefer to use Unity, should they be unable to resolve the EULA it's something to look into.

 

I'm sure we all have various concerns here, it seems these restrictions were to target large players abusing unity's low cost to make large amounts of money. BUT I believe they are quite restrictive to smaller scale users as well. I have some plans for interactive exhibits and tools that will also possibly go above 50 "embedded devices" and the added cost of another license beyond unity pro is not something I can take lightly. Even more consuming is the uncertainty of changing restrictions.

 

Since Touque is now open source you guys could use that IF Unity's making life hard .

My problem with it is it sets a dangerous example of what UT may do next .

 

That's right. Is this the beginning of a 'slippery slope' and where will it lead?

 

This is how I use unity too, I have huge amounts of code in c# script to make my games, Unity does the rendering and more importantly for me creates a cross platform outcome. To me Unity is a content facilitator, it's not a very good editor to be frank otherwise why do I spend all my time writing the scripts in VS? To me it's a tool to bring together assets and render the outcome to more than one platform.

I too agree with the very reel possibility of creating an alternative cross platform rendering engine, I've done this before for gaming machines and it only takes a 2 man team 3-4 months to achieve. This seems to be the only real value I get from Unity.

 

Would you mind making it open source :/
Although I lack the skill to use anything less then a What you see is what you get engine , i'd like to learn ...

 

No, I'd make it cost about $5000 per seat and have a hideously restrictive EULA to stop you using it anywhere that makes you money without you needing to pay me thousands in extra licensing! I'd then wait a couple of years and charge you even more for updates and then change the EULA again to stop you publishing your content to places where you were previously able to publish it......Still want a copy?

 

Ohh boy, that sounds prestigious, could you also get a royalty cut once I start to make enough to recoup my investment .

 

Glad I read this before I really started getting into Unity dev. Think I'll stick with code/company I can rely on.

 

You could download Unity 3.5. It isn't burdened with the same restrictions as 4.0 and it is still being updated with fixes.

 

3.5 is nearing EOL and is only receiving limited fixes:

 

This has the distinct feeling of someone who made a fake account to try making themselves look like a "lost sale".

Weak. Who's being shady now?

 

Why is this suspicious to you?

You have a potential customer with 1 post from a new account. Should he have more?

The reponse is appropriate to the topic.

 

I'm a suspicious person. But it seems a bit odd that someone would create an account just to make a single post to state that they won't be using the engine.

 

You mean some account created a week ago may or may not be fake therefore the obviously poorly written EULA is a good idea?

Or the poorly written EULA is a good idea because UT is a company?

I'm missing the reasoning here...

...or how this helps UT fix the problem.

 

khanstruct,
Why would you defend a policy that clearly doesn't have your best interests at heart. We all have a lot invested in Unity, be it time, emotional support or money. It will be interesting to see where this 'timeline' travels, eh?

 

Can we get a rough ETA on an official solution or at least clarity on items that you have made a decision on?

This continued delay with Zero feedback for 6 days only causes more concern (perhaps unnecessarily).

 

I will make it easy for you, I for one will not be buying unity pro 4 with this EULA in place, it either goes back to V3.5s eula or i'm staying with 3.5 whilst looking for alternate engines to use. Why any of you think it's good or ok for Unity to change their EULA to something that is clearly worse for its existing customers is beyond me. Look up the definition of upgrade, upgrades should not get more restrictive thus making a worse product!

 

+1

It's now a new week, so some feedback would be nice.

 

A large company has a lot to organise to make fundamental policy changes. I say, the more time the better, so they can get it right. One reason they are in this pickle is because things were obviously rushed and not thought through. I hope Unity doesn't take the easy road and say ' people need to get in touch with us on a case by case scenario' . There needs to be some solid frame of reference, so people know where they stand and have an assurance that things will remain so for a reasonable chunk of the future. That way stability will return and doubts will vanish.

 

I agree, I'm not concerned that they are taking their time to reply, something of this level of importance requires a good deal of time to get right. They have previously stated that they recognise the problem and suggested that in many of the cases outlined, the potential detrimental effect was not there intent. Whilst it might be great to get some additional feedback, I'm just not sure realistically what they could say beyond 'we are working on it'.

What is important is that everyone who feels they are or might be affected by these changes, email examples to UT to let them know. This is vital as it will help UT shape the EULA so that they can balance it between continuing a successful business whilst supporting indie developers.

Of course this sadly doesn't address the realities that it would appear Unity is growing to such an extent that they need to find additional means of it generating direct revenue for themselves. If you accept this and want Unity to continue there has to be some changes to the EULA to capture some of the 'premium' markets. Unfortunately that's also the rub, in that no matter how lenient UT's new EULA might be, it will always be seen as requiring additional up front costs for projects that previously just required Pro.

I wonder out of those like myself who found the changes in the EULA unacceptable, where the middle ground might be? Is there a middle ground? Obviously speaking for myself it would mean a EULA that doesn't restrict any of my current or potential client projects, but that in itself would give UT no room to manoeuvre.

This suggests to me that a different solution need to be found and is one that has already been suggested several times. Instead of putting restrictions in the EULA, UT should offer specific licenses that provided the added value for which they are charging, but make it completely optional for the developer to purchase.

For example
Gambling License:
Get a special build of Unity which has additional features that enabling building a gambling app easier. Get additional support etc.

Streaming/Linux Server License:
Use of Unity linux builds on a server requires this license ( as it would seem that linux is the favoured system for this). This does NOT affect developers with Unity Pro creating and distributing linux builds of their games. Again it would be hoped that the linux server add-on would provide additional features to add value to such a license.

Embedded License:
Ok, not sure about this one, but since the intent appeared to be to prevent companies such as car manufactures from using Unity as interfaces for parts of their cars i'm sure there must be some method of building a license around an add-on that again directly adds value.

In all three examples the aim is that Unity no longer uses the EULA in a way that can lead to options and choice being removed from its users, that it offers licenses that resemble, as closely as possible, how their other add-on licenses currently operate (which generally seem fair) and that purchasing the license deliverers an add-on that provides some added value beyond that of Unity Pro, to justify the additional cost.

 

The issue with embedded device is not all of them require special work/devices. They can be running windows xp fine. But the new Eula definition would not permit me to deploy there. And for people who don't think this eula affect them, look further. We have google glass, microsoft glasses on the horizontal, the landscape of gaming may change drastically.

 

After reading the EULA I'm really disappointed about gambling restrictions. Why on earth I could not be using my own program made with a valid license to produce anything I want?. Anyway, If they want to limit gambling, why aren't they setting a fee or anything after XXXXX dollars earn? Gambling is going to be one of the most profitable field on smartphones in the near future. Limiting this is just a dumb way to go IMO.