Unity went crazy, what will happen to KSP2 (and KSP1)?

[AtomicTech]

KSP 2 on Unreal Engine (Releasing in 2030 with all features included)?

Edited September 15, 2023 by AtomicTech

[RayneCloud]

 

 

[MechBFP]

1 hour ago, MarcAbaddon said:

And it was a terrible stupid decision to go after installs instead of purchases.

Ya it makes no sense. If they aren’t going to charge for reinstalls, then the only possible reason they are going after installs is to make money off people who are pirating games, which definitely sounds like profiting off criminal activity. 
So assuming they aren’t that dumb the only thing that can be reasonably concluded is they actually will go after some reinstalls (such as someone getting a new computer).

[Royalswissarmyknife]

1 hour ago, AtomicTech said:

KSP 2 on Unreal Engine (Releasing in 2030 with all features included)?

No reentry effects will be added "shortly"

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, MechBFP said:

Ya it makes no sense. If they aren’t going to charge for reinstalls, then the only possible reason they are going after installs is to make money off people who are pirating games, which definitely sounds like profiting off criminal activity. 
So assuming they aren’t that dumb the only thing that can be reasonably concluded is they actually will go after some reinstalls (such as someone getting a new computer).

I disagree. It makes sense perfectly, these guys are not stupid.

Someone made some calculations about the Unity's prospects for the future and realised they will not get the money they want by going that path - perhaps due competition, perhaps due the cost of fixing the long list of technical debits, perhaps because the new processors being launched are screwing them due some unhappy design decisions made in the past and fixing it is going to be hugely expensive - or perhaps by any other reason beyound me. Or all of them together.

So if they are not going to make enough money by increasing their user base, the obvious solution is to squeeze the installed user base the most they can while the ship is afloat. It's a "sound business decision" : if your asset is going to be scrapped on the end of the current fiscal year, you don't need to waste money on preventive maintenance, and can use it on activities that will reduce its life span (as long it's not destroyed before the end of the fiscal year).

As a matter of fact, you must do it as this is the best way to maximising the incoming the asset is able to provide.

 

2 hours ago, AtomicTech said:

KSP 2 on Unreal Engine (Releasing in 2030 with all features included)?

Unreal Engine is not only a completely different engine, but also has no bindings to C#. Restarting from scratch to use Unreal will demand not only a completely restart on development, but also a complete new team to start with - what would include the decision makers. I find it unlikely it will happen - mainly because this crapstorm is not going to affect them that much: TTI is big enough to be able to cut a nice deal with Unity Technologies to minimize the fees.

 

3 hours ago, MarcAbaddon said:

As mentioned previously: there is a lot to criticize about Unity's decision.  And it was a terrible stupid decision to go after installs instead of purchases. But on purchases the 0.2$ charge would be entirely reasonable, especially if it goes into engine development.

And since, as I said above, they are not stupid, they obviously know it. If they know it and tried the stunt the same way it's because they know they are not going to get enough money on new sales - what implies they are betting there are going to be way less sales for Unity Games than they want.

If your marketshare is stagnating and you want more money, your only option is to squeeze the marketshare you already have.

And, in time, the money for Research & Development should be already on their budget. If this money is not there anymore, it's because someone took it. Who? Why? When?

 

7 hours ago, Vl3d said:

I just want Unity to be competitive, do good research and flourish. Unity has allowed a great number of devs to find financial success. I think they should have a revenue stream that allows them to compete with Unreal and be a foundation for the games of the future. We're arguing specifics, but I don't see a real problem after reading the conditions.

That's the problem: misalignment of expectations between Unity's stakeholders.

Unity's high brass are there for the money. They realised that trying to stay competitive will incur in costs that will undermine their expectations for profit. So they think Unity3D is going to loose market and, again, the only way to keep the profit at the levels they want is to milk the installed base instead.

This is hardly a novelty - Oracle, SAP et all do exactly the same: most of their income is not by doing new sales (how many people buy a new SAP license nowadays?), but by the recurring fees they get from the current costumers (or new products they force them to buy by deprecating older ones and offering replacements).

All of this had happened before. All of this will happen again.

 

7 hours ago, Periple said:

The upshot is that for example I can't trust them to support our studio anymore. Even if they roll back this change, the incentives aren't there.

Exactly. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

And, frankly, this is hardly the first time Unity screws their customers over. Such a decision, IMHO, should have been considered for at least 12 months, 24 from a technical point of view.

 

Edited September 15, 2023 by Lisias
Tyop! Surprised?

[USAGuerrilla]

On 9/14/2023 at 1:39 AM, MarcAbaddon said:

I do have concerns about the change, especially the practicality, but it still seems to be cheaper than using UE, so I am not sure why people want to move to that? Until now Unity had no pricing that scaled in any way with game success unlike Unreal which takes a flat 5%. For the maximum charge of 0.2$ being equal to 5% you would need to sell a lot of copies at 4$ each. 

Only real issue really is using installs instead of sales. Tracking installs seems like a way to get around certain platforms potentially underreporting sales? But there seems to be a really tight rope to walk between collecting excessive information and run afoul of GDPR or having insufficient data to be able to really confirm that the installs are valid new installations.

yeh, but Unity isn't Unreal Engine. It isn't that good compared to it.

On 9/14/2023 at 5:41 AM, RayneCloud said:

So, here's some additional information,

https://unity.com/runtime-fee - This is the actual policy on the Unity Website.

Here's the "Per Install" rate, you'll notice that unity personal and unity plus plans pay MORE per install but it's a flat rate that never changes, than Pro and Enterprise.  Also, as a note, this only "Kicks In" Jan 1st, and they start charging for all installs after that date.

Epic, as a note, charges a 5% Royalty Fee for everything over 1 million in revenue, per title, and sales on the epic store are excluded from this. 

Also, another note, the CEO of Unity and a few other "C Suite Execs" sold shares before this announcement, and then Unty's stock took a nose dive.

How often are they going to revise these chargers? Can they add more? How long user uses the engine $/per hour?

[USAGuerrilla]

17 hours ago, Lisias said:

These CEO guys, they are not stupid. They know it. It's the reason I'm convinced Unity is going to cash whatever they can and ditch the engine, perhaps selling it to someone else.

They are quitting the milk business and entering the steak one - using the old cash cow as Startup.

after shares price tanked, they are going to sell it?

[Periple]

16 minutes ago, USAGuerrilla said:

yeh, but Unity isn't Unreal Engine. It isn't that good compared to it.

It’s not as simple as that. UE is fantastic for certain types of games but if the game you’re making isn’t one of those types, it’s going to be a bumpy ride. Moreover, UE development at medium scale is a good deal more complicated and expensive than Unity development.

If the game you’re making is first or third person 3D (or a racing game f.ex), real-time, and photorealistic, and won’t include a lot of complex performance-critical bespoke logic, UE will be a breeze. If you’re doing something like that at AAA scale, it’s a no-brainer.

But if you’re a small or mid-size studio doing something a bit different and want to give your game a unique look while maybe using assets available on the market, you’ll have a rough time with UE. Until now Unity has been much better suited for that: a lot of stuff that needs modifications to the engine in UE is exposed for you to mess with, the asset store has loads of stuff, there are plugins for everything, and it’s pretty easy to set up good-enough development infrastructure.

A lot of studios like us will not find it easy to switch to UE. Some of us will probably be really happy with Godot and others with one of the other more specialized/niche engines available on the market. But a lot of us are just SOL. There isn’t anything out there that fits our needs quite as well as Unity for example. I do hope Godot gets a shot in the arm, because we would have to change a lot about the kinds of games we make if we have to switch to UE because of this.

I think KSP2 in particular would be pretty hard to make in UE, once you get past the proof of concept and have to start figuring out orbital mechanics, planetary bodies with no transitions from landed to high orbit, how vessels work in the background and so on.

tl;dr “just switch to Unreal” isn’t realistic for a lot of us!

[AtomicTech]

2 hours ago, Lisias said:

Unreal Engine is not only a completely different engine, but also has no bindings to C#. Restarting from scratch to use Unreal will demand not only a completely restart on development, but also a complete new team to start with - what would include the decision makers. I find it unlikely it will happen - mainly because this crapstorm is not going to affect them that much: TTI is big enough to be able to cut a nice deal with Unity Technologies to minimize the fees.

I reasoned as much; I just wanted to throw a joke into the mix

 

[Lisias]

On 9/15/2023 at 2:03 PM, USAGuerrilla said:

after shares price tanked, they are going to sell it?

No. He's going to buy everything they can using stooges, and when things get better (and it will this time eventually, see below), he will be able to excerpt yet more power over the board.

There're people smarter than you scattered over the World, some of them earning money from you. It's better to keep this in mind, it may save your business eventually.

 

On 9/15/2023 at 2:19 PM, Periple said:

tl;dr “just switch to Unreal” isn’t realistic for a lot of us!

And this is precisely the reason Unity Tech is able to do whatever they please, besides not exactly how they want.

Unity has a lock-in on their market, and they has decided it will be more profitable to exercise their muscles on people like you than trying to increasing their market share by luring people from other engines.

I think they will accomplish whatever they really want exactly because of that - it's perfectly possible that this drama is a plot to accomplish something we are not seeing - as perhaps enabling a hostile take over, like Stephen Elop did on Nokia before Microsoft grabbed it.

In a way or another, what remains to be answered is: what you are going to do to not be fooled again?

Spoiler

 

 

On 9/15/2023 at 3:36 PM, AtomicTech said:

I reasoned as much; I just wanted to throw a joke into the mix

Uh.. Whoops.

Spoiler

 

— — POST EDIT — — 

Found very interesting information here: {SNIP}

Given the sensibility of the subject, I will copy&paste the post here in the case that one gets removed by some reason.

Spoiler

Quote

Yes, John is undoubtedly an amazing person, since they don't let you be a CEO unless you are one. But he has also been the CEO of Unity since 2014 and oversaw its progress from "that engine that lets you port your game to anything" to "the platform that every single mobile game is made on and the backbone of the inde developer market." The main reason why so many of you are only hearing about him being the CEO now, is because he HAD (past tense) been doing a relatively good job.

What changed ... In 2020 Unity went public, and a bunch of excrements heads bought their way onto Unity's board of directors. Ultimately the CEO works for the Board, so when these new bosses tell him to do something self destructive, he does it.

Here are the names you should be talking about instead of John:

Tomer Bar Zeev

Roelof Botha

Egon Durban.

Remember IronSource, that dog excrements monetization company that absolutely everyone in the industry dumped and was circling the drain until Unity bought them for $4.4 billion? Tomer Bar Zeev is the founder of IronSource, and following the merger he became Unity's 3rd president (along with John and Marc) ... yes, this is the amazing person who sold a package of malware under the guise of monetization software & ultimately the root cause of this install tax. Given the IronSource's history of malware, I feel that it is safe to say that the Unity runtime will likely start getting flagged by antivirus programs and casually request admin rights during installation.

How Unity got infected with IronSource is that Sequoia Capitol and Silver lake pledged to invest $1 billion into Unity if the deal went through. Frankly, the math doesn't add up for Unity to trade $4.4 billion to buy a plague blanket of a company, only to receive $1 billion in return. Especially when a rival mobile monetization company offered to pay Unity $17 billion if the called off the IronSource deal and merge with them instead. Unless that $1b was for the sake of C-suite bonuses, in which case all of this makes perfect sense. But who the Hell is Roelof Botha & Egon Durban, and who are they important names?

Roelof is a Director of Sequoia, Egon is the founder of Silver Lak, and both of them have ties back to Elon Musk ... which is pretty telling for how fast Unity has caught on fire. If Egon's name is familiar, it is because he was on Twitter's Board and was the one who pushed to have them accept the deal & then got thrown off the board when they realised that he was just spying for Elon during the resulting lawsuit. He also was the one who helped Elon with his fake " Taking Tesla private" scam. Roelof was the CFO of PayPal before it got acquired and has a long history of being involved with mergers that result in a lot of money for some, but absolute excrements deals for end users.

Looping back to the top ... I think John is done with Unity, but not in the "yay, us consumers have protested hard enough to get him fired" kind of way the internet wants. I think he was done in 2020 when he went from being the guy actually running the company, to the guy who answers to a room full of investment love heads (of the 13 board members, 11 are investment managers), and then gets to take the blame for their excrements decisions. I feel like the reason why he sold his stock is because he knew this was a excrements idea that was going to tank the company, but these amazing persons wouldn't listen. So he cashed out his stock and will be announcing his retirement at the start of Q4.

Don't be shocked when Tomer Bar Zeev gets named as his replacement.

P.S. MAYBE THEY CAN MERGE WITH ZENGA NEXT!!!!!!

 

Ladies and Gentlemen… I think we are witnessing a hostile takeover.

— — POST POST EDIT — — 

The Unity's ToS repository was deleted. Thanks Kraken there're mirrors made recently : https://github.com/thaliaarchi/unity-termsofservice

I strongly suggest to anyone developing on Unity to mirror and clone **everything** on https://github.com/Unity-Technologies as soon as possible, because the dices are starting to roll.

Edited September 16, 2023 by Gargamel
Vulgarities

[mattihase]

Hey so as a game dev myself I'd just like to wish the devs good luck with the whole unity licensing debacle going on RN.
Personally I don't think what they've announced is gonna stand as a lot of companies are lawyering up against it but I can imagine it all still being up in the air might be quite stressful, so as one game dev to a bunch of others, sorry y'all have to deal with that.

 

Quick explaination for anyone not in the know: The CEO of unity made a bunch of really greedy changes to its licensing agreement putting a tax on games companies based on how many times a game is installed (not bought, installed), enforced by having unity use telemetry without the developer and end user's consent.  Not great for so many reasons. Fortunately it seems to be illegal and quite possibly in breach of earlier license contracts they put out so it's entirely probable it won't stand as is.

[Gargamel]

Overlapping threads have been merged.

[Lisias]

For anyone still hopping things about Unity are not going to get that bad, some more insights:

1. On July, 2022, Unity Technologies announces a merge with Iron Source
   1. ironSource Ltd. is a  software company that focuses on developing technologies for app monetization and distribution, with its core products focused on the app economy.
   2. The merge was concluded in November.
2. On June, 2022 (one month before the merge announce!), the github repository for the Changes in Unity ToS was silently removed!
   1. Old ToS still available on Web (look for "Prior Terms")
      1. WebArchive.
   2. git repository mirror
      1. On github
      2. On Software Heritage
3. April 3rd this year (slightly before the release of 2022 LTS in June), the clausule were is was guaranteed the right to keep using the older ToS as long you don't update your stack to the newer covered by the new ToS was removed from the current ToS, and a new one explicitly granting them rights to retroactively change licensing terms was added.
   1. New ToS, effective April 2023 for Unity 2022.
      1. WebArchive
   2. Interesting part:

      1. Quote

         2.2 Unity Runtime

         Subject to payment of applicable fees, if any, you may distribute the Unity Runtime as an integrated part of your Projects, solely as embedded or incorporated into your Projects, and solely to third parties to whom you license or sell your Projects or who provide you with services, in each case pursuant to an agreement that is no less protective of Unity and its licensors and its service providers than this Agreement.

4. On September 2023, they announce a per install fee for the Runtime.

I'm quoting the reddit article, as I just could not say it better:

Quote

They've purposefully removed the repo that shows license changes, removed the clause that means you could avoid future license changes, then changed the license to add additional fees retroactively, with no way to opt-out. After this behaviour, are we meant to trust they won't increase these fees, or add new fees in the future?

This is a plan being carefully executed for more than an Year already.

I said before and I will say it again: these guys are not stupid, they know what they are doing. It's up to us to fence ourselves and defend our interests, because they will not stop pursuing theirs.

Edited September 17, 2023 by Lisias
better wording! (yeah, no tyops this time!)

[USAGuerrilla]

On 9/15/2023 at 11:19 AM, Periple said:

I think KSP2 in particular would be pretty hard to make in UE, once you get past the proof of concept and have to start figuring out orbital mechanics, planetary bodies with no transitions from landed to high orbit, how vessels work in the background and so on.

tl;dr “just switch to Unreal” isn’t realistic for a lot of us!

no transition from orbit to landing can be done in UE or other engines. unity isn't special in this respect. LOD exists everywhere.
I think KSP2 is using unity because KSP was unity and they wanted to reuse code / maybe keep plugins (or at least make them easy to port)

On 9/15/2023 at 12:43 PM, Lisias said:

No. He's going to buy everything they can using stooges, and when things get better (and it will this time eventually, see below), he will be able to excerpt yet more power over the board.

There're people smarter than you scattered over the World, some of them earning money from you. It's better to keep this in mind, it may save your business eventually

of course there are, you probably count yourself as one. other smarter people say Unity wants to be bought out (by Apple or other large company).
(buy everything? some people sell low but in general it is a bad idea, especially as Unity has deal with Apple).

[PDCWolf]

On 9/15/2023 at 6:05 AM, Vl3d said:

I just want Unity to be competitive, do good research and flourish. Unity has allowed a great number of devs to find financial success. I think they should have a revenue stream that allows them to compete with Unreal and be a foundation for the games of the future. We're arguing specifics, but I don't see a real problem after reading the conditions.

They charge $2000 per seat yearly to the cheapest non free tier customers., and goes up to like $5000 yearly IIRC. One of the last numbers for Unity is 3.9 Billion users. Now, I'm totally sure that like 90% of those are just free accounts used for varying stuff or not even using the thing anymore, but they're operating at 1.8 BILLION dollars of revenue.

It's not them "looking for a revenue stream that allows them to be competitive", it's them being greedy and charging for something that comes at zero cost to them, which is whatever the hell a user does with pre-packaged software.

People move to Unreal and Godot because Unity is trash, and has been trash for a while, and now they want more money as well.

[Lisias]

7 minutes ago, USAGuerrilla said:

of course there are, you probably count yourself as one. other smarter people say Unity wants to be bought out (by Apple or other large company).
(buy everything? some people sell low but in general it is a bad idea, especially as Unity has deal with Apple).

This whole ordeal looks like a plot to orchestrate an hostile takeover, like it was done before when Microsoft used Stephen Elop to dehydrate Nokia stocks enough to allow Microsoft to buy it for peanuts.

Is started exactly like that: the board got infiltrated, then they elected a new CEO that, so, did some pretty interesting movements that ended up plummeting Nokia stock value. Some time after Microsoft bought the thing.

Apparently, they didn't found the need to replace the CEO.

I would believe the Apple theory if Unity didn't had merged to IronSource - Apple business model is completely incompatible to Iron Source's, they are exactly in the opposite of the market spectrum, and so the IronSource guys will not be beneficed by being bought by Apple, as Apple will just get rid of them to preserve their business model.

I believe that Apple would want to buy Unity (the cheapest as possible) though.

[PDCWolf]

3 minutes ago, Lisias said:

This whole ordeal looks like a plot to orchestrate an hostile takeover, like it was done before when Microsoft used Stephen Elop to dehydrate Nokia stocks enough to allow Microsoft to buy it for peanuts.

Is started exactly like that: the board got infiltrated, then they elected a new CEO that, so, did some pretty interesting movements that ended up plummeting Nokia stock value. Some time after Microsoft bought the thing.

Apparently, they didn't found the need to replace the CEO.

I would believe the Apple theory if Unity didn't had merged to IronSource - Apple business model is completely incompatible to Iron Source's, they are exactly in the opposite of the market spectrum, and so the IronSource guys will not be beneficed by being bought by Apple, as Apple will just get rid of them to preserve their business model.

I believe that Apple would want to buy Unity (the cheapest as possible) though.

Not sure how related it is, but Unity did reject a buyout from AppLovin for almost $18 billion last year.

[PDCWolf]

The plot thickens. I had missed this video.

 

[mattihase]

 

22 hours ago, Lisias said:

This is a plan being carefully executed for more than an Year already.

I said before and I will say it again: these guys are not stupid, they know what they are doing. It's up to us to fence ourselves and defend our interests, because they will not stop pursuing theirs.

Yes they're smart enough to have planned this in advance, but at the same time they're certainly daft enough not to factor in how everyone's  obviously gonna respond to this.
Studios are already planning to  move away from unity development, and from what I've heard, publishers are already dropping unity games currently in development for being too financially risky. I wouldn't be surprised if we start to see mass delistings in the near future either.

rich people usually aren't stupid in legal/financal ways, for the most part, but they absolutely are in people/grass touching ways. Let's not give them the dignity of pretending they're not idiots in their own way.

[Lisias]

7 hours ago, mattihase said:

rich people usually aren't stupid in legal/financal ways, for the most part, but they absolutely are in people/grass touching ways. Let's not give them the dignity of pretending they're not idiots in their own way.

Unless someone are willing to buy Unity for peanuts, and invested a few billions USD to infiltrate the Company and dehydrate it to buy it cheap. I'm getting repetitive, but it's really hard to believe they did this by accident. Riccitiello surely knows better, he have experience with this crap since his times on E.A.

I'm not telling you are wrong, it's perfectly possible you are right. But these guys didn't reached where they are now by doing incredibly stupid mistakes by accident, as it would need to happen to you be right.

On the other hand, foreign players usually miss details about local legislation - there's one thing that may support your thesis, and it is an Anticompetitive Lawsuit.

Spoiler

Quote

This is why Unity isn't replying or posting anything (rumor)

Know some people that work for Unity offices down here. Game dev is a small world and everyone knows each other. I live in Montreal and I can tell you EVERY SINGLE indie studio that uses Unity (so 90%+ of them) are flipping out. Going bankrupt if this goes through. Literally.

So I know a few people that work for Unity and it turns out Unity ROYALLY loveed up with one thing in particular. I mean, they loveed up with MANY things (retroactively changing the TOS, insane installation fee, backtracking on their TOS, applying fees reotractively (LOL), saying microsoft would pay the install fee (BIG LOL), forcing people to use their ironsource garbage, etc) but they loveed up on one thing in particular.

Unity said it would waive the installation fee if game studios used THEIR ad platform.

THIS IS SO ILLEGAL I CANNOT EVEN BEGIN TO DESCRIBE HOW ILLEGAL IT IS.

This is literally, 100%, precisely what an anticompetitive lawsuit is. Like, if you were studying to become a lawyer, this is EXACTLY what you would read in your textbook about an anticompetitive lawsuit. Here's why.

Say you work for admob. If people use your product, they need to pay a boatload of money for Unity. If they use Unity's ad system, they pay nothing. Unity is IN EFFECT forcing people to use THEIR ad system and THIS IS SO ILLEGAL IT'S NOT EVEN FUNNY.

I'm old enough to remember when Microsoft lost a MASSIVE multi-billion anticompetitive lawsuit and you know what for?

Because Internet Explorer came bundled with Windows.

Yes. That's it.

When you installed Windows 2000 or whatever, it came with Internet Explorer. Other browser makers (Netscape et c) complained it was anticompetitive. LITERALLY JUST BECAUSE WINDOWS CAME WITH INTERNET EXPLORER.

I mean, they were not forcing you to use it. You could literally open Internet Explorer, download netscape, and never use Explorer again.

Microsoft lose the lawsuit, was fine BILLIONS, and was ALMOST forced to split the company in two!

And here comes today. Unity says:

"You can use any advertising platform in YOUR game that YOU developped... BUTTTT if you don't use ours, lol bro, we gonna bill you a excrementston of money every month. We're going to bill you EVERY SINGLE TIME someone installs your game. UNLESS you pick our advertising platform. Still want to try our competitor?"

This. Is. Anticompetitive. To. Hell.

Imagine you work for Admob, Admaven and all, how do you feel? Unity controls the mobile gaming market. They are basically KILLING your business. Are you really going to stand there and wait? Of course not lol.

Unity KNOWS it loveed up massively when they posted that, they KNOW they are going to get sued and right now, the rumor is that the lawyers basically told them NOT TO SAY A SINGLE WORD because they know Unity loveed up and they know they are going to end up in court.

That single sentence right here: https://mobilegamer.biz/unity-is-offering-a-runtime-fee-waiver-if-you-switch-to-levelplay-as-it-tries-to-kill-applovin/

Is game over for Unity. We are talking about a lawsuit, with punitive damages, that exceeds the value of the company.

THAT is why Unity won't comment and make any changes for a while.

They might not have a company six months from now...

(search reddit for an article called "This is why Unity isn't replying or posting anything (rumor)", as the original post can't be linked here due bad wording)

Microsoft got hugely screwed on a similar lawsuit in the past during the Browser Wars - and what they did is way less harsh than what Unity is doing. People outside USA and Europe usually don't have to think too much about anti-thrust laws, and end up not worrying about it while doing some stunts on these countries (brazilians usually get fined a lot on USA exactly because of this - lots of small things that we just let pass through in Brazil are harshly punished on USA and not all of us pay due attention to these details on the day to day affairs - until that fine fine is delivered by mail  )

And there's one additional detail that may had passed through while they plotted the stunt - Unity Technologies are drawing light into a nasty practice of the Tech Industry for decades: changes on licensing terms that are effective retroactively. Google, Apple, Microsoft, et all, all of them pull this stunt now and then, but with Unity3D literally scorching the earth with it, some legislations are probably being cooked right now about - and this is going to cost them some money to work around.

Some movement (besides still lacking, but it's exactly what I would expect from a Federation of Companies that also rely on the practice) are already happening on Europe:

The EGDF calls for EU regulation. “Unity’s install fees are a sign of looming game engine market failure” .

https://www.pocketgamer.biz/news/82432/egdf-lashes-out-at-unity-calls-for-eu-regulation/#:~:text=In a statement released by,develop their own game engines.

Essentially, they are calling for a 6 month warning in advance for such licensing changes - instead of yelling about retroactive changes that are really the problem here.

In a way or another, chances are that Unity Technologies will be no more before they try to collect that runtime fees of them. When Microsoft got sued, they barely survived not being split in two, and they already were an economic behemoth. I don't believe U.T. is capitalised enough to survive an Anti Trust investigation where they are clearly guilty to the bones.

TL;DR: I still think that the Unity3D trashing is by design, they intentionally screwed up this part of the Unity Technologies business to allow it to be cheaply took over by a 3rd party (that I don't have the slightest clue about who may be, but I have some suspects on my mind). However, they didn't minded the legal implications and the risk of a huge Anti Trust investigation - that at worst will hugely impact the other part of the business they care.

The whole Unity Technologies are running on the blade now, and this is the part I think they didn't expected to happen.

Edited September 18, 2023 by Lisias
Grammars… {sigh) - good thing I'm a programmer, not a novelist!!

[Periple]

Normal companies do a legal due diligence whenever they change something with legal implications. Even we do that and we’re just a mid-sized indie studio, not a publicly listed multibillion dollar business.

I know a bunch of rich people and they’re not any smarter than anybody else. Most of them inherited their wealth and managed not to lose it; it’s surprisingly hard to lose money after a certain point, our economic system is hard-wired to funnel money up. Some got lucky, they were in the right place at the right time. Some are a particular kind of borderline sociopath who thrives in the corporate environment and have clawed their way all the way to the top. And almost all of them are convinced they’re rich because they’re smarter and better and more responsible than other people.

Plain incompetence and hubris are perfectly likely explanations for this disaster, no need to invoke hidden motives. The people making the decisions just aren’t very bright but think they are.

[Lisias]

10 minutes ago, Periple said:

Plain incompetence and hubris are perfectly likely explanations for this disaster, no need to invoke hidden motives. The people making the decisions just aren’t very bright but think they are.

Yep. But there were a CEO around (a very experienced CEO), a couple Presidents and a lot of Vice Presidents to call their attention and explain the consequences.

The board of directors also are way bigger than 3 or 4 people, these decisions can't be taken by a few rich spoiled brats only: there're twelve directors in the board, way more than the 3 or 4 from Iron Source et all. Source: https://unity.com/our-company

Again, I'm not telling you are wrong, you may be right. But I find very difficult to believe that all the board members would agree with such idiocy without yelling about suing each other by reckless management. Most of these people are losing money, lots of money - a pornographic amount of money.

So, IMHO, the most logical explanation is that only some of the board members plotted the stunt and managed to gaslight the others - what's, frankly, the Business equivalent of a coup d'état. That would inescapably lead to consequences - and, so, the potential gain must be stratospheric, so the consequences would be diluted by the profits.

There're too much people involved to be just the result of the bad behaviour of a few spoiled brats - only one was enough to blow the whistle and prevent all this crapstorm.

[Periple]

In my experience it’s really rare to see dissent in those kinds of meetings. Usually it’s just somebody with an opinion who bulldozes it through. BoD members are usually part-time, they have businesses of their own as well. Somebody makes a presentation, everybody else nods along and the decision is made.

Also the more people are involved to share the responsibility the less likely it is for someone to speak up. I knew someone who was on the board of a giant telco making incredibly dumb decisions, he did speak up, everybody nodded along politely and then made the dumb decisions anyway and proceeded to lose several billion. 

Also BoD members who habitually question decisions aren’t very liked and usually go be members at some other BoD. That’s what happened to him.

 

[Lisias]

13 hours ago, Periple said:

In my experience it’s really rare to see dissent in those kinds of meetings. Usually it’s just somebody with an opinion who bulldozes it through. BoD members are usually part-time, they have businesses of their own as well. Somebody makes a presentation, everybody else nods along and the decision is made.

Jesus Christ… It's a miracle we still have Companies running in the Western World… 

Capitalism is impracticable when headed by people that don't care about… Capital...

My projections for the future are bleak… 

 

13 hours ago, Periple said:

Also the more people are involved to share the responsibility the less likely it is for someone to speak up. I knew someone who was on the board of a giant telco making incredibly dumb decisions, he did speak up, everybody nodded along politely and then made the dumb decisions anyway and proceeded to lose several billion. 

I was raised being taught that the most sensible part of the human body is the wallet. Apparently, I'm too old school for today's economics, the human physiology had changed and I missed the memo.

 

13 hours ago, Periple said:

Also BoD members who habitually question decisions aren’t very liked and usually go be members at some other BoD. That’s what happened to him.

What makes hostile takeovers incredibly easy. I never really understood how Stephen Elop managed to dismantle Nokia essentially unchecked as he did. Now I think I may be able to understand eventually… It will take some days until I digest this information - my brain just refuses to accept that people can be so cavalier about money. Their own money.

— — POST EDIT — — 

I understand squat about these things, but there're analysts saying there're more than 53% of chance of Unity going bankrupt (whatever they understand bankruptcy) - for comparison, the USA's average risk of bankruptcy on TI is about 20%.

Quote

Based on the latest financial disclosure, Unity Software has a Probability Of Bankruptcy of 53%. This is 30.99% higher than that of the Software sector and significantly higher than that of the Information Technology industry. The probability of bankruptcy for all United States stocks is 33.07% lower than that of the firm.

— — 

The Probability of Bankruptcy SHOULD NOT be confused with the actual chance of a company to file for chapter 7, 11, 12, or 13 bankruptcy protection. Macroaxis simply defines Financial Distress as an operational condition where a company is having difficulty meeting its current financial obligations towards its creditors or delivering on the expectations of its investors. 

https://www.macroaxis.com/invest/ratio/U/Probability-Of-Bankruptcy

Someone with better understand about this can comment about?

Edited September 18, 2023 by Lisias
POST EDIT

[asmi]

15 hours ago, Periple said:

In my experience it’s really rare to see dissent in those kinds of meetings.

Very few people have the guts to say "no" to their boss, especially a passionate one (even if for all the wrong reasons), as it can put their career at risk. As the old saying goes, a failed project is a failure for grunts (engineers and regular line workers - you know those who actually get stuff done), but it's "gained experience" for managers. All those vice's are probably seeing themselves in a CEO chair one day.

Edited September 18, 2023 by asmi