Personally I’m wondering if Chinese gamedev industry would “buy Godot” or do something to that effect. Japanese publishers won’t be able to do that nor would be willing to pay, so I’m guessing they’ll migrate existing to UE or wind down Unity titles, just my speculations though.
Additionally the copyright isn’t even owned by those organizations but rather retained in full by all of the many individual contributors to Godot, without a Contributor License Agreement.
So any for-profit corporate acquirer would not be able to get the Godot name, and if they didn’t want to have to comply with the Godot copyright license, they’d have to get the agreement of every individual contributor whose work they don’t want to rewrite.
In short, they are safe from acquisition in the same way that Debian is, unlike most corporate-sponsored or small-team personally-owned “open source” projects that we see here on Hacker News.
(Or, at least they say they are.)
I was formerly heavily involved in the leadership of the other major US non-profit charity that does this kind of fiscal sponsorship (and which maintained a friendly and collaborative relationship with the charity that Godot previously used). They’re not scamming you in the way of a lot of executives at VC-funded for-profit startups (and their acquirers) when they make entirely legally unenforceable statements about what will or won’t happen in the future which they don’t necessarily even believe themselves.
If I understand you correctly (I haven't really been following this), they changed the contract and are trying to retroactively collect license fees for installs done prior to the change in contract? I don't think this is legal. When you change a contract, it's on a go forward bases. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. It's definitely a money grab. If it's deemed illegal, i.e. fraud, I hope there is jail time. Gotta send a message.
Did Unity recently get acquired, new investors or new management?
Nope. They bought Weta tools and the investment haven't paid out and probably won't be soon if ever, now they are desperate for money.
They'll be able to get away with that then, the weasels. Sounds like they are trying to make a golden goose and kill it in one fell swoop. The latest Unreal demos look mighty fine. Sounds like we will be seeing a bunch of games use it in the near future.
I wonder if the older engines used by older games have any way to detect installs. I'd hate to see devs who abandoned their projects years ago but are still downloadable somewhere get caught up in this.
EA's former CEO, John Riccitiello took over last year. He inaugurated himself with quite a few statements, one of which was discussed here:
For me personally, C:S goes in too much on building a nice looking city and not enough on the simulation aspect.
If it's illegal, it will just be invalid. What means that people could just not pay them. There's no jail time coming out of this.
It seems more like, starting in 2024 when you get more downloads the fee would be applied.
I see people talking here about apps that have a huge user base and a very low price per purchase. I admit that segment didn’t pop into my mind initially. And I see the problem there. I also imagine the Unity execs may have missed that scenario too.
From reading all of their public communication, and with just a hint of principle of charity, I suspect they are trying to do this in the most fair minded and developer friendly manner possible.
You have to meet both volume and revenue minimums to even be subject to this. All free apps are safe. All non-profits are safe.
I think it is good Unity is receiving public feedback.
I am sad so many people are jumping to the conclusion this is a corrupt money grab.
What category of game has "a huge user base and a very low price per purchase?" Mobile free-to-play, that's what. How are those games monetized? Frequently with ads. And it's been noted elsewhere that if you use Unity's ad network, you will get a 100% discount on your per-install fees.
They knew exactly what they were doing. They merged with an ad company -- they are now an ad company. Their strategy is to make F2P ad-supported games untenable on Unity if you're not getting your advertisements from them.
I wonder how it'd have gone down if Unity had said, "From Unity version 2024 and beyond, if you have ads in your game, you must get them from us," and let that be the end of it.
That goes out the window when they make the changes retroactive.
I can't even understand how it can possibly be legal. How on earth is it even possible to say "your game which was released before we updated this license is subject to the updated version"? IANAL but that sure seems like something which would require both parties to agree to the updated terms for them to be binding.
It's very different from the situation where one party retroactively changes conditions.
> Unity may update these Unity Software Additional Terms at any time for any reason and without notice (the “Updated Terms”) and those Updated Terms will apply to the most recent current-year version of the Unity Software, provided that, if the Updated Terms adversely impact your rights, you may elect to continue to use any current-year versions of the Unity Software (e.g., 2018.x and 2018.y and any Long Term Supported (LTS) versions for that current-year release) according to the terms that applied just prior to the Updated Terms (the “Prior Terms”). The Updated Terms will then not apply to your use of those current-year versions unless and until you update to a subsequent year version of the Unity Software (e.g. from 2019.4 to 2020.1). If material modifications are made to these Terms, Unity will endeavor to notify you of the modification. If a modification is required to comply with applicable law, the modification will apply notwithstanding this section. Except as explicitly set forth in this paragraph, your use of any new version or release of the Unity Software will be subject to the Updated Terms applicable to that release or version. You understand that it is your responsibility to maintain complete records establishing your entitlement to Prior Terms.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220716084623/https://github.co...
However, the clause was still in the October 2022 terms, and was still there in March 2023 [2], and was actually removed in April this year...
It's likely just an oversight, but it does feel pretty dishonest in the face of removing the github repo, its the difference between "that clause has been gone for a year" and "that clause was removed less than 6 months ago"
[1] https://unity.com/legal/terms-of-service/software-legacy
[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20230303043022/https://unity.com...
I don’t know. I can see how it would be ridiculous if Amazon said “oh, by the way, starting next year you have to pay a cent every time you finish any of the books you bought on your kindle”
But if Netflix went “starting next year, there’s a surcharge of 1 cent per episode you watch” nobody would go “surely it can only count for episodes released from next year!
Which raises an interesting question to me: what if a developer wants out of the Unity contract? Does that mean they have to somehow break games consumers already purchased so as not to be liable to install fees?
We live in a dystopia lmao. Of course stuff like this is possible. Unity took one leap forward and pissed everyone off, they'll "fix" it by taking one or two steps back and then everyone will forget about it, just like we forget about everything else.
Exactly. So if they did this in an upfront way, they would have said that starting with Unity 2024 there is this new cost structure. Then game devs can make informed choices if they want to build those types of games on the platform.
This retroactive stuff is insane and I cannot figure out how a company can make that type of move if they care about their users. Although I think I sort of answered my own question...