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Comment by dwallin | Hacker News Reader

The devil is in the details (which was the problem with the original terms). The original plan seemed reasonable at face value but when you dived into the details it was really problematic. The revised terms are transformatively better, but might seem similar just looking at them shallowly. The key bits are

1) It is no longer retroactive. Existing games on the market using unity can continue distributing without their business getting immediately impacted.

2) It's no longer per install, it's now "new people engaging with your game each month" and the numbers are now all self-reported. Originally Unity was going to calculate installs on their end in an opaque way.

3) You can choose to just use a revenue share arrangement instead of per install. Since it's the lower of the two you can effectively ignore whichever one isn't favorable to your business.

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Isn't the elephant in the room the fact that they can still unilaterally change the terms at any time in the future?

Presumably not retroactively though? The pricing model seems to only be applicable starting 2024 LTS version. Which seems pretty reasonable? I mean you can't really expect them to never change TOS for future versions.

If i was starting a multi-year, potentially billion-dollar project right now, what has unity done to guarantee my project won't be axed because of their greed? Personally, i'd expect them to actually not change TOS for a given version ever, enabling me to at least have the safety net of never updating the engine, but they removed that guarantee from the TOS. This isn't a SaaS app used to sync your photos we're talking about, this is the underlying tech for massive swathes of some people's entire lives.

This is like saying "you can't really expect linux TOS to never change for future versions" (pretend that makes sense). Like yeah they might be subject to change, but as someone basing my entire work on it, i am making the bet that i will continue to be able to do that, and unity has just showed that not only they can change it, but that they will, without hesitation and possibly retroactively.

I can't and I won't in any way justify the retroactive part (even though they seemingly promised not to do that again, they already made the same promise a couple of years ago..).

But I'm not quite sure I understand your overall argument. Are you saying that if you release any type of software you're should never be allowed to change the TOS in subsequent version? e.g. Windows 11 should have exactly the same TOS as Windows 95?

No, he's saying he expects the Windows 95 TOS not to change, so you have the option of staying on 95 if you don't like the 11 TOS.

But they don't promise that.

They said that the fee will only apply to games made with the new version.

from their website:

> What are you changing in the terms?

> The last changes were made on April 3, 2023. We will make sure that you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity you are using as long as you keep using that version. We will post these changes on our GitHub repository and https://unity.com/legal.

They already were caught changing terms retroactively a few years ago and created that repo back then. They silently deleted it last(?) year...

So it seems they do promise that (whatever their promise is worth is another question..)

It's better to reply that to him, I was just clarifying his comment.

An they had language in their TOS to reflect that, but they removed it (before the current fiasco). They also removed the github repo they're talking about.

Then again they've shown their word is worthless and that they will break promises. No point in crying over spilled milk.

Then what’s to stop them from pulling a tactic out of Apple’s book and simply “soft-force“ upgrades in to the new versions (and new TOS)?

Upgrading to a new Unity version was a significant struggle for many projects at least a few years ago (especially if you skipped a couple of version). So that probably.

Yeah, I can't really see why anyone should trust them now. They've already shown themselves as being willing to screw over their users to satisfy their greed. They'll do it again.

This was actually the SECOND time they tried to do TOS shenanigans, which is why they had that dumb git repo of TOS that they tried to stealthily delete before running this change.

Surely they won't do it a third time, right? Especially after this "U-turn" sitll includes all the tech and legal for setting up a "fee for each installation"

After all, a very wise man once said *"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice... I can't be fooled again."

I believe it was "if you fool me... can't get fooled again"

As it happens, we were both wrong. The original speech is:

”There's an old saying in Tennessee - I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."

https://youtu.be/rQ6N-sb7SVQ?si=tneRi2tldeaNniPC

When that was the dumbest thing we could joke about... Simpler times...

It was one year after 9/11, at the height of US semi-fascist paranoia. I don't really remember those times as simpler.

I read it as a Bush/Trump comparison

You read it right.

I don't think the retroactivity was ever legal, but small developers wouldn't be able to defend their rights in court, and the fact that Unity stooped that low revealed who they were. Nobody can ever trust them again, especially with the possibility of future retroactive changes being explicitly open.

The good part of the news is that developers who are currently working on a game can still finish it without submitting to the news terms. That is incredibly important and will save many games. But it's not going to save Unity from itself.

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