Not really. Actually disabling analytics in games is not all that straightforward; see this topic. The rest of the topic shows it's not necessarily that simple, either, and there are plenty of Unity games that don't use Plus or Pro.

If you search the docs for analytics, all you get is info about disabling editor analytics, which is a different thing. (Yes, the editor itself is spyware...check this out.) Especially if you're not a Unity Pro user it's forgivable if you're not fully aware of the situation with analytics.

I disagree. The devs are partially to blame, but not fully.

GOG is also, equally as much to blame, for allowing spyware to be infested into the games that GOG distributes.

GOG could easily implement & enforce a policy that dictates no spyware-like elements of any kind are allowed into GOG games, period.

All GOG games with Unity spyware should be delisted off of GOG, and/or the devs the compelled to remove the spyware if they want their games to stay listed on GOG.

Likewise for the other, non-Unity spyware that is infested into several other GOG games, like the Sony games that are on GOG and that will be coming to GOG.

GOG certainly does not have clean hands in this matter of spyware being present in many GOG games, because GOG turns a blind eye to it, and chooses to allow it to occur.

Have you seen this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQSDsjJAics

Yes, I'm more than familiar with the whole Unity situation. That video's somewhat old and outdated now.

Well, me too. This was the last thing I got about the whole situation. I hope they head to another direction now.

I recently watched a video interview featuring Al, the developer of Skald: Against the Black Priory You can skip to the segments discussing Unity, Why did you make the engine from scratch and Surprises but I would advise you to watch the whole thing. He uses Unity as a tool, but he has independently coded everything else, giving him 100% control and the flexibility to migrate to any other engine. Others are not in such a favorable position. They are bound to Unity, for better or worse, unless they invest time and money to salvage parts of code and assets and rewrite them for any other third-party engine.

As I said above: Actually that wasn't entirely accurate; it's both $1M and 1M "initial engagements" (what they're calling installs now). You can read about the current terms here. Basically they're trying to walk back the "applies retroactively" stuff, and they replaced the install fee with a bizarre "pay either by installs or gross revenue" fee, since they refuse to drop the installs idea entirely. Even though it's silly, as they admit in the FAQ:

Thank you guys for clearing this up :)

I think my previous wording was not as clear as it could have been. What I meant is that devs decided to use an engine to build upon, knew that such engine would include almost-mandatory telemetry, and decided that they did not care enough about that to either:
- use another engine
- provide a way to disable the tracking
- warn the user about the tracking

The devs are obviously not the only ones to blame here, but they are the ones who ultimately made that choice to allow the tracking of their players.

You're overestimating what devs know about what the engine does, especially since Unity doesn't go out of their way to make this sort of thing obvious. Some do know about the analytics, some don't. I suggest not assuming malice when simple ignorance is usually the cause. This is 99% Unity's responsibility...telemetry should be completely disabled by default, and they should make it clear that it exists and what it does. They do neither.

I have difficulties believing that something that is such a common knowledge amongst players could be ignored that easily by game developers. If it really is down to ignorance, this is not the kind of incompetence I am ready to turn a blind eye on.

That's accurate; Steam and Galaxy achievements are absolutely telemetry. Anyone who demands "no spyware" but also demands "Galaxy achievements mandatory" is being more than a little hypocritical.

Believe whatever you want; that doesn't change anything. I guess having a realistic understanding of what's going on is too much to ask.

Since you seem to know these game developers so well, please give me a list of those that unknowingly shipped a build of their game including Unity tracking to GOG. I will contact them to share that crucial information, so they can fix the situation promptly.

Somehow I doubt that. Also, here's this again since you don't seem to remember: Should we expect that you'll offer to personally help those Unity users not paying for Plus or Pro to migrate to a new engine, and pay for all expenses?