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I bet a hacker group will get a fresh copy of the new Unity runtime, and then disable the phone-home feature, then recommend every dev who makes games to use that runtime instead.

But that's just a bandaid. Unity is likely done.
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BreOl72: Runtime fee:
On September 12, 2023, Unity announced changes to its licensing model that will take effect January 2024.
Games using the engine will be subject to a "runtime fee", calculated per-installation and charged monthly, if they reach specific revenue and installation thresholds:

for Unity Personal and Plus [...], this will be $200,000 over 12 months and 200,000 installations, with the runtime fee set at 20 cents per-install.

For Pro and enterprise this will be $1,000,000 over 12 months and one million installs, with runtime fee beginning at 15 cents per-install and decreasing with scale, and discounted in territories designated as emerging markets.
Unity states that monetizing the runtime in this manner is required to "[allow] creators to keep the ongoing financial gains from player engagement."
++++++++++

That's a lot of necessary revenue, resp. installs.

Edit: attachment.
A bit more reasonable but still, it's per install past a certain threshold. Extremely prone to abuse the moment someone makes an automation script that triggers the install detection a hundred times a minute. A successful Unity game release? Unleash the bot farm and bankrupt any dev you want.
Post edited September 13, 2023 by idbeholdME
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sergeant_citrus: Still a bonkers idea.
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P-E-S: I'm just trying to get my head wrapped around the legality of it because as far as I understand it Unity wants to retroactively collect those fees for already released games as well as games coming out after Jan 1, 2024. That sounds extremely fishy to me. There should be no way they can just rewrite their licensing agreement after the fact. Hell, there are probably game devs knee-deep in development right now who would never agree to such shenanigans. Will they just be totally screwed?

I just hope they get a big swift kick in their collective nut sack for this bullshit. From what I've been reading elsewhere it sounds like quite a few indies will simply stop using Unity no matter whether they might backpedal this or not because they can't be trusted.
Agreed, it smacks of changing the agreement after the fact. Not a lawyer but it's certainly wrong in the spirit of things.
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sergeant_citrus: Agreed, it smacks of changing the agreement after the fact. Not a lawyer but it's certainly wrong in the spirit of things.
Just realized this is just a repeat of Wizards of the Coast, deciding to update the 'OGL' where they will own everything you create because the D&D brand is just so good...
So does anyone know which games on gog are unity?
Is there a list of it.
Found a pcgamingwiki list in the thread by searching but it only goes to somewhere games with the letter C how do i see more?
Post edited September 13, 2023 by Fonzer
I wonder how many will follow...
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Fonzer: So does anyone know which games on gog are unity?
Is there a list of it.
Sort by platform: Linux. Most of those.

It might be worth cross-referencing upcoming deals with engine info from pcgamingwiki in order to determine what might be last chance saloon. Not sure if alarmist, or rational response to impending catastrophe...
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Fonzer: So does anyone know which games on gog are unity? Is there a list of it.
Found a pcgamingwiki list in the thread by searching but it only goes to somewhere games with the letter C how do i see more?
I posted the link earlier:-
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_that_use_Unity

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sergeant_citrus: Apparently they will only charge for the first installation in a particular device. So if you reinstall a game on the same computer, no additional fee. If you install it on a Steam Deck or ROG Ally or whatever, extra fee.

Still a bonkers idea.
They still haven't explained how they plan on enforcing that for DRM-Free games. For them to know which devices have had first installs, they obviously want the game to upload your motherboard's unique HWID (exactly as Steam CEG protected games + Windows Activation does) then collect them as a database. But that's not going to work for GOG games installed offline / behind a "whitelisted" firewall (block by default, allow by exception). Unless they intend to make online connections a requirement that is...

At this stage, I think it's a good idea if someone at GOG speaks to someone at Unity directly and gets them to clarify a few things for exactly how +2024 Unity Engine releases on GOG are going to work on a technical level as out of that list timesink posted, every issue was addressed - except the fact DRM-Free games can be installed offline and "uncountable"...
Post edited September 13, 2023 by AB2012
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Fonzer: So does anyone know which games on gog are unity? Is there a list of it.
Found a pcgamingwiki list in the thread by searching but it only goes to somewhere games with the letter C how do i see more?
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AB2012: I posted the link earlier:-
https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/List_of_games_that_use_Unity
But it only goes to C and pressing more says this You do not have permission to run arbitrary Cargo queries, for the following reason:

The action you have requested is limited to users in one of the groups: Users, Administrators, Trusted, Editors.
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rtcvb32: I bet a hacker group will get a fresh copy of the new Unity runtime, and then disable the phone-home feature, then recommend every dev who makes games to use that runtime instead.

But that's just a bandaid. Unity is likely done.
Piracy is considerably more risky if you're a business that's profiting off in some way using the pirated tool than if you're an individual pirating something for your own entertainment.

I don't think any game studio would want to risk releasing a game made using any tools or assets that they know to be pirated.
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Fonzer: But it only goes to C and pressing more says this You do not have permission to run arbitrary Cargo queries, for the following reason:

The action you have requested is limited to users in one of the groups: Users, Administrators, Trusted, Editors.
I'll contact PCGW's moderators and get them to take a look.

Edit: This is actually by design. PCGW has had problems in the past of bots being so aggressive constantly "scraping" such huge lists every few minutes that it almost DDOS'd the site. The solution is to create an account and login then the full list is visible.
Post edited September 13, 2023 by AB2012
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sergeant_citrus: More details in case anyone is interested - https://www.axios.com/2023/09/13/unity-runtime-fee-policy-marc-whitten

Apparently they will only charge for the first installation in a particular device. So if you reinstall a game on the same computer, no additional fee. If you install it on a Steam Deck or ROG Ally or whatever, extra fee.

Still a bonkers idea.
That could lead to a fun ship of Theseus argument.
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dtgreene: I don't think any game studio would want to risk releasing a game made using any tools or assets that they know to be pirated.
Hahaha... yeah right...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XEKPUARYckc

But in the context to my reply to unity, it's not the game that's pirated... just the runtime.

Though it looks like they are just going to make up numbers and bill companies for money rather than having the runtime phone home, so who knows.
Post edited September 13, 2023 by rtcvb32
For sure it will be interesting how many Unity games will be pulled from the stores, if nothing changes.

And if GoG will do a Bye Bye Unity Sale within the winter sale...
The list of Unity games is gigantic. Are they all going down that route? It's a damn tragedy.