[Drakim]

They used to have a clause that you could use the old terms of service from when you published your game. But it was removed in favor of even games developed under those terms of services needing to pay. That is very much a retroactive change.

[master-lincoln]

I still don't see how that is retroactive. The TOS changed, but I only accepted the TOS how they were when I paid my license. So the new TOS do not apply until my contract ends. That is the law (at least here in Europe)

[RHSeeger]

Because it's not software you can (reasonably) swap out later. Once you've developed your product, it's part of your deliverable. It's like a company changing terms on their engine once you've already built a car around it, and sold them to someone.

[angry_octet]

Unless your licence says otherwise, each sale is newly licencing the Unity runtime.

The plus side from this will hopefully be people reading contracts more closely before basing their income stream on it.

[RHSeeger]

> The plus side from this will hopefully be people reading contracts more closely before basing their income stream on it.

I thought the point of all this was that they changed the license. So you sign a license to use the product and spent time and money to develop your product... then they change the license so it's no longer profitable for you to sell it.

So I guess the only reasonable solution to prevent that type of thing is for the license to include wording that you have the right to continue to license it under the same conditions (and presumably price limited) perpetually.

[angry_octet]

You got it. But I'd go further -- what use is thousands of dollars in engine-specific assets for an unmaintained engine version? You should have the right to use new releases of the engine with the existing licence, and maintain feature parity and get security and bug fixes.

I'm sure someone at Unreal is working on asset conversation and API shims to allow porting Unity games, but it's a big change and costly for the developer.

[Drakim]

> So the new TOS do not apply until my contract ends. That is the law (at least here in Europe)

Correct, it's illegal. They are trying to do an illegal retroactive change. That's the point.

[spuz]

When does the contract end for someone who started selling their game in June 2023? If it is January 2024, then I don't see how a change to the contract starting on that date would be illegal. If it is June 2024, then I could see how it could be illegal.

[danaris]

"Murder? No, they can't do that! That's illegal!"

[master-lincoln]

Except that here they will not do something to you like a murderer. They might ask you to pay money. But if you refuse I believe they will at most sue you for the money and then lose if it was illegal.

[danaris]

Can you afford to pay the legal fees to prove that it's illegal, even as Unity continues to drag out the fight with procedural motions, appeals, etc?

Can you afford to bet on winning?

It really shouldn't be this way, and I hope that we will see a time when "that's illegal" means that a company like Unity wouldn't even consider doing it. But as things stand, something like this is often only illegal in practice when it's done by people without the resources to fight lengthy legal battles.

[breezeTrowel]

Yes, it's illegal. They are still doing it. Make sure they don't have your payment information when they start the first wave of billing in February.