According to what Unity reps said elsewhere, they have no way of knowing what's a bought install, what's a demo, what's a charity bundle, what's a pirated install, and what is someone loading a webpage with a WebGL program integrated (every page view = 1 install).
Instead, they want to estimate how much people owe them. Using secret methods with no accountability.
"according to our extensive research, when we multiplied how much we like you by fuckall, you owe us 20000"
This is my kind of maths, add on p&p, handling, admin and VAT let's it call it a nice round milly. No, no questions at this time sorry.
Exactly. To me, this explanation sounds like they'll just magically estimate the numbers without really being able to prove it. And that sucks.
However, we can be sure that developers will have their own analytics, that are probably way more accurate and they know exactly how many people have played or installed their game. And I'm betting that this number will be a lot smaller than the Unity "estimation", and people will get even more angry.
It would mean every Unity game was not-so-secretly shipped with code that phones home to the Unity company upon install.
Either they've been egregiously spying on gamers for years (and by extension, game developers using Unity have just been fine with that), or they're lying through their teeth.
Red flags are always free. Upfront anyway. You pay for them at an unexpected time in unpleasant ways later. So feel free to have as many as Unity is providing. 😊
This needs to be adapted into a three part movie (think Creepshow) where a seemingly innocuous vendor selling flags rather than balloons is the "host" and the people who buy red ones get them free...but "You pay for them at an unexpected time in unpleasant ways later." And all the parts are just FULL of red flags the characters don't see but the audience does (as per usual in most horror films).
I love their response to (paraphrasing) "Are you going to do another Darth Vader and alter the deal on us in the future?" - "Oh yes, potentially every year."
Is it just me, or does "we have a proprietary data model that calculates..." sound an awful lot like "we have no actual method of tracking that"?
To me it sounds a lot like "We don't really want to answer that question, so here's a bit of technobabble to ease your mind."
I mean, writing your own linked list in C and then summing its values could be considered as having "a proprietary data model that calculates", but it has basically nothing to do with the question on how they track such things, just hints that they're not using an existing - and proven - tracking method.
To clarify; they took the question "How are you tracking installs" to mean "With your tracking data, how are you counting installs", and then basically answered "We add the numbers together"
This is a complete non-answer, and it seems to suggest that their actual tracking method is likely unreliable.
What do you bet they have an actually figured that part out yet and were just hoping no one would ask, and then that they'd magically be able to come up with something.
It sounds like bluffing.
In other words, it could very well be complete and utter bullshit.
Why couldn't someone set up a script to install, uninstall, and reinstall Unity games on a loop? That would fuck with their numbers hardcore.
Right but if it's something that's affecting every single creator then why would anyone continue to want to use Unity
The only reason people will continue using Unity is because they've already made )or are in the process of making) a game using it and switching to something else would waste massive amounts of time and effort. Unity is depending on this - this is basically them squeezing everything out of existing customers without regard for long term growth.
Remember, the whole idea here is that Unity is demanding payments for already existing games. They clearly don't care about whether people keep using Unity for new games in the future; the executives who made this decision will have cashed out and will be long gone by the time all the existing Unity games in the pipeline are done and things dry up.
They will try to sell based on future payments owed, or projected earnings. Then they will be sued by a big guy for breach of contract, having changed the terms without consent.
Then the money will disappear. Already, the engine will be abandoned. Unity is dead now.
Foss is available and with the programming community now incentivised to use it, it should do well. That might be their play. They knew the end was nigh.
If I'm reading this right, it isn't even the real numbers they're working with. It's their "proprietary data model."
If they could tell an install is pirated then they would lock it down
They either count all installs as legitimate or pirated copies are not picked up by their telemetry
All points made in that post are LMAO.
They estimate the installs. Or least thats what remains between they wont track installs and they have a proprietary data model to calculate them.
Enshittification takes its course.
rofl seriously? Not only will they charge for the installs, but they won’t even use the actual number of installs - they’ll guess? This is the most hilariously stupid business model I’ve ever heard of
All this makes a lot more sense with the lens of mobile gaming. Effort required is little, and margins are huge. If players don't partake in microtransactions, you just bombard them with ads.
This is the future of Unity. They are counting on devs not even bothering with the whole monetization model and instead expect them to turn on IronSource ads.
When crackers don't patch out the phone line, they can.
Edit: Only in some cases, though. They can detect popular ways to crack games, like Steam DRM stubs. If the game has zero identifiable information about the buyer and no or an unsupported DRM, they're SOL.
The thing is that most Unity games don't even have DRM in the first place. At most most will have the Steam DRM which is trivial to bypass. And Unity Games released on GOG will be especially at risk.
Idc about anything right now I'm hungry af and the only thing I was able to read was crackers fml
and how exactly is unity going to know whether it was gotten legitimately or not? the only way the developers wouldn't get charged is if crackers patched it out
But you're also correct that the developers don't get charged when crackers patch out the phone line.
They can't detect everything, but let's look at Steam as an example. If the game detects Steam DRM, then the game knows that they should've bought the game on Steam. They can check whether the Steam DRM is a stub and therefore a crack, or get your local Steam account ID and cross-check whether you bought the game with a Steam API.
That was my thought as well, since they count installs and not use count of bought copies directly from a platform.
What if people create cracks for legit purchased games, e.g. on Steam, which only removes the Unity tracking part?
A simple Firewall rule which "fixes it" for all games installed on a machine might work as well?
I believe it might be similar or the same procedure for every game using Unity. We might see this popping up at some point.
Oh it's our fault for being confused is it, ok.
What a jackass.
Oh and look at that they are 100% going to increase the price on you down the line.
Proprietary software A is bad. Long live proprietary software B!
(Or maybe check out Godot)
Unreal is open source, although it isn't free. I would certainly prefer it to unity though.
Its not open source, its source available because you can't distribute modifications to unreal.
Will probably be enforced via licensing. Maybe even self reported. Probably has a clause giving them permission to perform audits of your sales.
I doubt they will spend that much time. Just state you owe us x. If you appeal, you have to proove sales from your different channels.
There is no way they'll just make up a bunch of invoices for small developers. That would be too time consuming, plus they'd need to show reasonable effort in determining the invoice. It's best to just let the devs do all the work with the fear that an audit can cost them so much more money than they'd save if they lied.
They have telemetry. They probably know when a game is downloaded. They probably don't know if it's legitimate. They just auto bill based on telemetry and leave devs to dispute or suck the big one. Only effort needs to go into disputes. Big clients will obviously get quicker resolution.
No company would trust devs to be honest about downloads and it would be too expensive to verify.
They don't need to audit much, just need a steam, epic, and itch total downloads figures.
They'd have to do best effort against charging devs for pirated copies.
Telemetry is also easily blocked. As a business, I'd trust that a lot less. It's why many enterprise licenses are simply self reported. The punishment isn't worth lying enough to make a difference.
Most companies would trust devs as the devs are not big enough to survive a legal fight they'd certainly lose with prejudice, meaning they'd pay court costs as well.
Not really, they just go by if the game isn't selling well, or rather isn't selling well enough for them, obviously they have to be careful not to do it too aggressively otherwise otherwise they'll come off as being greedy or whiny about poor sales, which isn't a good look on any dev (especially if it's not actually related to piracy, then it hurts their argument).
They've just been careful enough to only whip out the crybaby arguments when it'll work in their favor and seem enough like piracy, as opposed to doing it too much or at the wrong time and seeming salty about low sales (to be fair that's exactly what's happening, but people think they know more about who buys vs who pirates, rather than who buys vs who doesn't).
They can obviously track pirated installs.
They use computational predictions and quantum mathematical calculations through a software called trust me bro.
