What a bunch of maroons. 99.9% chance someone else mirrored that git repo.
EDIT: And this is yet another reason everyone, everywhere, should immediately mirror any git repo for a project they are even remotely interested in.
github giveth, and github can (and does) taketh away. Say NO to centralized source management platforms – exactly the antithesis of what git was designed for in the first place!
Say NO to centralized source management platforms
True, maybe, but in this case entirely pointless. If Unity didn’t host their repo on git, they would’ve hosted it on their own solution. They would’ve been able to delete the repo just the same. Furthermore, if they hosted the solution on their own, it would’ve made it harder for others to mirror the repo. At least harder as git makes it.
Fair enough… archive.is and other solutions then to capture their pages before/after changes.
github giveth, and github can (and does)
To be fair, this is a feature not a bug. The original creator is the one who taketh away.
True, generally. Unless DMCA notices force github to taketh away for them… :) youtube-dl and others found out.
Say no to centralized platforms altogether. I don’t want to be that person, but things like these are exactly why open-source is (and should be) superior. It’s unfortunate that OSS has had so little traction in the end-user side of things
That’s changing, imo. For years, closed source software built by companies was just superior in I’d say 80% of cases (Image editing, DAWs, 3D graphics (remember, blender may be getting up their in age, but it only recently hit parity with other major softwares)
I feel like now I’m using more open source software than not, not out of a personal belief, but because it’s actually better now than some of the closed source alternatives (price is not an issue with me, I’m gonna pirate whatever I want to use anyway)
I feel like it’s hitting a wider audience, too, nowadays.
What’s the point of having an outdated copy of the ToS? Unity did this just so that it’s not so easy for everyone to see future changes.
Users are bound by the version of the terms they agree with when they start using the product. There may be a term that says ongoing usage when the terms change constitutes acceptance of a change.
Unity are trying to say they can make the change retroactively, but the 2022 (and prior) terms apparently included a clause saying that if future changes were detrimental to the user they could stay on old versions of the software and remain bound by the old terms. That’s one angle Devs could use to tell them to get fucked There may be others.Ooooh, I understand now! That’s fucked up, and that’s so dumb of them.
My question is how much support does Unity provide or need to provide to the old versions, or I guess any version. Will they still be usable a few years down the road?
Mirror a git repo? Do you understand how git works? You clone the repo, and it’s effectively mirrored already, especially for something that doesn’t change much.
If you want the commits updated, then put
git pullin a daily cronjob. Boom! Mirror.True, every git pull is a ‘mirror’. Bad phrasing on my part. I was thinking more of when I set up my local gogs instance to mirror an outside/upstream git (such as from github), which really is just their term for pulling again automatically every time upstream changes.
I mean you’re not wrong but also that’s already done for us by the Wayback Machine.
But yeah this is major ignorant corporate Streisand-effecting. Basically openly admitting they don’t care about the ethics of their company.
Enshittification… enshittification everywhere
Exactly, everyone seems to be jumping in the bandwagon these days. Makes me wonder if it was part of the plan from day one of the web 2.0.
The cheap money is gone. Now suddenly companies need to find profit to satisfy investors.
I hope shareholders like watching people jump ship.
This isn’t far from the truth. I run a small business and I can assure you, making a profit in the last 3-4 years has been rough.
part of the plan from day one of the web 2.0
Ah yes,
XMLHTTPRequest, the ultimate bait-and-switch.Yeah, gotta love people that have no clue taking phrases they don’t understand and applying them to non-technical conversation.
ooffff
Are they just hoping that literally no publisher will legally challenge these terms? You can’t just change the terms retroactively without consent and start charging people whatever you want. They’ll lose the instant someone takes them to court over it
Especially when there’s a lot of high profile clients who’s business literally relies on them. They will absolutely have a ton of lawsuits coming towards them. Good, fuck them for thinking they could, or should, ever do this.
I’m sure if this actually pushes through they’ll change the terms for those clients just to keep them happy (and paying what they do pay, which likely dwarfs all the smaller players). And they sure as shit won’t fight for the smaller creators when they get theirs.
Well, that certainly smells like a class action suit.
My question is what sort of “support” does Unity provide to these legacy engines. If the old versions are unsupported, does that mean they will be hard or impossible to use, or does it simply mean they don’t get feature updates?
The challenged Microsoft. Fucking MICROSOFT. They are completely and utterly fucked
Let’s not forget Nintendo too. Their layers haven’t ruined someone’s life in at least a week, so they are thirsty for blood.
Its true theres no modders that the Nintendo ninjas are stalking currently so that whole division is bored AF.
I thought they were busy going after people for decade-old ROM hacks.
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You can’t just change the terms retroactively without consent and start charging people whatever
They can, if you don’t like it you quit using their product that is the alternative they offer if you don’t like the new license. If you want to continue to using it you have to accept and pay. It is not illegal, they can change the conditions anytime, the initial conditions 100% said that already as most terms have.
Not saying it isn’t terrible tough to be clear.
EDIT: They
hated Jesusdownvoted the user because he told them the truth.You’re right that a lot of Terms of Service documents and similar agreement documents have language that reserves the right to modify those terms.
At the same time just because something is in the terms doesn’t mean it can stand the test of adjudication and terms as well as changes are often challenged in court with success.
Unity is in a particular tricky situation because the clause that governed modifications in their last ToS explicitly gives the user the option to pass on modifications that adversely affects them and stick with the old terms:
Unity may update these Unity Software Additional Terms at any time for any reason and without notice (the “Updated Terms”) and those Updated Terms will apply to the most recent current-year version of the Unity Software, provided that, if the Updated Terms adversely impact your rights, you may elect to continue to use any current-year versions of the Unity Software (e.g., 2018.x and 2018.y and any Long Term Supported (LTS) versions for that current-year release) according to the terms that applied just prior to the Updated Terms (the “Prior Terms”). The Updated Terms will then not apply to your use of those current-year versions unless and until you update to a subsequent year version of the Unity Software (e.g. from 2019.4 to 2020.1). If material modifications are made to these Terms, Unity will endeavor to notify you of the modification. If a modification is required to comply with applicable law, the modification will apply notwithstanding this section. Except as explicitly set forth in this paragraph, your use of any new version or release of the Unity Software will be subject to the Updated Terms applicable to that release or version. You understand that it is your responsibility to maintain complete records establishing your entitlement to Prior Terms.
I agree that it seems like a problematic part. That said… even if devs are allowed to stay using that version, for a lot of devs is not practical, so the end result is basically the same, they cannot afford to stay on the old version and would need to pay to continue using it.
Except for old games not being updated or similar that they don’t need updates to the tools/engine.
You are right in terms of in-development and future games. But unity is also trying to enforce these terms on already released games. This could potentially bring a challenge to their subscription model, which essentially states you must continue to pay as long as your game is available. I don’t know much about the law, but I do know that there are legal limitations on how rented/subscribed products work. These limitations are to prevent straight up scams from stealing from you and making it technically legal with some fine print. Which isn’t too far off from what unity is doing now.
This is comparable to you renting a drill from someone to make a table. You agree to the terms that you must continue to pay a subscription as long as the table exists. Then unity drill co. decides you must also pay a fee every time someone sits at the table. Even though the table is already made, and you already had an agreement to pay for the drill you had previously used. Your only alternative is to destroy the table.
Just because the terms said they could modify the deal doesn’t mean they can force anything on you as if you had already agreed to it.
I pose you this, I open a book store. I say my terms of service is say, all non racist books are allowed to sit on the shelves. I then later say, “I now own the copywrite and that physical copy of any book placed on my shelves. The new ones, the existing ones, and the future ones.” You’d be scrambling to get my books back before I pretend a contract you never agreed to is on effect and illegally steal them.
It’s a book store you wouldn’t own the copyright that makes no sense. Plus wtf is on with the non racist part at the beginning what has that to do with anything in the rest of the text.
And in any case yeah that would illegal because you don’t own the copyright neither those books. You own the book store and the shelves you could decide one day to charge them another fee if they want their book in your store and use your shelves, that would be an equivalent. And yeah any existing ones, and future ones would require the fee, of course, it is your fucking book store, maybe people won’t like it and look for s different store to put their books but that’s it.
A different thing is if you have a contract with the book store saying x year you will never have a fee. Or similar. Yeah that would be breach of contract and you could do something about it but this is not the case.
Their terms clearly indicate that they can be changed. If people didn’t try to or couldn’t get another terms/contract that specified otherwise is unfortunate but it is what it is.
Plus wtf is on with the non racist part at the beginning what has that to do with anything in the rest of the text.
It emulates the stuff they put into a TOS.
for s different store to put their books but that’s it
My original comment was trying to say the recource legally allowed is to be kicked out, however that isnt possable with how unity qants fees and by its nature intertwines with the copywrited work, witch is hard to impossable to un-publish.
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Maybe I misunderstood it but I never got the idea this was case , they will not charge for the previous years. Just that to continue to use it you need to pay, and that applied to already released games. It’s not exactly the same as you mention
In any case as other comments said the previous terms covered that case so yeah legally they cannot charge them for those already released games if they still use the old unity version, as the terms allowed for somebody that doesn’t like the new terms to stay on the older version and the older terms.
But as I pointed out in another comments that generally don’t works because sometimes the devs need to update the games for fixes on the engine to support new hardware or stuff like that or simply fix bugs on the engine itself.
I dont know if thats true. however, somtimes for whatever reason it goes out of your control and you cant revoke access to the game binarys (foss, public domain, pirated, etc…). Unity still wants someone to pay.
Isn’t this action (removal of the git repo) essentially an admission that:
- Unity is doing something shady;
- Unity knows it’s doing something shady;
- Unity knows when the public sees what they’re doing what they’re doing, it’ll be recognized as totally something shady?
Yes slim, it’s shady.
In this digital era, you’d have thought they would know that it would leave a trail. Of course, it’s a calculated risk.
But man, are they bad at math
A suspiciously wiped and cleaned trail is still a trail.
Removed by mod
Sure a lot of people have a copy of the old repo. But I think the point is that it won’t be that easy to track ToS changes.
Oh no, now someone will have to write a bot to scrape the ToS once a day or something, and push it to Github if it has changed.
With the current rate of enshitification, once a day may not be enough.
According to EU regulations I think they’re obligated to inform users of any changes, so removing the repo doesn’t really do much to hinder people in tracking changes.
Unity uses mercurial for version control so maybe this is news to them.
Interesting, I wasn’t aware of this tool.
I’m already switching to Godot.
Here’s link to it, https://godotengine.org/
Well it’s good to know I don’t have to start from scratch. I’ll take a look, thanks!
If you have any sticking points, let me know, or post in the most popular Godot community and myself and other experienced peers will be more than happy to help!
Awesome thanks! I have some experience with Unity so I expect I should be able to pick up the basics fairly quickly. I’m currently slogging my way through a 10 hour intro to v4 on Youtube.
Pretty excited to start out with a new and open engine. Is there any way to extract my paid-for assets from Unity and use them in Godot?
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Hmm, that isn’t something I have personally encountered. This tool looks promising even if it isn’t under development anymore, but it might be worth a shot.
The more I read about this mess, the more I believe this is the work of one or multiple CEOs who have absolutely no clue about the field they are in and started giving orders.
You know what kind of boss I mean. That kind who can’t handle a NO and throws a fit every time they are proven wrong. But you still do as they will, because they are disgusting human beings and you are already in talks with a new workplace.
What’s weird to me is that CEOs should know all about accounting and financials. He should have realized that this pricing model is unsustainable for most Unity developers, because many make less than what he’s asking for per install themselves.
It’s clear that professional CEOs don’t know anything about tech, but this isn’t a tech issue.
I bet he justified it saying something cliche like gotta break a few eggs to make an omelette.
Buzzword salad. Yum
MAKING THE MOTHER OF ALL OMELETTES HERE, JACK;
CAN’T FRET OVER EVERY EGG.
They absolutely do know. They’re well aware of the impact this will have on small devs. That was their goal. They want to price out those free or low cost games that use Unity and never make a profit to avoid paying royalty fees.
This wasn’t incompetence. It’s straight up malice.
They don’t want to price out small devs, they want to get them onto their ad platform. They’ve said games that use their ad platform will have the fee waived.
Of course, he may not realize that this dries up one of the largest sources of the Unity developers the clients he does care about uses.
Agree 100% same with reddit. Malice not incompetence
I’ve been suspecting this is one of those “do 200% horrible damages but increases revenue (or at least make the company seem more profitable)” then have a “management change” that comes in as the savoir but they only roll back 10% of the changes to show they’ve fixed things.
Beast Rabban --> Feyd-Rautha
Their CEO is the guy who was leading Electronic Arts when it was voted the worst company of the year, implemented first lootboxes and who was openly suggesting to charge people real money per reload.
crowning shit, should be his ign
The problem is, I don’t think the CEO would be in anyway getting the consequences of their actions. Of the company is sinking, they will just “be fired” and get those extra money (like huge amount of money). The company will close and announce bankruptcy. The “person” isn’t punished.
Gotta change the system and hold the responsible, accountable
Reddit, Xwitter, Unity…what next in the queue of “let me fuck myself” ?
Shout out to Postman who this week decided to depreciate their local (secure) credential storage scratchpad, to force people to use their API and store everything on their cloud platform
https://blog.postman.com/announcing-new-lightweight-postman-api-client/
Global enshitification continues
Postman got flagged as no longer safe to use on corporate hardware after this. Sounds like it’s time to go back to using curl for everything.
Wow, as someone who has been a happy Postman customer this fucking blows. Are there any good forks?
Try Insomnia. It is pretty neat.
I love insomnia. Switched from postman a while ago, haven’t looked back.
I didn’t try it, but: https://hoppscotch.io/
For the VS Code enjoyers, there’s the Thunder Client extension. It’s pretty good but I hate that you can’t commit your queries on the free tier anymore
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Nope, I didn’t. But they all being A-holes, show no sign of digging their own graves like Reddit, X, and Unity did.
Guess they are supervillains then, lol.
Eh, I’m sure it’s just a matter of time. As people have said above the infinite free money is drying up. That’s a fact that all these corporations have to contend with. The only difference between Twitter and Facebook or Unity and Google is that Twitter and Unity have made their dumb decisions already. Facebook, Google, and others have navigated this fairly well so far. But they are feeling the same pressures that Reddit and Unity did and eventually they will bend to them too.
That sounds like a company I want to completely rely on to develop a product, a company and my whole dev career.
Like the kid that took his ball and went home and then is surprised that nobody wants to play with him.
Now the clause is completely absent in any of the new ToS, which means that users are obligated to any changes Unity made to their services regardless of version numbers including pricing updates such as the recent fee that will charge developers per game install.
No, it doesn’t. Just because Unity decide to update the terms and conditions does not mean that users are obligated to accept new terms.
Getting rid of the previous versions just makes it harder for unity to enforce any terms on previously signed agreements.
It’s akin to a TV comedy when someone grabs a contract and eats it thinking it will void the contract. If they do try to sue anyone using older versions with that TOS, it should be fun to see how it plays out in court.
Unfortunately, unity has enough money to drag heels in court, and out spend many smaller companies that would try
I wonder if they would be able to team up with eachother against unity.
I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t know exactly where everyone involved resides. That being said, I imagine pooling resources might help with those costs, if possible. There’s certainly more than two gaming companies that are being screwed by this.
To be honest, I would contribute to a legitimate go fund me for them. Fuck unity.
So unity too hired a few managers who want to make a quick buck, get a good bonus and then leave unity before it’s the burning husk that will be left once this is all said and done.
Yup. I think the “person” should be held accountable for their actions. The company would die, but the CEO would still get so much money out of this situation.
What’s with these companies going full-evil all of a sudden.
The infinite money dried up. Now they are out of ideas on how to make a profit because they werent before.
Also investors pushing for higher profit margins. Unity is publicly traded company.
and poor parsec just got bought by unity, definitely gonna go down with the ship for profit
So the companies “aren’t making enough money”, which means they don’t have enough to pay us, which means we don’t have enough to spend on them.
Hmm.
They only “don’t have enough to pay us” insofar as they don’t have enough to pay us without sacrificing record high profits or CEO salaries.
Others did it and faced no consequences. No government step-in, no mass customer loss. When there are no consequences for greedy monopolistic behaviours, greedy monopolies act greedily. Welcome to market capitalism without proper regulation.
Interest rates
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To be fair it does seem like there’s some kind of coordinated effort going on.
Wait 'till Musk buys it and renames to Xunity
Ain’t that his kid’s name?
Xnity
Xnity
That’s a good way to end up getting Xued by Comcast Xfinity
Ask Coke about Sierra Mist…
clearly they have a “fi” while ours doesn’t, no grounds for copyright infringement.
start the lawyer money sinks!
Xity, the home of Xity business practices.
Corporations might have an iron grip over basically everything in our life, reducing our choices to a minimum, out of necessity, but the fact that they think we’re stupid too, is actually astounding
In many cases the have not been proven wrong.
Who is influencing all these tech companies to be this greedy lately?
High interest rates. They built up the entire industry on the concept that they would have access to cheap capital forever. Now they don’t, so they’re squeezing their userbases – who they’ve already been squeezing even with low interest rates – from absurdly greedy to Saturday morning cartoon villain.
That, and probably investment in commercial real estate, which of course tanked because of WFH, which is also why so many companies are forcing people back into the office.
Do you have any further reading on this? I’d love to learn more about how we got here
We got here through government inaction (or complicit, through lobbyists.)
The wealth class were buying more money from the future. We’re now living in that future and all our money is disappearing into the pockets of the wealthy. Somehow this is an essential process in order for people to get anything done.
I first got exposed to the problem from this Adam Conover interview with Dan Olson: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=4aU-QkJfgGw
This article is also a nice encapsulation of the problem, even though it focuses on financial technology only, it applies to other tech companies as well:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/fintech-faces-reckoning-only-matter-133006783.htmlIn an attempt to reboot the global economy, central banks slashed interest rates to almost zero, resulting in an era of cheap money.
This resulted in two things. First, it incentivized investors to fund promising (and, in many cases, not so promising) young tech companies. But it also allowed for the emergence of business models that, in any other circumstance, would be completely unviable.
So buy very long puts on Chime is my take away from that Yahoo article.
Edit: Nevermind… Chime is still private. They keep pushing back their IPO because fintech stocks keep declining…
You mean we can just do what we want and nobody will stop us?
