1233
This is of course not including the yearly Unity subscription, where Unity Pro costs $2,040 per seat (although they may have Enterprise pricing)
Absolutely ridiculous. Many Unity devs are saying they're switching engines on social media.
this post was submitted on 12 Sep 2023
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๐ค So what's stopping people from simply making games under the free license and selling them anyway without paying Unity ridiculous taxes and fees?
Also now would be a great time to just use Godot and be done with it.
Licenses and copyright laws. When you make a game with Unity, you're using proprietary code from Unity which has a license stating that the free version can only be used under certain circumstances. You'd be braking this license agreement if you distribute a game outside those conditions
How could they enforce such a thing? Just incorporate in another country and put the money there. Accept payment for micro transactions in Bitcoin. It's not like they could take a foreign company to court; you just have to pick the right country that doesn't honor such things.
The thing about unity is that it's not just a software you use to program the game. When you distribute the game, you also distribute the engine. Since the engine is licensed to you under a special license, distributing it in a way that's not permitted is copyright infringement. You agree to the license when you use unity, it's like signing a contract. And if you breach this contract, Unity has all the rights to take legal action against you for profiting off their proprietary engine without paying them.
It also just doesn't make sense to even try that. If you're at the point where you'd have to share your profits with unity, your game will be making enough sales that it's probably big enough for unity to notice it. And if you manage to keep your copyright infringement hidden from them, then your game is probably so small that you wouldn't be paying anyways.
So yeah, it's simply illegal, and unity will take legal action if they're losing out on enough money
From my experience that is not true. Unity has a very dedicated team of lawyers who are constantly looking out for possible licence infringiments. And they would rather inquire twice than to ignore someone for being "too small to notice".
How I made this experience: In univeristy I worked on a research project regarding immersion in gaming. We used Unity for creating virtual environments to conduct our experiments. For that we acquired a couple of education licenses which were strictly bound to non-profit usage. In return we got them for free. Some months later we received mail from Unitiy lawyers who suspected that we broke the terms of our license. The matter was cleared up after a while. But still, I was astonished by the dedication and energy they invested. It makes sense though. Their business depends on it.
Interesting to know that they'll come after you either way, thanks!
Licensing and copyright infringement doesn't mean jack shit if you do business with an entity from a country that doesn't respect such things. Even lawsuits wouldn't do anything in that case. And even if Unity went to the press about it, you could just hold up a giant middle finger and people would still buy your game.
Enforcement is the only thing that truly matters.
Good luck selling your game if unity asks every distributor to remove your game for copyright infringement.
I'm not saying it's impossible, you can go ahead and try. But you asked what stops people and the answer is laws. If it was so easy to do what you're suggesting, then everyone would do it
I'm surprised someone hasn't launched a game platform in some other country to help developers skirt such laws, point in fact.
ahoy matey! looking to distribute yer game in the open sea?
Last time I checked out Godot it wasn't exactly what you called fully featured. So really it isn't an unequivalent replacement.
Unity was a massive pile of crap when it was first released as well. Hopefully Godot will improve over time like unity did.
Problem is back then no better alternative existed. Now it does
Godot is also open source.
Another problem is that Unity has a team of paid engineers and Godot doesn't. Or does it?
Then it's time for us to put our heads together and make it so. Godot's open source.
Sure but then we just get back around to the whole "why don't people just build their own engine" arguement.
If I am making a game then I don't want to spend time building out an engine first. I am very grateful to the people who do spend their time updating the engine but I don't actually have the time.
And then we just go back around to the "too bad, we don't have a choice" argument. We don't have a choice. The fact that it's hard or inconvenient to make one doesn't change the fact that we have to. Stop being lazy and focus on making or improving a free open-source engine so you can make games. Priorities first. You can't make a game without a suitable engine so you don't have a choice regardless of any other consideration or circumstance.
Life is not always easy or convenient. Often, it's the opposite. And you have to deal with that.
You seem to underestimate the immense amount of work a good quality engine requires. It's not about being lazy or having some neglectable inconveniences. For a lot of, especially smaller, developers this is a matter of financial survival.
Open source is cool, but requires dedicated regular contributors. The more work there is to do, the more important this and the number of contributors is. And there are not enough good engineers who like to dedicate their free time for such unpaid work. This just doesn't work very well with such a capitalistic economy system that we have now.
When was the last time you checked?
I don't know like 18 months ago and have just checked again and it still isn't