That was because Unity was going to charge them for every install regardless of new purchase, reinstall, or different platforms. Unity has backed down from that now.
To clarify, Unity backed down for previous versions of Unity. Any game that makes over the revenue limit made with a version later than the update to the terms will still pay that or they now can optionally pay I think a portion of revenue instead.
Binaries at around 61MB, which has the full engine code. I don't know about feature parity, but the skeleton animation still needs some work, it throws a fuckload of errors when you fiddle with certain modifiers, like InverseKinematics (seriously, it'll throw a line of error pointing to that per frame. Won't crash or anything, but it's annoying as fuck and gets in the way of debugging). Still, for wholly 2D games, it's leagues better than Unity, once you understand how to do stuff
Regarding per-frame errors (it used to SUCK being on early beta, a lot of things did that), can't you just disable that specific error from getting logged and/or throwing a warning? I can't remember how, but I could swear I've done it before.
Honestly, that is perfectly fine as a business model, being able to choose between per install and revenue cut is actually very developer friendly, and changing licensing terms for future versions doesn't really fuck anyone over.
If only they hadn't shattered everyones trust with their previous announcement so now no one sane will want to use unity anymore.
Why does Unity deserve a cut of the profits from games made with their tools? Seems as ridiculous to me as a maker of power tools demanding a cut of profits from contractors using their products.
How else are they going to pay to improve the engine and add things. A revenue cut is the market standard. In fact, Unity comes in slightly lower than Unreal Engine with the newer terms.
You don't try to change things retroactively though. That's not how contracts work. What they tried to do original was both not a good deal and most likely not legal. They lost everyone's confidence. This isn't because they wanted money, but because how they went about it.
They'll pay by charging customers a reasonable licensing fee. Market standards are meaningless in an age of aggressive monetization and consolidation. Of course they'll try and get away with as much as they can and people have been shown to excuse a lot. However, I would pose that is entirely unreasonable that providing access to tools earns anyone a portion of future sales.
This very clearly goes beyond paying to improve the services and is simply about maximizing profit.
I partially agree, but I also disagree that it's all about profit. The point of revenue sharing is that if they make the engine well, then it becomes more likely for your game to be successful. That revenue share can be re-invested to continue improving it.
Would you say that the engine is not part of the game? In what way is it seperate from the thing you created? Employees ideally should get a share of revenue, as they helped create the product, and the engine is part of the product, so their employees should get a share for the work they helped create as well.
Retroactively and unilaterally applying a new license is not fine as a business model, which is exactly what they tried to pull at first. Completely ignoring everyone who said it was a terrible idea and going ahead with it anyway also shows the immense incompetence of CEO and whoever else was with him.
Yes, that is what I said? Their model now is fine because it's not retroactive, their original announced one was absolutely not and no one sane would want to use their engine anymore after that.