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What I don't get about this is how can Unity change their contract without renegotiating? Do developers and publishers publishing Unity games renegotiate released game contracts annually?
I would never sign a contract that allowed one part to unilaterally change the agreement so they could impose more fees without having to come to an agreement. And if you DID sign a yearly contract to continue publishing a game, that sounds like a recipe for Unity to hold a popular game hostage for renegotiation.
Unity works off of licenses, you agree to certain terms of service in order to use the engine for your game. In this situation, the provider usually reserves the right to revoke/void and change the licenses and agreements. This is legal, but it's a new contract, so it has to be agreed to by both parties.
So here they just send an email saying they have changed terms of service and that you can accept these new ToS or not use the product.
So they are renegotiating, its just that the alternative to their demands is not using their product (which many developers are rightfully stating they've chosen to do)
So here they just send an email saying they have changed terms of service and that you can accept these new ToS or not use the product.
So publishers are paying to develop games on Unity and publish them for sale. And Unity can unilaterally decide to change their ToS that impacts how much publishers have to pay for already-published game, and the only recourse publishers have is to pull games from stores?
Is this standard for game engines like Unreal? If so, that's absolutely unhinged. I'd never, ever sign a contract like that, specifically because of the bullshit Unity is pulling now. It's typical for these ToS changes to prevent new development or uses of the engine, but to affect sales of already-published media is...really out there.
Yeah, that's where I think there's room for developers to have some sort of legal footing.
If youre a dev and you just stop updating your game after the changes go into effect I think you might be able to make a legal argument that you are no longer using Unity to develop your game, you just don't accept the new contract and you keep everything the same under the old license. I don't know how well this would work though since I don't know how Unity has defined "use" of their engine in prior.
Amd this might be fine for a few devs, but if you are still developing or actively supporting your game things could be more difficult. You would have to make the same argument, start converting your game to another engine, and hope your game's sales from whatever version it is currently in can hold you over until then. You wouldn't be able to make any more changes to the game under Unity without accepting the new terms.