6 hours ago, meganoth said:
Note that the most severe reactions come from developers with millions of free-to-play smartphone installs where the bussiness model is to give out the game to the whole world and let a small percentage of players pay. A fee per installation is poison for such a model and it is no surprise that those developers have immediately launched every available ICBM 😉.
Other developers are just not hit that hard that they would enter a state of panic.
We don't know that. The BIGGEST players using the Unity engine are ones with huge legal departments - Disney's law firm for example is actually an entire subsidiary company which may be larger than Unity's entire business.
Just because we haven't heard any public comments from Disney, Nintendo, etc. doesn't mean their lawyers haven't been sending strongly-worded (and strongly-backed) letters and inquiries to Unity.
6 hours ago, Tom Stephens said:
Maybe not "unreliable", maybe actually untrustworthy.
The install fees in some form are understandable, from a certain point of view. And maybe there were smarter ways to raise revenue. But surreptitiously back-editing away past promises in their TOS indicates they knew they were doing something of dubious character, because the back-editing itself is of such character. And I still have to learn more about their association with advertising and gambling (avarice and vice?).
The other thing I've seen attend such behavior in my 60 years is collapse. When companies (especially smaller ones, but not just) are close to failing, they do some odd things. Sometimes prosecutable things.
One thing that's on my mind is how this will affect modding the game. I notice some use Unity assets. I also notice mods can double the life of a game. What wins out here?
Exactly. Never fall into the trap of thinking that just because someone has a senior position at a large business that they're particularly intelligent much less that they would do the seemingly-"sensible" thing to do in a given situation. People of all stations and walks of life can do incredibly stupid and deranged things as much as anyone else can.
*waves arms in general direction of second richest man in the world, formerly richest man in the entire world*