Unity has blocked SpatialOS - What's up and what it means for us
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This is so sad...
... can we reunite the austrian hungarian empire?
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@wolfiaut You definitely meant Danubian Federation, didn't you?
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It is looking less and less like this will have anything to do with Fractured. Looks more like in fighting and posturing with another developer. It should all be over soon.
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@mazikar said in Unity has blocked SpatialOS - What's up and what it means for us:
It is looking less and less like this will have anything to do with Fractured. Looks more like in fighting and posturing with another developer. It should all be over soon.
See something new? I agree with the posturing.. but I'm not seeing the other stuff you mentioned.
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Maybe this will be the first major migration of new and maybe even existing projects to different engines, be it the major ones or the new ones popping all over the place.
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I don't know if anyone has linked this already, I read it this morning. Nick Summers wrote an article posted on Engadget about this.. and fractured is one of the main examples: https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/10/unity-improbable-epic-games-spatial-os/
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Why is Fractured using Spacial-OS in the first place? Just make your own custom software.
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Just hope this gets resolved quickly and end up not being too painful for the development of this game.
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@pwnstar said in Unity has blocked SpatialOS - What's up and what it means for us:
Why is Fractured using Spacial-OS in the first place? Just make your own custom software.
Because SpatialOS gives you excellent integration of Unity for a Cloudplatform to scale your server needs.
To write such an system would way too much to do by your own, when you are a small studio.
The sense and vision of Improbable made service is, to give small studios the ability not to care about the server technic behind, but to concentrate on developing the game.
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Honestly, after researching this, this story is mind-blowing.
Its like Unity just wants to go out of business or something.
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@jahlon that would be worst case.
But lets see how it works out.
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@prometheus said in Unity has blocked SpatialOS - What's up and what it means for us:
It's absolutely crazy to think that Unity would block so many of its developer base from a small ToS change. I also heard people saying that they are doing it because they might be releasing their own version of what SpatialOS does?
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@rutsy said in Unity has blocked SpatialOS - What's up and what it means for us:
@prometheus said in Unity has blocked SpatialOS - What's up and what it means for us:
It's absolutely crazy to think that Unity would block so many of its developer base from a small ToS change. I also heard people saying that they are doing it because they might be releasing their own version of what SpatialOS does?
Most of the "think to know" are pure speculations.
But it is true, that their Cloudplatform is in Alpha right now:
https://unity.com/solutions/real-time-multiplayer/game-server-hosting
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@kralith So it appears that Unity, instead of fairly outcompeting their concurrence, they are basically just putting the same/similar solutions of competitors out of the fight right away. That is like holding a tournament, but then proclaiming the victor without actually holding it
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@kralith said in Unity has blocked SpatialOS - What's up and what it means for us:
But it is true, that their Cloudplatform is in Alpha right now:
https://unity.com/solutions/real-time-multiplayer/game-server-hostingThat's concerning.. Interesting how it took a few days for this to get dug up. The initial press pass missed this as well. This competing platform paints things in a whole different light.
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@Prometheus it’s interesting how as soon as unity does this ue4 announces 5mil in developer grants to support small studios. https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/unrealdevgrants
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@jahlon said in Unity has blocked SpatialOS - What's up and what it means for us:
Honestly, after researching this, this story is mind-blowing.
Its like Unity just wants to go out of business or something.
Is this a case of a so-far competent company starting suddenly making horrible business decision (like, say, after a hostile takeover), or just a video game-related company making blunt-headed - but not fatal - decisions (like, say, EA during the last two decades or so).
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I understand it as Unity was charging developers to use their system. Improbable came along and took unity and created a backend, then started to charge developers for it.
Unity isn't make the extra revenue from Improbable, so they changed their ToS (odd it was a year after they personally visited) to remove Improbably.
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@jetah well they could have been trying to work out a deal where they profited more or was giving them a chance to changes things
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@vortech said in Unity has blocked SpatialOS - What's up and what it means for us:
@mazikar said in Unity has blocked SpatialOS - What's up and what it means for us:
It is looking less and less like this will have anything to do with Fractured. Looks more like in fighting and posturing with another developer. It should all be over soon.
See something new? I agree with the posturing.. but I'm not seeing the other stuff you mentioned.
The whole retroactive thing sort of blows my mind, but he's right, newer articles are showing that Unity wanted something and didn't really want to shut these things down. In the end it should get worked out and things should be fine again.
Unity has said World's Adrift was okay and won't need to be taken down. I don't know who they talked to in order to get Unity to say this, maybe someone at Fractured can reach out and talk to them as well.
Another game using the two together (Lazarus by Split Milk) at first took their game down being worried, but brought it back up two hours later and said they're going to keep going until someone forces them to take it down. They found out that they were going to be able to keep the game up, as per their tweets, so there's another game that thought they were going to be affected that turned out to be just fine.
The latest tweet by Split Milk says this: "People and companies who we have no influence over have created events that led to us being told that we'd have to shut the Lazarus servers down.
It turns out this was not true."
So they are just fine now.
Epic/Unreal and Improbable also have committed $25 million to help developers get out of this mess, so if Fractured is stuck in this mess, hopefully they'll get a chunk of that cash to help them get out of it. And yet if these other companies are fine, I think that means Fractured will be fine as well.
There was some confusion with the wording of what Unity was saying and doing, and there are other things happening behind the scenes that we didn't really know about. Unity isn't entirely to blame. Someone else put it like this:
"Unity requires that anyone who qualifies as a “platform” (SpacialOS is exactly this) become liscenced by Unity as such, Improbable said “nah, that is ok: we are just fine without one, but thanks for asking” for 2 years.
So, if you run your own unity project on your own server, then you are not a platform (note that this is about back end server software for you game, not the physical hardware your server files are installed on).
But if you make a generic server program and then sell it to other development teams to run their games without having to go through the work of building their own server, then you are a “Platform.”
Which is exactly what SpacialOS was.
Unity told them mutiple times to get with the program (the same program that lots if other “platform” suppliers have signed up with) and Improbable wouldn’t do it.
So Unity revoked their rights to be a Unity Developer."
It's something that SpacialOS can work out with them. SpacialOS is claiming they didn't get the emails or notifications over the past two years, that their dog ate their homework and their little brother deleted their emails, but in the end they'll work it out. Unity wanted them to get with the program, not actually shut these games down.
I'm confident all will be worked out in the end, as other games have said they are fine and were simply led to believe they had to shut down when they really did not need to.
