Unity has blocked SpatialOS - What's up and what it means for us
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@lovechildbell
that's true but if you went to that meeting then why wait a year to change the ToS? Seems to me you'd change it just after the meeting.
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@jetah Yeah, it appears to me more like a blatant lie. They maybe told them on some meeting, but they came probably to some sort of an agreement something. Probably something like this:
Unity - "If you want to continue your services, you will have to buy additional licenses"
Improbable - "Why? It is not against EULA or ToS?"
Unity - "We will change it."
Improbable - "So? You will just cut many, many Unity users out there? Especially those small studios that would struggle to have their own server?"
Unity among themselves - 'So, how is our own cloud service? When it will be ready?' 'Maybe in a year, or two, or maybe even later'
Unity - "Ok, nevermind, we will not change it (for now)"
Improbable - "Oh, glad to hear that, you had me worried there (that you are the same greedy bastards as <currently input nearly any AAA company>)
Unity and Improbable shake hands and never speak about it again, not untill Unity suddenly changes their ToS a year/two later when their own cloud service is ready and the other companies providing similar solution as Improbable agreed to pay additional money and lets Improbable know about it in the most horrific and terrible way - outright terminates their licenses.
Please note that these are only one of many possible ways it could went by - as currently it is a word against a word and they will definitely not share any internal information with us - although Unity could as they claim Improbable breached the ToS and EULA after they were warned multiple times, so they should not longer be protected by the terms agreed in the contract... so what is the point in not revealing the information that would clear Unity's, therefore their own, name?
On the other hand Improbable claims there was no breach, not until the change in ToS, which would put the contract into more of a dispute state in which sharing internal information would be a huge breach of the contract...
So as I see it, the contract has been most probably held true and now it is more of a dispute of whether the change in ToS has been formarly and properly communicated with Improbable and whether they even breached anything (it may be even part of the contract that the T&C cannot be changed for x years).
Where are the lawyers when one would need some insight into the local laws applied to the contract, respectively what would be the reason behind Unity only "claiming" and not providing any proof.
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@jetah dono maybe all the legal mumbo jumbo takes time to work out and word properly or they weren't yet ready to make the change yet for what ever reason
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We know Unity and Improbable had a meeting more than a year ago. Why did it take so long for Unity to change the ToS?
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@mewmew said in Unity has blocked SpatialOS - What's up and what it means for us:
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.Just because they're able to keep their live game up, doesn't mean they're fine. Without a license, SpatialOS can't support their Unity platform, and without support, further development on the platform is risky. If any major bugs pop up, devs are screwed. If Improbable and Unity can't agree to a solution to at least keep support, these games are still going to have to switch engines or stop updating.
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.
According to Improbable: Unity warned them that SpatialOS might be in violation of the original ToS, and requested technical information to make a judgement. Improbable complied and received confirmation that they were not in violation. Some time later (in the middle of commercial discussions), Unity updated their ToS in a way that threatened SpatialOS. Improbable, confused, ask for clarification from Unity but were ignored and their license revoked.
I have some suspicions towards Improbable with the way they're trying to leverage the gaming industry against Unity to grant them "interoperability without commercial arrangement," but I'm inclined to believe Improbable that everything was fine up until the ToS change. If Improbable were acting in bad faith, then it should have been Unity's responsibility to warn their customers that their products were in danger which they failed to do.
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@target said in Unity has blocked SpatialOS - What's up and what it means for us:
Just because they're able to keep their live game up, doesn't mean they're fine. Without a license, SpatialOS can't support their Unity platform, and without support, further development on the platform is risky. If any major bugs pop up, devs are screwed. If Improbable and Unity can't agree to a solution to at least keep support, these games are still going to have to switch engines or stop updating.
Thats the whole point.
The question about who is guilty and who not we can not answer with the informations we have, because all around are just speculations about the public words of both sides.
All this does not matter, it just matters, that Developer get a clear answer, how they can work on with SpatialOS.There are just some possiblities how it can work out:
- Improbable and Unity get any partnership as result of their negotiations: All will be fine for future
- althought the Licence owner are warned, that it can happen again, means the trust is destroyed
- Improbable and Unity don't get together anymore:
- Developer have to decide, either to stay at SpatialOS and move their Engine or to change the Platform and stay at Unity.
All in all, whatever will happen, the Developer are indeed affected, much affected.
In this case Unity simply lied about this whole "No actual Developement is affected in any kind".
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we are source of our problems ))))
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If anyone can do a recap of the effective information we have and post it on reddit (i can post too but im not a native speacker and or either i haven't followed the case at 360° for now) it will help to keep the media pressure on both parts. Else we can bring it up on the next news from someone of the parts. I think is important to underline how much this case is damaging indipendent projects..
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I wouldn't be the least surprised if Epic Games was behind all this nice little theater to take over a piece of the cake. Pushing some cash into hands of few "right" people to cause this little drama, and make the takeover.
It would definitely sound like them.
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@00 said in Unity has blocked SpatialOS - What's up and what it means for us:
If anyone can do a recap of the effective information we have
We don't have much effective informations.
We just have tons of speculations.To summarize the case:
- Unity revoked licenses of Improbable/SpatialOS
- Improbable informed their customers in public about it and wrote an emotional statement
- Unity got a mass of WHY? from their customers (Unity Develeoper) and the please to give a statement to clear the TOS
- Unity made an Reactive (emotional) Statement in public, where they said things about Improbable and stated that actual Unity Developements are not affected and they can use still SpatialOS for their projects.
- User/Developer got splitted into Pro Improbable or Pro Unity with all the mess of speculations we have now
- Improbable reacted with another Statement when Unreal stepped into the ring
- Improbable made a final (emotional) Statement in Reaction of the Reaction of Unity, where clear statement is about that they will not be able to support and develope Unity integration in SpatialOS, so that Customers are infact affected.
- Unity just pleased their customers to be patient in their forum, because they work on more clear TOS
- While all these i am sure Improbable and Unity are in negotiation how and if it will run in future.
Here we are.
We know nothing.
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Unity probably thought they're coming from a position with more power but it will hurt them more then it will hurt Improbable in a long run.
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@tulukaruk That is probably true and Improbable is alredy in GGWP mode after the contract with Epic and the UE4. Butt he problem is our game not Improbable.. if we have to swich engine or if we dont have support from Unity>SpatialOS anymore we are in a big loss..
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@00 the thing is if it's safe to stay with Unity if they do stuff like that... or will they learn from this? If they do shit like this in 2-3 years then changing engine will be much harder at that point. I love Unity but... that's a really dick move they did. Even if they had real reasons to fight with Improbable.
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Hi all, the true problem is not Unity or Improbable it's the way EULA-TOS could change drastically with no-warning
If in a ToS a service is a free-access with no account change in the opposed way like an account needed and a fee access by month... If you have no possibilities to change cost-less fast you don't feel very well.
If some society use google drive, if tomorrow this service come at a 1000€/month what they do ? Pay or quit ? They probably go on pay to use until they find a solution and get all there docs on cloud.At less a change of EULA-TOS must be put effective some month after publicized.
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@gofrit said in Unity has blocked SpatialOS - What's up and what it means for us:
(...) EULA-TOS could change drastically with no-warning(...)
That's why I hate licensing. If you buy a product and the associated contract(s) are fine with you, there's little leeway to go back on it later on. Most unfortunately, I am not aware of any 'client'-engine that would be purchase without a license.
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To be honest, it looks like Improbable is on the wrong here from my perspective, if they really have been copying and stealing tech from Unity as they claim(and I wouldn't be surprised if this happened; unicorns are not known for respecting boundaries).
Probably in this case, Improbable will have to stop playing the victim card and settle this either in negotiations or in court. Let's see how this works out.
The reason why I suspect Improbable is that their first reaction, on having things go sideways, is to go to the press rather than negotiate in private. Leveraging public emotions and using general statements like "games that people love will cease development because of this sudden and unexpected change!!" are a clear appeal to the masses. It's a classic populist move. If both parties were mature, they would have settled this in private and if differences could not be reconciled, parted in good terms.
Another thing is that Improbable instantly put together a 25 million dollar deal immediately after this 'surprising' change? You can see the lies unravel here IMO. These deals don't magically appear in under the span of a week, they're negotiated over a very long time. And as anyone knows, Epic Games is owned by Tencent, who has a history of cornering marketshare in China.
Random speculation here, but anyone bet that Tencent is trying to expand to earn more for their shareholders and possibly advance their own private interests in gathering more tech? It is after all, only useful to the central party if it can provide something, else it becomes a threat to the establishment over in China (The Chinese Govt recently moved against Tencent via Video Game bans, so I imagine Tencent is in a rush to show why this would be a bad idea (as the Communist Party also wants to catch up on any and all tech)). Or they could just be trying to make more money, either way works.
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@basileus even if that's true what Unity did with changing TOS is a very bad move and it looks bad for the future as well. Some people not using SpatialOS and not connected to Improbable were affected.
If Unity only suspended Improbable and did not change TOS then I would be on their side. But this looks like messing with users just to get more money from Improbable.
Remember that SpatialOS started before Fractured started - so it's over a year ago. And they never hide what they're doing. Then suddenly Unity wakes up and says no?
The message from Unity is basically this: if you're doing something that we don't like we will change TOS to block you even if at first we agreed.
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Good feedback.
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If you've worked with Unity before, you know that they're a very developer friendly organization. Furthermore, the TOS changes are merely for show. The fact is that Improbable has been breaking the TOS from the get go, (putting their wrapper around a one time use Unity License, then selling that to multiple people). The TOS change was merely to clarify that they were indeed breaking the rules, and that it was time to negotiate. Improbable then plays victim, runs to the press, and has a backup 25 million dollar plan in place in under 3 days.
Improbable might think it's being smart, but this is a pretty transparent scheme from where I stand. Let us see how it plays out. Improbable wouldn't be the first unicorn to use dirty tricks to get ahead, and it won't be the last, but often these unicorns companies are just playing the coinflip game, much like cheaters in exams. Flip heads 7 times in a row, and you're a straight A student graduating with honors. Flip heads 6 times and tails once, you're exposed as a cheater and leave in disgrace with nothing.
Remember that at this point, Improbable has actually made no actual money yet (their balance line is still deep in the red and they haven't been profitable once), and like other unicorns, rely on fresh investors dumping money into them for the promise of one day being a major cash cow. For example, did you know that even Twitter, the giant unicorn of today's world, just turned a profit for the very first time in Q2 of 2018? And they've been around since 2006. That's 12 years to turn a profit (but of course, now it's a very valuable and trustworthy unicorn, and one of the good ones in terms of how they run their business).
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If you've worked with Unity before, you know that they're a very developer friendly organization. Furthermore, the TOS changes are merely for show. The fact is that Improbable has been breaking the TOS from the get go, (putting their wrapper around a one time use Unity License, then selling that to multiple people).
Improbable doesn't sell Unity to people. All Unity developers who use SpatialOS use their own copies of Unity. Improbable explained how it all works here.
