this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2023
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I don't see how any of this would hold up in court. I'm pretty sure you can't be liable for a new tos for what is essentially new software that you didn't use in your project. This company is clearly run by fucktards who are hoping to prey upon devs that just don't know better or can't fight back.
The Unity Runtime (Basicallt the core of the engine) is technically licensed as a subscription. So when the free license renews, this is included in the new ToS and it’ll be a lot harder to fight.
Obviously not a lawyer, but I'm not 100% certain that the billing terms would stand up to legal scrutiny. It's been kinda hard to keep up with this story so my apologies if any of this is wrong, but I believe that they said they were wanting to use an "aggregate proprietary model" to determine downloads. What that basically means (I think) is "we'll tell you how much you have to pay us but we can't independently justify any individual charge".
Again, I'm not a lawyer, and I don't know of anything off the top of my head that'd make that illegal, but it also doesn't really feel like it'd square with how things work. I mean if companies could just make up a number and say you owe them that much without being able to say why or whether or not that number comports in any way with reality, then what's stopping every company from doing that? What's stopping a magazine for example from coming back to you and saying "Yes, you paid us for the magazine. But our proprietary aggregate model that totally reflects reality promise tm suggests that you might have shown that magazine to two or three other people after you purchased it from us. So that means you have to pay us three instances of the review licence fee."?
I don't know. Obviously this is all scuzzy and morally wrong. It's just that even factoring in that this is a subscription service and that they are a corporation with an army of lawyers who'll likely win any challenge to it, I can't really shake the feeling that there's something fundamentally legally wrong about that aspect of it in particular that wouldn't hold up in court. Even for them.
You’re completely right, but Unity also has the money to get this to be stuck in court for ages. They’re counting on being able to win a war of attrition on it.
There’s just enough questionable tactics around it that it’s legally plausible they get away with it.
This fight will probably set some major precedent for how online services charge.
anytime your company policy is, "...win a legal war of attrition..." your company is shit.