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EpicRandy on 14 September 2023
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Machiavellian said:
EpicRandy said:

Yeah don't think it's possible either. But, The fact that some successful games devs will be charged per install as soon as January 1st is so f*-up, not only have they never agreed to such a clause but the only way for them to free themselves from such is to remove their successful IPs from distribution. This points out the possibility that Unity may retain some rights over the distribution of products as per the current user agreement, which could enable them to use these rights to force actual royalty from distributors.

If that's the case however it's even worse as it assesses that, by using Unity, you are not only a victim of the currently anticipated change but Unity has a hand over your own products that enable them to come up with ever so crazy short-term money grab policy.

At this point, even without considering this change's impacts, the sole context that enabled Unity to enact such half-assed money grad and the fact they are looking and willing to enact such tells me one thing Unity is dead this move simply killed it on the spot.

There's no way devs will continue to use this engine with their new projects only to become dependent on the whims of a failed CEO's shortsightedness.

This really pains me because I love geeking out with Unity and over the past few years it has become stable enough to be a favorite among indies. Since some indies of today will certainly grow to be AAA devs, the outlook for Unity to finally have a foothold in the AAA engine market share in the not-so-distant future never was as good as it was.

But now, in one blunder, this is all gone, even reversing course won't do it as there is no way the dev will have the confidence Unity won't try again with something slightly different.

The only path forward for unity is either A:

  • kick out the current Ceo's
  • Reverse courses 
  • Change policy in a way that does not enable them to do so ever again
  • Do all above in the next few days

or B:

  • Be acquired 
  • Let the new acquirer do A) and give back confidence in Unity to its users

Yeah, there is no way Sony or MS will continue to allow any game made with Unity stay on their service.  I agree with your options as you can tell, a move like this a nuke of the company and is set to gain max amount of money in the short term before the company goes under.  As you state the only way that this even gets any type of fix is for the CEO to be kicked out.  I am believing that he is looking for a payday.  The company gets sold and he gets a nice severance to walk away.  The question is who would purchase the company.  I have no clue who would want Unity at this point and deal with this mess.  

MS is the only one that's come to mind and even then, that's with a very low probability only sustained by :

  1. Past relation with Unity
  2. The fact Unity uses C# as the main programming language which has been developed and is promoted by Microsoft.
  3. It may bolster their Id@Xbox initiative with generous license terms, the like MS partner benefits from Visual Studio.

Other than that maybe Apple or Google would have an incentive but very doubt it because of point no 2 above.

I have a friend working with Unity (making games for casino slot machines), they only recently switched to Unity (4-5 years) mostly because of his push for it. I'll be sure to ask him about this and what it entails for them.