Unity is the engine behind some popular games like Pokemon Go, Kerbal Space Program and one called Cult of the Lamb.
Earlier, Bronwen noted how Massive Monster, the developers of Cult of the Lamb, announced they’d delete the game in response to a license change.
Later, in the Geek Native podcast, I mentioned how the Demiplane partner virtual tabletop TaleSpire announced they would not be immediately affected but were disgusted.
TaleSpire said;
To be clear, we are not immediately affected, and TaleSpire is not going anywhere. However, this is not why we, like many in the community, are angry. As others have perfectly elucidated, the fact that Unity would even attempt this makes them an actor that, as it stands, cannot be trusted.
I contacted SmiteWorks, the owners of Fantasy Grounds, perhaps the biggest virtual tabletop, to see if they had been affected. It turns out that the change had been discussed on the forums.
SmiteWorks summarised for me, noting that they were highly opposed to the change and had begun to look at alternatives. To be clear, moving Fantasy Grounds from Unity would have been terrible for the platform.
Good news: Unity has changed its mind and modified the corporate proposals. The change is significant to SmiteWorks, and Fantasy Grounds has little to worry about.
There might be slight implications if Fantasy Grounds adopts a future version of Unity that is acceptable to SmiteWorks. In particular, according to the software house, the self-reporting mechanism for installs is unlikely to be disruptive or cause business harm.
Ars Technica covered the changes in detail, noting no fees for the Personal tier for old or current projects and a 2.5% revenue cap.
The full response from Unity was published as a blog post, starting with an apology.
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