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Unity backtracks slightly on plans to charge developers for game installs
(www.eurogamer.net)
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this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2023
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Still an enormous nope. Both for the developers and the users. How do you check if a game has already been installed once? What data are you gonna steal to check if it has been installed already?
They'd have to get steam to tell them each time a game was downloaded to a different device so they could invoice. And apple.. and google... and random websites..
Or they make the client phone home each time it's run, which is going to cause its own mess of issues (firewalls, that kind of thing.. some of the corporate firewalls we run our app behind would raise lots of alarm bells at something like that).
The announcement says they'll still charge per device, so I'd guess they either hash your hardware and send it over or leave some garbage data in your registry on uninstall.
Either way, not a solution to the problem at all. In that even with a single per-user fee this is still bad.
That still wouldn't prevent malicious driving up of the install count. You wouldn't even need to actually install it, you could just figure out how they communicate a new install and then either block it if you want to say "fuck unity" or send fake ones to say "fuck this dev using unity".
And how will it work for devs that think they can handle it but then change their minds and drop unity but some older versions of their installers are still out there?
All the debate about the hypothetical hostile uses of the scheme are... more valid than I'd like, given that it's clear they hadn't thought about any of them, but it's missing the forest for the trees.
The forest is that even if this worked as intended it'd be a dealbreaker. That's the forest.
But they also confirmed that every new/reinstall on the same device counts as a different install, aka another 20ct
I think that's the bit they just rolled back, according to the OP's link.
They would have to have a home grown solution since Valve is unlikely to help them and other platforms like gamepass exist.
I can’t wait to write a script to install Windows and install shitty publisher’s Unity game repeatedly in VMs, old hardware, etc.
Lol get this, I don't know if I heard right, but the install count was based on their own telemetry added to the game. SO if someone pirated your game, it could still count as an install.
Yep. Unity gets to decide how much you owe them. And there’s no way you can verify that they’re telling the truth.
It would be a shitty crack if it allowed a pirated game to still phone home during/after install.
It’s not phoning home to the developer, but Unity.
Unity is an application to spy on users and show them ads. Often there is some sort of game involved, but I think that is just coincidence.
Not every Unity game is a generic free mobile game
Kerbal Space Program, an awesome game that simulates the construction of space vehicles and the physics of an entire solar system hyper-realistically, was developed in Unity. I am waiting on their dev team's word on this.
I know KSP. I also know KSP 2 which has the same physics bugs and limitations KSP 1 had with Unity. I know there are many "proper" games made in Unity but if the Unity company can detect your customers installing the game it is a huge red privacy flag.