September 2023 PCG Article Links and Discussion

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Oh for sure, the way it is now resembles when the hen spots the fox—ie a flustered cluck.



Looks to be in the Indie 2D space mainly so far:

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAS_pUTFA7o
As a player, I will now be at least a little uncomfortable installing Unity games knowing that I'm causing a charge against the developer if it's on a new system. It's just ridiculous.
 
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Zloth

Community Contributor
As a player, I will now be at least a little uncomfortable installing Unity games knowing that I'm causing a charge against the developer if it's on a new system. It's just ridiculous.
Except it isn't just on a new system. It's any re-install. Maybe. Remember, this is only the 'personal' level of Unity. Bigger games likely aren't using that.

I think the retroactive aspect of this is going to be laughed out of court, IF the people doing the suing can manage to pay enough to bring it to court. There are quite a few indie developers, but they don't have lawyers and they are spread over several nations.

If courts uphold this sort of thing, it's going to be a VERY big deal for a lot more than gaming. Oracle and Microsoft can just decide that now every business using their database software has to pay a penny per query. Or maybe some image format could suddenly decide everybody has to pay royalties. <ahem>
 
Well, it should be a class action lawsuit, but you likely aren't going to find attorney's to take the case with deferred payment until it actually goes into effect and there are damages to collect.

Some of these indies should have plenty of money if they made enough off their games to trigger this new policy. As far as the contract goes, according to the 9th Circuit Court: "...a party can't unilaterally change the terms of a contract; it must obtain the other party's consent before doing so... This is because a revised contract is merely an offer and does not bind the parties until accepted."

Of course, they could have gotten consent by having a pop-up ask if you agree to the new terms. The vast majority of people would have just clicked "yes" and not even read it.
 

Just another day in the world of video games. . Be interesting to see if this was a developer or just an outraged observer.
apparently it was one of there own employees. https://www.eurogamer.net/unity-clo...hreat-following-controversial-pricing-changes

UPDATE 15/9/23: The "credible" death threat that prompted the closure of Unity offices yesterday was made by a Unity employee, police have now revealed.

A statement from San Francisco police, via Polygon, explained that the threat originated from an employee who had "made a threat towards his employer using social media".

The unnamed employee who made the threat did not work in the San Francisco office, and it's unclear what further action is being taken.
 
Has that been tested in court? I find it diff to believe a court would ignore testimony or affidavits from billions of users who would almost all state they didn't read what they clicked on—iow pop-ups aren't fit for purpose as a contractual tool.
I don't know if it's been tested or not. I find it hard to believe that they can make this retroactive, but they at least THINK they can, and they must have gotten that information from somewhere. I guess we'll see what happens, although I suspect they'll just go back to the old fee structure before it actually goes to court. Maybe they just thought no one would challenge it?
 
Has that been tested in court? I find it diff to believe a court would ignore testimony or affidavits from billions of users who would almost all state they didn't read what they clicked on—iow pop-ups aren't fit for purpose as a contractual tool.

A quick Google search gave me one case where the terms and conditions didn't apply because they weren't made obvious enough:


I didn't see a case where they were upheld, but from what I gathered it should be binding if you make it clear enough someone is about to enter into a binding legal agreement.
 

Brian Boru

King of Munster
Moderator
from what I gathered it should be binding if you make it clear enough someone is about to enter into a binding legal agreement.
Interesting. The various digital biz contracts we get into all require very deliberate acts, with no room for misunderstanding or doing by accident. We've used DocuSign for well over a decade, and haven't bothered to look for alternative ways—that requires a digital signature.
 

Was an interesting read to me because I wasn't much of a gamer back then. Don't think I'd heard of Valve or Half Life or anything of the sort. When I wanted to play a game, which was kind of rare, I just went to CompUSA or BestBuy and wandered up and down the aisle reading the back covers of the game boxes until I settled on something, and I was mostly only interested in first person cRPGs (like Might and Magic, Wizardry or Bard's Tale) and sports games. Although it was around this time that I discovered the first two Fallout games, recommended to me by someone at work, and fell in love with them.

I think my first Steam purchase was around 2008 or 2009, and I never played the game and forgot about Steam for a few years until one day I thought, "You know, I bought a game somewhere online...I wonder where that was?" and did a search for something like "digital PC game store" and found Steam again.

What a disaster that was. Now I have 1200 games.
 
I had to look on the steam discussion page for Pile Up to figure out why it wasn't showing me any icons. There is a store in game you can buy extra tiles from, using points you earn in game. It doesn't show you any icons if there is something in the store you can buy. Once you have everything you can afford, it then lets you keep playing...

It could say that somewhere... I kept thinking the game was busted.

I can't seem to beat or even catch my score I got in first game... I hate that. It always seems to happen.
 
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I'd say there's a 50/50 chance that the new changes will also be monumentally stupid. I mean, I'm sure it's the same people making the changes. The only difference is that this time I'll think it's funny. Make a mistake once? That's awful. Make the same mistake again? That's comedy.

From what I've gathered so far they aren't planning on scrapping the idea, which would be the only thing that would make people reconsider dropping Unity.
 

OsaX Nymloth

Community Contributor
Whatever Unity does, they already killed themselves. At the best, we will see a Long Death Animation unless their value tanks to the abyss and a random Chinese company may bought them for a fifty bucks. Lots of studios are already switching from Unity, unless they have no choice (too deep in the development for the current project).

Good thing I started learning Unreal a while ago and hell I may want to give Godot a try since I still feel more comfortable using C# than C++.
 

Brian Boru

King of Munster
Moderator
Make that 1201 games
You see the bit about not choosing "Play" first time?

Where's that UX/UI discussion…? :rolleyes:

50/50 chance that the new changes will also be monumentally stupid
I doubt it. There are plenty of equity types high up in Unity who know how to play the game. This may have been a 'run it up the flagpole' gambit, or a 'make 'em glad to accept what we really want' gambit.

they already killed themselves
Maybe, or just some short-term damage. Unity may be sliding away from gaming as a main concern, CEO is actively pursuing and involved with other industries like movies, AI, AR & VR, architecture, engineering, and construction.

There could well be a conversation going on re 'Do we stay in gaming?' if they've plateaued in that industry, while seeing major growth opportunities elsewhere.
 

I would LOVE to see the Oblivion remaster be released but this was dated back to 2020, who knows if it’s something they are even working on anymore.

I wonder if the Adoring Fan being in Starfield has anything to do with the fact that they were working on that and Oblivion remaster around the same time. I like to think some dev working on the remaster really loved the Adoring Fan and wanted to give him new life so he pestered Todd to include him in Starfield.
 

Brian Boru

King of Munster
Moderator
The future of PC is Arm, so you might as well start bracing for it
Disclaimer: Eye no gnawting—merely read gurus :)

By that time—late 20s?—there may not be much bracing required.

♣ In the article, a chip design guru is quoted:
"According to Keller, modern Arm and x86 core designs are actually very similar deep down"

♦ Windows currently works on both x64 and Arm

♥ There's a good chance that there'll be a software layer between app/program code and the hardware which will translate as required on the fly, or maybe do some quick temp 'compile' for your work/game session

♠ AI by then should be able to help with previous point

Speculation: does it have to be either/or? Maybe both chips will be in the machine.
 

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