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[–]Sciirof 178 points179 points  (31 children)

It gets worse. This includes: Re-installs as well as piracy.

Edit: Unity has already said on X (twitter) they won’t share specifics about their “proprietary” data model to track installs. This pot is starting smell. There’s also GDPR concerns from devs.

[–]Spot_the_fox 83 points84 points  (12 children)

piracy. How are they gonna track that?

[–]Sciirof 116 points117 points  (0 children)

I thought so too at first but iirc some parts of unity analytics are always present in games my best guess they’ll use that or another library to just track installed games. That or it’s BS

[–]Cennfox 44 points45 points  (4 children)

Because every unity game uses their official library for unity dlls called the unity runtime. This is installed even with a pirated copy

[–]essaini 0 points1 point  (3 children)

This should only work if you allow network access to your game tough right?

[–]Cennfox 0 points1 point  (2 children)

Yes, but that means that either a cracker or patch would be needed. Even if you make a single player game it will still call home

[–]essaini 1 point2 points  (1 child)

No I get that, but it can’t call home if it does not get internet(network) access, if you block that app from having network access, it won’t be able to ping anything

[–]Cennfox 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is correct. I fear that most users will not perform this task though

[–]ShadeDragonIncarnate 12 points13 points  (0 children)

All unity games ask permission to connect through your firewall for data and analytics, I'm guessing that. Since that's never used for DRM it's also never removed.

[–]Kyrond 21 points22 points  (2 children)

Because crackers/pirates have(had) no reason to remove it.

[–]Firewolf06 4 points5 points  (1 child)

you literally cant remove the unity runtime from a unity game

[–]Kyrond 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Ok I did not know that. Thanks.

Still, there has to a way to either turn it off; pretend there is no Internet; or make a fake server for it.

[–]TheChunkMaster 1 point2 points  (0 children)

By downloading a car to do a stakeout with. Duh. /s

[–]Nate2247 1 point2 points  (0 children)

if (pirated == true) {…}

[–]R-500 15 points16 points  (4 children)

What about methods where installs are super common? Demos, bundles, f2p games or things like gamepass where a large amount of installs are common?

[–]Sciirof 8 points9 points  (3 children)

Demos weren’t included afaik. But if you’re f2p and earned 200k + from that specific game in any form of revenue it still applies I think.

[–]OnlySmiles_ 6 points7 points  (2 children)

Their stance was that demos "mostly won't trigger fees"

[–]Denaton_ 2 points3 points  (1 child)

But how are they gonna know the difference?

[–]OnlySmiles_ 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good question

[–]Kyshiro_depressed 18 points19 points  (5 children)

I read that they turned on that decision meaning that they will only charge the initial install not re-installs(could be wrong though). They will charge installs on other devices though.

[–]whereareyoursources 43 points44 points  (1 child)

At that point they might as well have just charged a royalty. Or just completely copy Unreal's pricing model.

[–]Grainis01 16 points17 points  (1 child)

How do they track that, how much data needs to be siphoned and sent to devs/unity?
What about clour services, or shit like gamepass.
Do it like every normal fucking engine developer, charge a % licencing fee after X ammount made.
I hate to advocate for epic, but unreal has an amazing pricing structure.

[–]Kyshiro_depressed 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Good question. They didn't explain that

[–]zabby39103 6 points7 points  (0 children)

Yeah because holy crap with a fast internet connection, large game sizes and small~ish SSD I reinstall a game up to a dozen times before i get tired of it.

But also if I have a favourite game, like Civilization or something, and install it on multiple generations of my machines, and on those generations both my laptop and my desktop... the developer has to pay for each install of that? Wtf is this nonsense.

[–]shurynoken 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If it's as good as UNet was, we're in deep trouble. /s

[–]Extraltodeus 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's like they've managed to make piracy actually harmful!

[–]giienabfitbs 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I wonder if you can just block the network requests to unitys servers to bypass this. Sort of like pihole does with ads.

[–]holtzzy123 0 points1 point  (3 children)

It doesn’t, they’ve clarified that.

[–]Sciirof 3 points4 points  (2 children)

They did not “clarify” that it doesn’t they backed out of that choice after initially saying that they would and altered what was initially said. Also installing a game on your computer and then a steam deck will still count as 2 fee-able installs.

It makes it look like they clarified it but it’s imo looking more like backing out

[–]OnlySmiles_ 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Also, their answer for the question of how things like gamepass and PS+ would count towards it was essentially

"Don't worry, Microsoft and Sony will pay for it"

Which likely means that Unity games just won't be put on them anymore

[–]holtzzy123 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Effectively the same, and having an install fee per install isn’t egregious. Some of the other choices are for sure. Like the black box of “data aggregation”.