No love lost: AppLovin helpfully releases tool to switch from Unity to Godot or Unreal

Technology@lemmy.world – 682 points – 10 months ago

AppLovin’s attempts to acquire Unity last year turned sour when Unity opted for a merger with rivals ironSource instead . Now, in the ongoing shockwave of Unity's unpopular introductio...

You are viewing a single comment

View all comments Show the parent comment

They "don't" allow it, that's how licenses work.

I keep seeing comments like these on source available nonfree software, but it really doesn't factor in the fact that older software is NOT going to be used due to bugs, features missing, technical debt, secuity vulnerabilities, etc. So unless it is forked (i.e: OpenTofu), it is as good as useless for everyone but hobbyists.

It's allowed by a specific clause in their TOS which assigns a EULA version dependent on the engine version. The EULA itself is different for different versions.

The point is that devs choosing to stay on an old version would not be good for Epic, so they are unlikely to directly create the circumstances where that is the logical result.

Unity also had that clause

In fact, they tried to delete it after their announcement

Yup, they actually removed the entire GitHub repo that they made specifically to track those changes for transparency.

The clause is:

If we make changes to this Agreement, you are not required to accept the amended Agreement, and this Agreement will continue to govern your use of any Licensed Technology you already have access to. However, if we make changes to this Agreement, you will not be allowed to access certain Epic services or download the Licensed Technology unless you have accepted the amended Agreement.

My understanding is this is fundamentally different to the Unity clause you're pointing out.

Another thing is that Unreal is ~~open source~~ source accessible. If there's a bug in 5.0 that is resolved in 5.1 but you don't want to accept the amended terms for 5.1, it's possible to fix the bug and build the engine yourself. In the event of a significant change like the one with Unity, I imagine some dev group would just fork it and maintain it themselves.

They do, though. Not only do they offer multiple, flexible licenses, their basic license specifically guarantees that it is irrevocable. In fact, if that basic license isn't good enough, they are open to license negotiation.

I strongly recommend reading their basic license. It's already one of the most fair and reasonable "out of the box" licenses in the industry.

https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/eula/unreal