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dear Unity

2023/09/15 11:49 PM (UTC -5) | tildearrow

neither you, nor game developers won't like this doomsday scenario...

background

in September 12, Unity Technologies has announced a change to its pricing model, in where additional fees for each new installation of the Unity Runtime (in other words, the installation of a Unity-powered game) will be charged to game developers given enough revenue and installations.
the decision is extremely controversial. everyone hates this change and have spoken out against it.

the doomsday scenario

now, how do you think this could go wrong?

Unity Game Installation Machine (UGIM). a system inspired by Kopimashin which installs a game hundreds of times per minute, on several virtual machines/containers with different identifiers (to trick Unity into thinking it's a different machine):

  1. spawn container
  2. install game once
  3. run it (this sends telemetry data and charges a game dev for the install)
  4. close and destroy container

let's say this process takes 10 seconds, and the machine has 64 cores.
how would this constitute a doomsday scenario?

  1. UGIM runs on all 64 cores, installing a game 384 times per minute, for a total of ~553k installations per day
  2. game devs are charged $110,592 (worst case) or $2764.8 (best case) PER DAY
  3. game devs notice the suspicious amount of installs and go bankrupt
  4. Unity Technologies make dirty money
  5. game devs sue Unity
  6. criminal investigation begins and governments join in
  7. Unity goes bankrupt
  8. the entire world goes crazy

science fiction, huh? nah... this could be a real scenario, given the amount of botnets that exist in this world...

how to be safe?

it depends on whether you are one of Unity Technologies' executives, or a game developer using Unity.

I am one of their executives

  1. step back.
  2. admit you're greedy.
  3. update your legal texts. be more ethical. provide a notice in advance when you plan updating your terms. stop tracking your users.
  5. don't ever think of making such a move again.

I use Unity

  1. stop using Unity.
  2. stop using Unity.
  3. stop using Unity.
  5. use a different engine (for example, Godot).

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