Extra life! Unity tries to undo disunity caused by Improbable cloud gaming toolkit ban

Game engine maker Unity Technologies has reversed its excommunication of cloud service provider Improbable with a revision of its Terms of Service that allows game developers to work with unapproved technology providers. Last week, Improbable, the UK-based maker of the SpatialOS Game Development Kit (GDK) for the Unity game …

[Starace]

Don't know why anyone was surprised

If you ever bother to read the license/terms of service for any of the decent game engines they're incredibly restrictive in all sorts of ways, and usually have some 'interesting' terms when you try to step outside a very narrow use case.

Add in the option some of them take to vary the terms from release to release and you're opening yourself up to all sorts of risks, assuming your concept is even compliant with their terms in the first place.

If they weren't so busy trying to squeeze the pennies and add restrictions they might all generate more money.

[BinkyTheMagicPaperclip]

I think you need to remember that Unity is *free* for revenue under $100K per year

There's no doubt Unity has dropped the ball a bit on this, but Improbable appear to have not been playing entirely fair either.

In the same way that Microsoft became annoyed when a third party plugin added features to the free version of Visual Studio, free product has to have a reason to push users towards a paid option.

[Steve McGuinness]

A reasonable discussion ending in a mutually beneficial agreement

The Dev in the article is right. They DEFINETELY are not Oracle.

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Dev in the article is right. They DEFINETELY are not Oracle"

I think it may a case of give it time. It looks like the new TOS basically says we won't compete against you but we reserve the right to break your shit.