Improbable Urges Unity to Rectify “Farcical” Situation for Devs
Improbable is urging Unity to clarify its terms of service or to otherwise unsuspend the SpatialOS developer’s license, according to a blog post titled “A final statement on SpatialOS and Unity”.
Improbable maintains its Unity license and access are still suspended, following a public statement issued by Unity which states that legacy developers can still run their SpatialOS games.
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“Improbable still has all its Unity license and access suspended. We cannot easily fix bugs, improve the service or really support our customers without being in a legal grey area,” reads the blog post from Improbable.
“Anyone who has ever run a live game knows this is a farcical situation that puts games at risk. Unity has still not clarified this, granted an exception or had a conversation with us, but we hope this will change.”
In December, Unity amended its license agreement in a move that would mean managed service like SpatialOS would be in breach of terms of service, according to Improbable. The cloud gaming company states that Unity did not notify them beforehand.
“When we became aware of the changes, shortly after they were made, we were in intermittent commercial discussions with Unity,” continues Improbable’s lengthy post. “As the clause stood it was so sweeping we assumed we had misunderstood or it was in error, and asked for clarification.”
“We had no other contact from Unity until 9th January. A Unity account manager spoke with a customer using SpatialOS and explained that Improbable was no longer permitted to use Unity. The customer contacted us to express their concern.
“Shortly after this, we received a helpdesk notification that our licenses were unusable due to a breach of the terms of service, but without specific details. At this point, we reached out to our day-to-day contacts at Unity. They confirmed that Unity was asserting we were in breach and our license was unusable (i.e. our service must stop).”
The blog post follows a war of words between Improbable and Unity on Thursday over the cloud gaming company’s claims. On Thursday night, Epic Games and Improbable announced a joint fund of $25 million USD to assist developers affected by apparent changes to Unity’s terms of service.
“Currently the lack of clarity in the Terms of Service for Unity – and the ambiguity created by their subsequent statements – places us and developers in a difficult situation,” says Improbable. “We urgently need clarity in order to move forward. Everyone requires a long term, dependable answer from Unity on what is and is not allowed, in a documented legal form.”
Variety has reached out to Unity for comment.
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