I find myself wondering what #Unity stupidity means for game preservation.
Many games are likely to be pulled and the devs are likely to do everything possible to stop users from installing these games.
Are these games lost forever? Not able to be preserved?
#gaming #gamingonlinux #gamepreservation #videogames #videogamepreservation
@LouisIngenthron @gpowerf But how would they know that? Unless those games require you to be connected at the internet at all time so they can check with a server who has it installed... 🤔
@Rana @gpowerf They already said they're putting trackers into their runtime so they collect the numbers they'll use to bill us and that we should just "trust them" that the numbers are right.
They've also explicitly stated that multiple installs from a single sale will count twice.
So, given all that, it seems very unlikely that they'd have some kind of magic way for their tracking software to determine whether a game was legitimate or not.
@LouisIngenthron @Rana This is a scary proposition. What if you pull the game from the market but people continue to reinstall their current downloads? This literally puts your company at risk.
@gpowerf @Rana Or worse, trolls don't have to bother DDOSing any more, they can just DROS (Dedicated reinstallation of software) an indie game company into bankruptcy.
I won't be surprised when there's a malware tool for sale next week to spin up hundreds of VMs automatically to install games and rake up charges.
@gpowerf@qoto.org Huh, are the changes retroactive then?
@trinsec I am not 100% sure I have to admit. I think that previous installs don't count, but if your game exists right now then the charges start in 2024 even if the game was developed in the past. They said: "Effective 1st January, 2024, we will introduce a new Unity Runtime Fee that’s based on game installs. We will also add cloud-based asset storage, Unity DevOps tools, and AI at runtime at no extra cost to Unity subscription plans this November."
It's not a new runtime with a new fee, they made it sound like it was a new fee for the existing runtime.
@gpowerf It will encourage piracy
I think the people in the archiving community will do their best to preserve as much as possible, if there's one specific game you think must be preserved maybe hit up your favorite archiver and ask about the possibilities (though you maybe have to pay a small fee) 🤔