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u/mainegreenerep 9d ago
The heightened detail on the flip-off really adds that nice touch of emphasis
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u/TimeSpiralNemesis 9d ago
"You draw in chibi cartoon style because you aren't good enough to draw hands"
Shen comics "Hold my beer"
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u/Khelthuzaad 9d ago
Yeah the comic is reverse AI Art
Everything is high quality except hands
If the feet are drawn bad then it's an Liefield reference
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u/SkollFenrirson 9d ago
An Liefeld reference indeed
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u/Phact-Heckler 9d ago
Sorry for the ignorance but what’s Liefeld reference? Google just game me pictures of captain America.
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u/DinoSmoreTheBard 9d ago
I believe it's in reference to the comic book artist, who famously is...kinda bad at anatomy.
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u/xixbia 9d ago
It's a bit more than kind of bad.
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u/Willtology 9d ago
I'm familiar with the infamous Liefeld Captain America where his chest just sticks out 4 feet for no apparent reason (don't give me that standing at an angle BS!). But this? LMAO. This is soooo much insanity. I'm just wondering how Liefeld had a successful career, let alone started his own comic company.
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u/action_lawyer_comics 9d ago
There’s some talent there. He made Deadpool, who is now one of the more iconic superheroes. Also, the 90’s was just the right time for some 90’s tryhard-y edginess, and Liefield was able to tap into this. We have him to “thank” for every new comic book character in the 90’s to have a ton of pouches all over the place.
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u/FardoBaggins 9d ago
have a ton of pouches all over the place.
it was mandatory at that point.
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u/Jar_Bairn 9d ago
Right time, right place and he's fast so he meets deadlines. Comic books are plagued by ridiculous deadlines regularly, so faster artists get more books to make sure things release on time (and then the entire thing gets cancelled mid run because the distribution system is messed up). Also a couple people apparently said he's easy to work with.
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u/Willtology 9d ago
He might be a super nice guy and honestly, his work may not be well reflected by an article specifically about his worst, most egregious work.
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u/mixalhs006 9d ago
I'm not familiar with him (only seen a few panels of his comics) but considering he got this popular I bet he had some other qualities.
My favorite author, Ryukishi07, is known as the guy who doesn't know how to draw (especially when it comes to hands) but his strength is in stuff like character designs, facial expressions, and storytelling. Stuff that only got better as time went on (the example above is from 2002, here's an example of what he did in 2007 and here in 2019)
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u/action_lawyer_comics 9d ago
Ah, the bittersweet nostalgia for the days when the GOP floating the idea of Arnold as president was considered an extreme idea
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u/mithrilmercenary 9d ago
Rob Liefeld is a comic artist who was notorious for drawing some atrocious edgy comics. This is mainly because he had some major problems with proportions and anatomy which led to broken spines, swollen male torsos and ridiculously tiny feet on everyone.
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9d ago
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u/Mickeymcirishman 9d ago
And shoulderpads! Can't forget about the comically oversized shoulder pads.
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u/ActualWhiterabbit 9d ago
I'd rather be called out for not being able to draw feet well than the implications of drawing them well.
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u/Khelthuzaad 9d ago
You fear the software developers that want to pay you to draw feet don't you?
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u/ActualWhiterabbit 9d ago
At a certain quality, it's obvious this skill was developed outside of financial incentives and only to briefly sate a different hunger.
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u/ThrowawayBlast 9d ago
When I become a billionaire I'm going to commission a character but each part will be drawn by an artist really into that part. I will unleash this abomination upon the world as an act of evil, for I am a billionaire and by definition, insane.
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u/Khelthuzaad 9d ago
It doesn't change the fact people will pay high money for drawn porn instead of normal paintings
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u/Theemuts 9d ago
Well, eh, maybe he started drawing this when WotC wanted to change their conditions and when he finished that hand it was no longer relevant!!
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u/ADeezHDeez 9d ago
Time to draw comic: 1hr
Time to draw middle finger: 46hrs
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u/TimeSpiralNemesis 9d ago
INB4 Unity also starts sending Pinkerton hit squads after creators.
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u/Locke2300 9d ago
“Boss, we sent some guys after Red Hook, and they haven’t checked in. I did, however, notice a shambling mound of flesh moving into your basement. Are those related?”
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u/Fylak 9d ago
"One day, you will learn the tragic extent of my failings"
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u/Shade_Strike_62 9d ago
Hey well even the big companies are not immune to consequences...as you could say, prodigious size does not dissuade the sharpened blade :D
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u/Lucius_Arcturus 9d ago
The bigger they are, the harder they fall
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u/Backupusername 9d ago
Monstrous size has no intrinsic merit... unless inordinate exsanguination be considered a virtue.
FTFY
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u/Locke2300 9d ago
“Haha! Well, overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer! Not that mound of flesh though, he’s quick!”
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u/Silly-Role699 9d ago
Effing hell this game will never let go of me, it’s got a rent-free spot on my brain somewhere, I read that in his voice without even thinking… time for another run methinks.
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u/Backupusername 9d ago
They didn't answer the letter. Now, unlike us, they are not part of this place.
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u/Zamtrios7256 9d ago
They do that to everyone but gamefreak because they don't want to step on daddy Nintendo's toes
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u/Dry-Cartographer-312 9d ago
That's cause Nintendo already has their ninjas. They know what'll happen if they cross them.
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u/Regniwekim2099 9d ago
And also it's basically guaranteed they have a custom licensing agreement in place anyways.
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9d ago
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u/necrolich66 9d ago
Huh, that's interesting. Securitas is used a lot in Belgium, interesting to know that they own the Pinkertons.
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9d ago
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u/necrolich66 9d ago
I'm not saying they are great at their job, I wouldn't know. They are the most known though.
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u/alphazero924 9d ago
Just in case you're not aware, WotC sent the actual literal Pinkertons to some dude's house because he bought some pre-release cards from a game store and showed them on YouTube.
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u/ButtSoup_Carlton 9d ago
I don't understand why they let these goons inside their house in the first place. They're not police and have no right to enter your home.
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u/newsflashjackass 9d ago
Likewise, "Corrections Corporations of America" is now "Core Civic".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoreCivic
Must've worn out the PR on their slave labor.
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u/newsflashjackass 9d ago
Some days it feels like Unity's developers heard the Queen Latifah song, assumed it was written by one of their users, and took dolorous umbrage.
"Not a bitch or a hoe? Well, we'll just see about that..."
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u/zeekim 9d ago
Now add a few more panels with elon sitting in the wings seeing this wanting to join in with Twitter
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u/Author_A_McGrath 9d ago
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u/DoctorWaluigiTime 9d ago
Not a chance in hell that'll actually happen. Unless he wants the site to crater more than it already has.
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u/Strange-Nerve970 9d ago
Hes fucking stupid enough that he probably thinks it will work and people will pay, nobody fucking pays for photoshop unless you need it for work so I don’t know how he thinks this is gonna go
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u/OtherwiseBad3283 9d ago
Winrar had entered the chat.
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u/Strange-Nerve970 9d ago
THATS THE BASTARD, sorry i couldnt recall its name for the LIFE of me, i googled most pirated software and photoshop came up #1 so 🤷🏻♂️
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u/Hollowbody57 9d ago
I mean, people don't really pirate WinRAR. You can download it from the developer's site and then just never pay for it and it'll keep working like normal, with the occasional pop-up asking you to buy it.
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u/Rongeong 9d ago
They only even have the popup because of businesses. They don't care if at-home users use winrar without paying, they make money selling to companies. Having it be free for home users means more people know about it and increased its overall usage.
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u/Dominator0211 9d ago
“B-b-but my fake metrics say I have more views than the world’s population. How could you live without paying for my tweets.”
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u/Strange-Nerve970 9d ago
I think he’s genuinely such a narcissist he truly believes people use twitter bc of him
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u/Dominator0211 9d ago
Of course. Don’t forget that according to Elon he’s only lost money on Twitter because of those pesky
JewsADL.4
u/Strange-Nerve970 9d ago
The only reason he hasnt gone full right wing National Alliance of Zerosum Inclusion is because even he knows that would be a death sentence
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u/DoctorWaluigiTime 9d ago
He thought disabling anonymous read access was a good idea for about an hour or two, before that was quickly reverted.
When he sees a similar reaction cutting off all free access, if it even gets that far (it won't), the same thing will happen.
I 100% agree though. Twitter is not mandatory to the point of requiring payment from folks, and the leap from "free" to "not free", even if it's like a dollar a year, is a massive thing to conquer.
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u/Author_A_McGrath 9d ago
He seems to have a history of acting like he actually wants Twitter to fail.
That's not because he does, granted, but at this point he's proven to be an idiot with a severe case of misplaced hubris, among a number of mental issues.
And I'm absolutely willing to call him that, because he ruined a platform that I and many others once were able to use for all sort of things.
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u/FiveCones 9d ago
He definitely thinks he's the reason Tesla and SpaceX have succeeded, despite it now being apparent, it's in spite of him
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u/FiveCones 9d ago
Hilarious, he's just trying to wring whatever money he can out of it while it collapses around him by fleecing the idiots who will pay for it like they paid for the blue checks
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u/Compart_My_Heart 9d ago
Can someone fill me in on what Wizards of the Coast or Unity did now, please? All I’ve been filled on is the Pinkertons.
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u/BorderlineUsefull 9d ago edited 9d ago
Basically as I understand Wizards said that anyone using DnD 5e to make their own homebrew content could be monetized by Wizards directly.
Edit: it wasn't just 5e that Wizards wanted to monetize. They wanted to monetize every part of the OGL or the actual base of the game meaning anyone making something related to DnD could potentially be taken by them.
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u/Compart_My_Heart 9d ago
I remember that now. That was a bunch a baloney. Homebrew content makes so little per person. To gouge them is cruel not to mention means less people giving affordable playing materials for some.
I already have strong feelings on some of the prices they have on DND Beyond. And the membership fees to access homebrew content others made or even sharing my book with my players.
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u/levian_durai 9d ago edited 9d ago
There was a set point where creators were exempt, something like 2 million dollars I think? Realistically it was specifically targeting Critical Role. Pretty pathetic too, considering how much they must have made for Wizards with how many people they introduced to DnD and who went on to buy their overpriced books.
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u/ffs_5555 9d ago
While this was bullshit, it wasn't even half of the reason people were mad. The BIGGIE was trying to retroactively declare that only "static text" (books, pdfs) counted under the licence.
Their real goal was not to shakedown Critical Role etc (though that was part of it.) But try to push VTTs other than their new official one out of the market - so they could charge for in-game content like videogame micro-transactions.
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u/levian_durai 9d ago
Oh right I forgot about that part, changing the existing open license. That would shut down so many existing things that were based on it. Pretty sure Wizards would have had a ton of lawsuits against them if it went through, but yea. Dick move and completely out of touch.
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u/soapbutt 9d ago
The micro transaction model (and subscription model while we are at it) is massively profitable and is being tried in EVERY kind of product.
It was just video games for a bit and the common phrase was “well if you don’t like it don’t buy it, let people who like stuff spend their money how they want”. Well they did and it made absurd money for barely any effort and now that shit it being pushed to everything and making everything stupid expensive.
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u/Valuable_Gold1221 9d ago
yep, while i did play dnd forever ago i got into again basically just because of critical role (same applies to everyone of my group). dnd definitely got a huge surge from them.
and it is kinda weird, didn't they even collaborate on the crit role campaign books? they are all in the same style as the official ones, i would guess wotc already takes a cut from that then?
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u/LivelyZebra 9d ago
But what if we had MORE money guys?
- WotC
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u/i_tyrant 9d ago
Definitely not just Critical Role - it was targeting anyone else who makes real money off the OGL as well, including Pathfinder, Matt Colville, Kobold Press, and other bigger third-party producers.
The issue wasn't just them saying "for future editions you owe us a cut", they were retroactively changing the OGL currently used by many third party companies to publish preexisting content. (Including content using the OGLs of previous editions like Pathfinder.)
CR was actually in a more gray area as to whether it would apply to them than the third-party publishers themselves.
They also didn't specify the earnings minimum at first, leading many people to think it would apply to smaller for-profit homebrewers too.
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u/ALiteralGraveyard 9d ago
Yeah I assumed it was targeted at big streamers/podcasters and maaaybe your Paizo’s or other DnD inspired game companies.
If anything they should be sending gift baskets to Matt Mercer on the daily
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u/TheBirminghamBear 9d ago
What they don't get is the only reason D&D is where it is is because of it's community and how easy it has been to use the basic rule set to turn it into all these projects.
Without that, D&D never escapes the terminal velocity of its niche industry. These dumb fucking dicks just see dollar signs with zero comprehension of how or why their own products work.
The open license is the beating heart of why D&D works, why it has the scope and reach it does.
All these halfwit MBAs are marching out of their grad programs and looking to enshittify anythign they can get their grubby little hands on.
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u/TradeMasterYellow 9d ago
They don't care about your little campaign with zero viewers. They're after the $2million/episode show.
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u/joshualuigi220 9d ago
Which is so bizarre because if The Adventure Zone, Critical Role, or Dimension 20 wanted to, they could fairly easily switch to Pathfinder or some other Fantasy RPG. It's not like there's a shortage to choose from. That would achieve the opposite of what they're trying to do since more people would get exposed to their competitor. It was a really really stupid move that reeked of execs going "how can we make even more money off of our fans?"
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u/yukichigai 9d ago
The license update WotC was pushing was also going to update the Open Game License that Pathfinder used to create their system in the first place. The same fees would've applied in theory.
Of course that was even more legally dubious than what Unity is trying to pull here, but WotC was going after every source of income they could identify. Truly scummy.
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u/Stewart_Games 9d ago
Hell their first big Vox Machina campaign had started in Pathfinder and they had to migrate the Gunslinger class over to D&D ruleset so that one character could work in the new rules. They did extra work just to make their first broadcast under D&D rules.
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u/UnseenPangolin 9d ago
TBF, the name recognition for PF just wasn't there at the time and even now pales in comparison to the nearly monolithic D&D. So, for marketing purposes for the stream, it made sense to move the game over to the more recognizable franchise.
Much as I dislike WOTC's corporate meddling, Critical Role's switch to D&D was more to the benefit of the cast initially.
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u/Retrohanska59 9d ago edited 9d ago
This is really the exact problem with DnD as IP; so little of what makes it fun can actually be copyrighted. You can't copyright basic game mechanics or generic fantasy/mythological creatures and what little can be copyrighted isn't unique and special enough to entice people to pay extra. Anyone can create a game with rulebook, dice rolling and and detailed fantasy world and it will be basically 80% DnD without WotC having any say in the matter. And boy must it annoy the hell out of them.
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u/buckX 9d ago edited 9d ago
It's hard to really feel sympathy, since that's not generally how games work anyway, and the big money earners are all out of copyright. I think they just look at the video games industry which happens to be especially burdened by copyright. It's not like the NBA has any control over you playing your own basketball game and selling tickets.
Additionally, while things like stats for a Mindflayer are likely copyrightable IP (the fluff and images certainly would be), game mechanics are much more in the realm of patents since they're describing a process to achieve the non-protectable concept of "modeling reality with stats and randomness". A patent on 3.5 (Pathfinder's basis) would already have expired.
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u/AimoLohkare 9d ago
That whole thing was organized to get a piece of Critical Role. They don't care about bunch of friends doing a campaign for fun.
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u/MeusRex 9d ago
It would also have shut down any VTT not controlled by them. I would bet good money on WOTC having plans to monitize their upcoming 3d VTT to all hells. They'll nickel and dime you for every last spell effect and custom piece of content.
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u/Mister_Macabre_ 9d ago edited 9d ago
To add on, this was an attempt to not only monetize all the content that used DnD as a basis, but if I remember correctly it was worded in such a way to imply anything from fanart to homebrew content would essentially be WotC property and could be used in future official content without permission. This was obviously to bank on stuff like Critical Role, but also to throw a punch at Paizo (who's original Pathfinder 1e was basically a DnD homebrew).
My favourite point in the whole debacle was when Paizo revealed that they expected something like that could happen from the beggining, so they carefully (but not very obviousily) constructed Pathfinder 2e to not contain any content (wording, intelectual property, original creature design) that could make them liable to WotC and then offered their own version of OGL to the masses. That was some Yu-Gi-Oh corporate move.
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u/tghast 9d ago
And then Paizo spearheaded ORC, an OGL spiritual successor for all of the companies and communities that got fucked over. Now that WotC is backpedaling, it’s too late. Paizo handled them masterfully.
They basically just got handed a bigger chunk of the market share for free because WotC was too greedy to just sit there and get paid.
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u/Notoryctemorph 9d ago
Well, to be fair, the ORC isn't owned by Paizo, something they went out of their way to make sure of, it's independently owned so that if Paizo ends up trying to pull the same shit WotC is pulling, they won't actually be able to do so
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u/StonedSolarian 9d ago
Not 5e. All of the OGL ( open game license ) which has been used for decades now in multiple editions of multiple systems.
The biggest hit would be against paizo, their main competitor.
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u/siegeszug 9d ago
A tabletop roleplaying game like Dungeons and Dragons is a difficult thing to monetize because you can't copyright game mechanics like rolling a 20 sided dice or generic enough concepts like a barbarian or wizard. So early on in D&D's history, monetization came from spewing out their own published adventures. However, people want to make their own worlds and adventures, and because these take time and skill to craft and often were better adventures than what old D&D could make, people wanted to purchase them and use them. Which angered the old company who ran D&D, resulting in lawsuits to try to stop people from publishing their own homebrews. This almost killed D&D back in the day.
So when Wizards of the Coast acquired D&D because the old company was doing so terrible with it they had to sell it off, Wizards of the Coast came up with the concept of an Open Game License (OGL) to allow normal people the ability to publish their own content without risk of lawsuits so long as the content was OGL compliant itself. This allowed D&D to thrive and become a powerhouse in the tabletop roleplaying sphere of nerddom.
However, Hasbro acquired Wizards of the Coast and mandated that their properties make obscene amounts of money. In order to accomplish this for D&D, Wizards of the Coast attempted to update the OGL to include royalties/fees and the ability for Wizards of the Coast to have access to the material for their own use (if they wanted to republish your adventure or use characters you created, they could just take them for their own material). This caused a massive uproar and rightfully caused fear in the people who create their own material or work with the OGL to make money.
Wizards of the Coast eventually backed down from changes to the OGL, but that trust the OGL originally created has been broken, and the alot of people are skeptical of the future of D&D as the need to monetize it beyond what you can do for a tabletop roleplaying game is still there.
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u/Compart_My_Heart 9d ago
I never knew why the original D&D sold their company the Wizards of the Coast. I’ve been playing for a few years but I didn’t know they tried to sue home brew content who tried to publish. Or that Wizards of the Coast is owned by Hasbro now… I understand the skepticism. I have my own doubts they won’t try to fill the gap somehow else.
Thank you for the detailed history! I appreciate it!
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u/Wrong-Elk-2833 9d ago
This is a very good summary, my only addition would be that there was also talk of a broken trust with WotC under Hasbro’s new corporate auspices, so the eventual response (after an initial “we are listening” post that was very poorly received) included a stipulation that did a good deal to restore the trust of creators.
The OGL was not only reverted, a new optional license agreement was drafted under the licensing terms of Creative Commons. Basically, the Hasbro/WotC decision and their broadcasting of said decision ensured the community understood that they were handing away the keys to even having the option for future owners of the dnd property from making this kind of change.
Based on such a severe about face on the policy (with the people who bothered to follow the tense exchange for a month being very happy at the end of it, but the company taking a real thrashing in the public eye) I’m guessing this was a struggle fought tooth and nail behind the scenes, and the sustained response from the community was enough for someone at Wizards to win an internal argument against a Hasbro monetization plan.
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u/Einkar_E 9d ago
and after that they sent pinkertons to little mtg streamer that by accident got unreleased set of cards
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u/Markaslin 9d ago
First two panels reference the Ogl kerfuffle in January, where WOTC tried to repeal it and claim ownership of anything using the license.
Recently Unity has announced a pricing change that would charge developers 20 cents per game installation retroactively, dumping a huge fee in the hands of all developers and making a freemium game model unfeasible.
Both cases had the respective communities go into a frenzy.
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u/AliceInNegaland 9d ago
To clarify, it was my understanding it was every time a game was installed, even if you already purchased and downloaded it before. So if you removed it from your library and chose to redownload it later the developer got charged again. Right?
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u/yukichigai 9d ago
That was the initial announcement, but then they later "clarified" with a pinky-swear promise that it would only apply to first time installs. Of course they also said they'd be basing fees on first-time installs they detected using their methods that they would not be sharing.
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u/No_Implement2793 9d ago
Its great too. They went from "We can't track if its a first install or pirated Install, so we just count them all" to "We'll only track first install per device, a thing we can totally track don't woooooryyy, also if it's pirated we'll work with you(After charging you for the pirated install)"
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u/Markaslin 9d ago
They claim that only first installs on a given system matters, but no one I heard speak about it, thinks that Unity will have a way of tracking that, that isnt Hella invasive.
But granting that, installing the same game on different hardware would count as a new install.
This also opens harassment avenues. For example, Unity would have no way of telling a virtual machine from a real one, meaning bad actors could chain installs on virtual machines to take money from devs.
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u/No_Implement2793 9d ago
They themselves said they couldn't track it in the first FAQ. They said they can only kinda estimate rough numbers, and thats why they can't track first installs. Then later said they could track it, and would only count first installs. In both cases they wouldn't explain how.
It's a total shitshow.
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u/Compart_My_Heart 9d ago
Thanks! I appreciate the time you spent in your answer. Also I vaguely remember the WOTC doing that. I think they backpedaled in the end, right?
And I know little of Unity but that sounds about right.
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u/Markaslin 9d ago
WOTC ended up back pedalling, yes. We'll see about Unity.
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u/Wild_Bottle6207 9d ago
Even if they did, I can tell you as a software dev that I would never use them again after this stunt. They may backpedal it now, but what if my next project is a few years long, as most gaming projects are, and Unity decide to pull this shit again 3 years from now, smack in the middle of my dev cycle?
Nope, Unity dug their own grave in amazing fashion.
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u/ethanicus 9d ago
Game development is a process that takes years to complete, and the last thing a dev needs is an unstable wildcard in their software lineup, especially one as critical as a game engine.
Basically, it's not about the money. It's not about shitty policies. It's about being unpredictable.
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u/Wild_Bottle6207 9d ago
Yeah, if someone came halfway into my project and said "we are changing everything from the ground up", that person and everyone involved would have their gonads punted through their skull at escape velocity.
Fuck. That.
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u/InfernalBrush66 9d ago
Last I saw, it only charged per install after hitting a minimum of revenue and total installs. Still scummy but it won't charge developers of free or really small games.
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u/sotonohito 9d ago
Irrelevant, Unity still really fucked up and it may well be the end of Unity's day as the top game engine.
The single biggest problem is that they tried to claim they could apply that charge RETROACTIVELY meaning that all people with extant games built using Unity would suddenly be hit with extra charges. You think Bethesda or whoever wants to pay an unpredictable amount to Unity basically just because Unity decided they wanted some more money?
Even if they'd just said that going forward any new games released with Unity would have to pay that extra per install fee it'd still be an unexpected, out of nowhere, extra fee that game devs would have to pay if they had a game in development under Unity.
Unity was used so widely because it worked, it was stable, and it had a simple, easily understood, fee structure that people took into account when budgeting for game development.
Now?
Now Unity has declared that nothing is certain, that they won't just change things for future games but might retroactively decree that you own them money from the original purchases of a game you'd developed and released years ago.
Even if Unity completely backs down and says they were kidding and of course they'd never do that, the damage is done.
Anyone developing game is going to be giving second thoughts to using Unity because it's now unknown. You know what today's fee structure will be, but what will it be tomorrow when Unity recalculates things and sends you a bill for stuff tht happened years ago?
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u/neo_ceo 9d ago
What wotc did was that, whatever fan project that was related to DND could be monetized and claimed by them, without the need of the creators approval.
If I remember correctly, but I am sure that the monetized part is completely correct
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u/MadaraAlucard12 9d ago
Also they were trying to copyright classic fantasy tropes and races.
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u/grendus 9d ago
WotC were the first to fuck up this way.
Beginning with the 3rd edition of Dungeons and Dragons, the game has been released under what's called the Open Gaming License. It's essentially an open source license that makes the rules of the game free and open source (though the books themselves and the setting are owned by WotC). This has enabled third party companies who want to release new content (adventures, homebrew classes, etc) to reference the rules officially, and is honestly what made D&D the most popular TTRPG after AD&D went bankrupt and other publishers nearly stole the crown. The OGL made it more profitable for third parties to produce D&D content instead of their own stuff.
With the upcoming release of the sixth edition (or 5.5e... WotC are being cagey with the marketing), WotC wanted to release a new version of the OGL that favored them greatly. Essentially you would have to report your earnings to them, you owed them a cut of the profits after a certain point, they could unilaterally revoke your right to sell your book (something they've wanted since someone published the Book of Erotic Fantasy back in the 3.5e era), and a few other tidbits. That would be bad enough on its own, but they also tried to revoke the OGL 1.0.
See, back in the day the OGL explicitly said that publishers were entitled to release under any valid version of the OGL, not just the latest. The idea was that if they ever needed to go back and make changes, or if they wanted to have different versions with different structures, you could always release under the set of licenses that worked best for you. WotC tried to cheat this by saying that the OGL 1.0 was no longer valid. Old content could stay under the 1.0 rules, but anything new had to be released under 1.1.
Needless to say, there was pandemonium. A ton of their partners broke with them, many of the D&D based content creators began to switch systems or even create their own. There were mass unsubscriptions from their subscription service. A ton of tables either switched immediately or made plans to switch to a new system. It was pretty bad (and I think indirectly hurt other projects - the D&D movie did poorly in theaters right around this time for example).
WotC eventually walked it back and released the core rules for 5e under Creative Commons as sort of a Mea Culpa, but nobody really trusts them anymore. Paizo created an alternative license called the Open RPG Collective (ORC) that third parties are looking at using now, that is essentially the OGL but "no seriously, we aren't going to try to steal your shit", which they're looking at handing off to a third party because even they don't trust future-them with this anymore.
And then a few months later, WotC sent the Pinkertons after a streamer who got an early box of MtG cards due to a distributor error.
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u/Vulpes_Corsac 9d ago
Don't forget, WOTC had already messed this up before too: While 3e was released under the OGL, 4e's license was significantly more restrictive, which contributed to the rising popularity of Paizo's Pathfinder. So they already knew this would go poorly, they just drastically underestimated how poorly. As it is, even with their relatively quick course correction, they already spawned several other competitors and gave Paizo a considerable boost for PF2e. And, they might still mess it up again if the new "OneDnD" isn't placed under creative commons as well.
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u/un_blob 9d ago
Wizards I do not know
Unity otherwise... they decided that starting soon, people and compagnies that sell games shall now pay them a fee at each sales...
They where free (with a priori version and some licencing) but this is nuts !
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u/Fylgja 9d ago
Not each sale. They want to charge for every install.
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u/Author_A_McGrath 9d ago
Insane business trends seem to be more and more common lately.
I'm just glad nobody's putting up with it.
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u/Rikiaz 9d ago
Worse yet, it’s not “every install” like the game reports back every time someone installs it, it’s based on an how many installs an algorithm determines should happen. And no one knows what data the algorithm uses or how it uses that data.
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u/TheNeonG1144 9d ago
It wasn’t each sale, it is each download
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u/LordofSandvich 9d ago
Not unique downloads, either - every. single. download.
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u/j0akime 9d ago
Even worse than that.
Every single install. Download once, install on 3 machines, your user now has 3X the cost in Unity's eyes.
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u/Rendition1370 9d ago edited 9d ago
Unity has free (Personal) and subscription based (Plus, Pro, Enterprise, Industry) licenses. They have introduced a retroactive runtime fee based on game installs which apply after certain thresholds of revenue and lifetime game installs are reached. (It takes effect next year)
Before the introduction, using Unity one could use free license for their games provided their revenue or funding was less than $100k. If they hit it, they had to upgrade their license to Plus (costs $400/yr). Similarly for $200k revenue they had to upgrade their license to Pro(costs $2040/yr).
Now with the introduction of Runtime fee installs, they've scrapped the need to upgrade license for free users, which is a plus but the runtime fee is the big problem.
They've also removed Plus subscription for new subscribers, existing subscribers will need to upgrade to the Pro subscription mid-October, they'll receive an email to upgrade to it, at one time for current Unity Plus price. The cheap option is gone which was a good option for devs particularly to remove the splash screen, now they'll need to pay them $2040/yr in future.
Only games that meet the following thresholds qualify for the Unity Runtime Fee:
- Unity Personal and Unity Plus: Those that have made $200,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 200,000 lifetime game installs.
- Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise: Those that have made $1,000,000 USD or more in the last 12 months AND have at least 1,000,000 lifetime game installs.
For Unity Personal and Unity Plus users if your game hits $200k lifetime installs and makes $200k revenue in the past 12 months, any game install after that, the devs need to pay them $0.20 per install.
Now the situation is a bit different for Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise license. Games that hit 1million lifetime installs and $1m revenue in the past 12 months, the rates as shown in the picture apply. Different between ranges (1-100k, 100k-500k, 500k-1m, 1m+)
Basically, they want to force devs to buy Unity Pro subscription at least so they aren't hit by $0.20 per install.
Installs would be tracked by their proprietary system.What's worse was initially they wanted to charge it for each install so one could maliciously keep reinstalling the game to charge the devs, apparently piracy was counted, demos, bundles, charities, giveaways and games on Xbox Gamepass, other consoles too.
They've backtracked from multiple installs on a device, new installs for separate devices still count, for the piracy issue they just want devs to work with them saying as if to just trust them.Demos don't count and neither do games from bundles, charities, giveaways, gamepass but fee for games on consoles need to be paid not by devs but the companies (Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo).
One can argue most devs won't reach the first $200k revenue and $200k lifetime game installs and if they do they can just upgrade to Pro. But the problem is retroactively charging every game, devs signed up mostly for free license and if they found success at worst they could pay $400 Plus subscription and if their game sold even more they'd need to get the $2040 Pro subscription.
But now they've to pay them for game installs which can be manipulated by malicious actors. They've lost the trust from most of the devs as most of them will probably ditch the engine for future and only publish the current game they're working on. Some devs are going to delist their current published games.How Free 2 Play games which hit the thresholds apply is another concern.
Also one has to remember that most devs using Unity have to pay several bills such as Assets used to create the game, staff if they hire, hosting servers, platform cut, taxes etc. These changes are a burden for them and they could potentially go under debt.
Now new tentative changes to the policy have leaked. They're as follows:
- Limiting fees to 4% of a game’s revenue over $1 million.
- Installations counted toward reaching the threshold will no longer be retroactive.
- Installations will no longer be tracked by proprietary tools. Instead, Unity will rely on users to self-report the data.
Overall very shitty move from Unity to make money, they could've done it better.
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u/FijiPotato 9d ago
Also to add a few more flames to the shitstorm, with the new Unity changes, they promised that they qould not charge game developers for charity games (games who's profits go to charity.) An indie game developer called "LizardFactory" reportedly tried to get an exception for their game "Orgynizer" which is a sex-positive game whos profits go to PlannedParenthood and C.S. Motts Children's Hospital.
Unity reportedly denied their request for an exception stating that those do not count as "valid charities" and are instead "political groups."
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u/Arlithian 9d ago
This blog post is gold
You also claim that you can guarantee that you can detect pirated copies and you won't charge for that... If that was true, and you need money, SELL THAT! Do you have tech that can 100% detect piracy? If that was true, you would not need our monthly fee, you could fix one of the biggest gaming industry problems overnight! But the truth is you don’t, isn’t it? Feel free to convince us otherwise.
I want to support this game now.
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u/bilowik 9d ago
It’s such a wild claim cuz anti piracy of any kind that involves protections on something that is fully digitally accessible can never be 100% unbreakable. If you can run the game or software locally, then it can be modified and the anti piracy protections removed. That’s why everyone hates anti piracy garbage that slows down performance in games, all it does is delay the inevitable, and barely at that.
Cloud gaming may be one of the only guaranteed ways to prevent piracy.
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u/poshenclave 9d ago
They can't sell that because what they're doing to gather that data is likely very illegal under GDPR and other personal data laws. Like, they only have that data because they're breaking the law to get it.
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u/MCMC_to_Serfdom 9d ago
To frame this point more aggressively:
John Riccitello will use politics as an excuse to deny healthcare to children with cancer.
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u/stomps-on-worlds 9d ago
"What John Riccitello doesn't want you to know about his politically-motivated scheme to steal money from kids with cancer"
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u/SirDidymus 9d ago
For us at Dungeon Alchemist, a Unity-driven mapmaker for rpg’s, these have been a fun couple of months… 🙂
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u/Obvious_Industry_237 9d ago
I dont get half of the things I see on reddit.
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u/RagnarockInProgress 9d ago
Wizards of the Coast (an organization responsible for DnD and most DnD adjacent things) have tried to write a funny little User Agreement thingie where you could create as much fan stuff as you want, but it’s all owned by WoTC actually and you’re giving them all your life savings, a while back.
That failed spectacularly and they called it off
Recently Unity got famous for their new “Runtime fee” where, if you make a game on their engine, you pay them $0.2 PER DOWNLOAD (so stuff like Charity, Giveaways, Bundles and Sales is them taking money out of YOUR pocket) of your game, which, if you’re a small scale indie dev, essentially reduces any profit you could get down to crumbs and in some cases makes you loose money.
Suffice to say people are not… thrilled about this, Unity Stock dropped to an all time low, it came out that what they’re doing might not be strictly legal because there’s no way for them to legally acquire how much an already bought game is downloaded on stuff like new devices, because that also counts, it also came up their EA-born CEO sold a BUNCH of his stock right before announcing this decisions and currently Untiy is backpedalling at the speed of sound.
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u/FiveCones 9d ago
For the Unity one, they also tried to make it retroactive to steal money from past installs as well.
Hilariously enough, they don't even seem to have a way to track installs because if they did, it would solve piracy as several people called out.
Then they updated it yesterday to say they would expect companies to self-report, as if anybody is going to tell them how much money they supposedly owe them, for over 1 million installs or something.
Heard a lot of unity devs quit because upper management came to the dev teams, asked them if it was possible, ignored the devs when they said no, and threw up the announcement without telling the devs it was going up
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u/DisastrousBusiness81 9d ago
Okay seriously, what the actual fuck. How do people in high level corporate offices do stuff this monumentally stupid?
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u/FiveCones 9d ago
Executives, especially ones hired from outside the company, usually care more about short term profits than long term goals.
Plenty of devs that use Unity have talked about how Unity has spent more time over the last few years on how to make more money for themselves, than actually working on bugs in the Unity engine
There's supposed to be one bug that's been there for years that crashes Unity if you don't open it in a certain way. Found it:
Currently we are on an LTS version that requires us to open a blank page before doing anything else, otherwise the engine simply crashes
From https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/the-death-of-unity
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u/DisastrousBusiness81 9d ago
Yes, but even in the short term, this is incredibly stupid move. How do these guys not remember basic economics?
When you make the cost of your product too high, people will just move to another one. And there are PLENTY of other products that can replace Unity out there.
That’s not a coding or cultural information a new exec doesn’t know, it’s basic logic.
These guys are supposed to be from the top business schools in the country, I just don’t know how they can ignore basic things like “don’t make your product cost so much everyone hates you”.
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u/stomps-on-worlds 9d ago
I'm afraid you are underestimating the hubris and arrogance of most executives and board members
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u/OkStatistician4940 9d ago
What the hell do you mean business school lol.
They're there because they were friends with or are directly related to the last owner/CEO.
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u/No_Implement2793 9d ago
I mean, the thought is some huge games that area made through Unity will have no choice but to pay the fee or delist the game.(Hearthstone, Genshin Impact, Hokai Star Rail for example)
Or games that are very late in dev will have no choice but to keep to the engine due to costs to switch.
Sure, no future games will be made in Unity, but the ones that already are will have to pay. Short term profits at the expense of long term.
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u/Odd-fox-God 9d ago
Yeah but those games all have huge companies backing them, pokémon go was made in unity and pokémon go is owned by Nintendo... Nintendo's going to sue the fuck out of unity if they try to charge them per Pokemon Go download.
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u/DisastrousBusiness81 9d ago
That’s…ugh. I guess under that reasoning it makes sense?
But again, that assumes every other game exec is a drooling moron who will be happy just forking over a wad of cash, rather than being another money-grubbing exec like themselves who would rather cut their arm off than pay a +1% fee on anything.
Like…this just gives the vibes of people so unbelievably disconnected from reality and how people will respond.
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u/Random-Rambling 9d ago
Because the consequences of their actions aren't immediate and/or severe enough to make them care.
By the time the shit of their dumb decisions hits the fan, they have already jumped ship with their golden parachutes a LONG time ago.
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u/Altered_Nova 9d ago
A lot of businesses these days seem to be run by con artists. I have to assume that this new policy is an intentional fraudulent scheme and unity execs were planning to make up numbers for the fees, because it's literally impossible to track legitimate first-time installs for a game. They just assumed their customers would be too stupid to understand they were being scammed. It's the only explanation that makes any sense to me.
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u/RagnarockInProgress 9d ago
Tp quote a certain man: “It sure is a good thing that Ultrakill sold 0 copies in the past 3 years”
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u/Altered_Nova 9d ago
The crazy thing is that if they'd just tried to demand a cut of all sales from games made using their engine, that would have been scummy but it might have worked. But demanding a cut of all legitimate first-time installs is pure insanity, because it's literally impossible to track such a thing and they had to have been informed of that. The delusional executives who pushed through this absurd policy either thought their own objecting developers were too stupid to know what they were talking about, or they assumed all their customers were too stupid to understand that the new monetization policy was impossible to implement and would just let themselves get scammed.
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u/Langsamkoenig 9d ago
PER DOWNLOAD
No, PER INSTALL. Which may or may not be worse, but it's certainly way more invasive.
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u/Lexi_Banner 9d ago
And WotC still pulls shady shit. Nothing has changed - they will just get better at hiding their true intentions until it is too late for anyone to affect any chance.
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u/SponsoredByMLGMtnDew 9d ago
That's a nice articulated middle finger you got there......
-sniffs loudly-
Yeah...
-eyes unfocus-
-licks lips-
It'd be a shame if someone.....put it in a low budget asset flip project
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u/Uuugggg 9d ago
.. Also reddit, right?
Remember when reddit did this and shut down the good reddit viewer apps?
No I guess not, most of the people who used those apps are gone now
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u/MoebiusX7 9d ago
To show you how long it's been since I've seriously gamed when I read about this whole Unity kerfluffle and looked it up my first response was "wait, game developers today use a pre-made engine to construct their games?" I guess the days where every game developer, even small indie ones, had to program their games from scratch and make their own engine is long gone. I feel like such a geezer.
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u/JingleJangleJin 9d ago
It's been common practice for the last thirty years or so.
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u/stpetepatsfan 9d ago
I thought it was cool to make a few doom levels back in the day. Yea, I'm an old gamer.
Heck, I remember a terrain creater in the 90's. Now see what UE 5.3 can do on YT and I'm gonna need a a NASA computer to run next gen games.
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u/silver-orange 9d ago
games and game engines have become incredibly complex in that time period as well -- hence the benefits of licensing an engine.
I know an old game developer who worked at lucasfilm games in the 80s (later known as lucasarts). They developed commodore titles in small teams of 1-4 developers -- to write a whole game that fit in a few hundred kb of storage.
He had a chance to visit lucasarts again decades later. Where he'd been tasked with writing half of a game himself in the 80s, he sat next to a developer at lunch whose entire job was scoped to fire and water effects for a game in the Jedi series. Goes to show how much work goes into those sorts of details in modern AAA games
Another tidbit: a number of those early lucasfilm games titles did share an internally developed game engine, the SCUMM engine
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u/Sam-Gunn 9d ago
"and in my day, we had to program in our own game patches, from the backs of magazines! And RAM cost two hundred dollars a kilobyte!"
[Grandkids slowly back away]
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u/MoebiusX7 9d ago
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u/AvalonCollective 9d ago
I’ve never seen that clip and now I’m over here dying of laughter. Thank you.
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u/RedBlue010 9d ago
But people have been making games in pre made engines since forever? Indie or no.
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u/Kyleometers 9d ago
You’re either like 70, or don’t remember things very well. Developers were using premade engines in the 80s.
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u/pchc_lx 9d ago
what examples from the 1980s?
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u/Kyleometers 9d ago
There’s a few, but they weren’t called “game engines” until the 90s. “Pinball Construction Set” and “Thunder Force Construction” are two of them. Here’s one for Commodore 64: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garry_Kitchen%27s_GameMaker
Plus, probably the easiest “you weren’t paying attention” - RPG Maker was released in 1992.
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u/Sharkytrs 9d ago
ngl, with unity and unreal, games development is REALLY easy now, not like back in microcomputer days where it was from scratch in 40kb or not happening.
a blank unity project can be 2gb+ depending on the setup.......
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u/DaNubIzHere 9d ago
It was a horrible idea. The CEO thinks it’s a horrible idea. He sold off stocks before the announcement. Everyone thinks it’s a horrible idea.
Why go ahead with the horrible idea? Someone want to buy that yacht now rather than later.
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