Unity Silently Deletes GitHub Repo that Tracks Terms of Service Changes and Updated Its License 

Following the update to its pricing plan that charges developers for each game install, Unity has seemingly silently removed its GitHub repository that tracks any terms of service (ToS) changes the company made.

As discovered by a Reddit user, Unity has removed its GitHub repository that allows the public to track any changes made to the license agreements and has updated the ToS to remove a clause that lets developers use the terms from older versions of the game engine that their product shipped with.

As a result of the repository deletion, the webpage is no longer accessible, resulting in an Error 404 unless users visit through a web archive.

While visiting the page through a web archive, the web page’s last availability was on 16 July 2022, revealing that Unity might have silently deleted the repo sometime before that day.

The GitHub repository was first established in 2019 wherein an official blog post, Unity revealed that they are committed to being an open platform and that hosting on the software development cloud-based service will “give developers full transparency about what changes are happening, and when.”

In the same blog post, Unity also revealed that they have updated the license agreement, saying “When you obtain a version of Unity, and don’t upgrade your project, we think you should be able to stick to that version of the ToS.”

ToS Update

In the term update from 10 March 2022, Unity added a clause to the Modification section of the ToS, stating the following:

“If the Updated Terms adversely impact your rights, you may elect to continue to use any current-year versions of the Unity Software (e.g., 2018.x and 2018.y and any Long Term Supported (LTS) versions for that current-year release) according to the terms that applied just prior to the Updated Terms.”

“The Updated Terms will then not apply to your use of those current-year versions unless and until you update to a subsequent year version of the Unity Software (e.g. from 2019.4 to 2020.1).”

However, on 3 April 2023, a few months before the supposed repository deletion date, Unity updated their ToS once again, removing the clause that was added on 10 March 2022, disabling developers from using the agreement from the version with which their game shipped.

Now the clause is completely absent in any of the new ToS, which means that users are obligated to any changes Unity made to their services regardless of version numbers including pricing updates such as the recent fee that will charge developers per game install.

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