Unity forum users should have their Unity Developer Network account linked to their licenses. For example, under your forum name/avatar, it should show which licenses for Unity you have purchased, i.e Unity Pro, Android Pro, iOS basic etc.
I’m sure this won’t be a massive thing for UT to implement since I think the accounts are already linked.
This has several benefits…
1.) It will weed out those using pirated Unity licenses for Commercial Work gain.
2.) It gives customers peace of mind, knowing the software used to build their product is fully licensed, and that the developer is not some fly-by-night ripoff fraud, they are a licensed developer with a reputation to uphold.
3.) For customers looking for developers, they can see if a user has Pro/Basic and make decisions accordingly
Although this won’t stop fraud or piracy, I believe it will go a long way to help combat it, and I don’t think it would be a major issue for UT to implement on these forums…
I support this idea. Nothing makes me more angry then somebody pirating someone elses hard work, especially if I hire someone to do a job for me and they are using stolen 3D software or an illicit version of Unity. Something should be done to verify a users liscence holdings for sure.
Linking a forum account to a license account and to show the licences owned was the case in the GarageGames community since a long time.
You can show how it looks in their forum like here : http://www.garagegames.com/community/forums/viewthread/75608
Click on the names under avatar pictures to see the users profiles and licenses owned.
I don’t know if it has an impact on piracy or fraud, but it helps to know to who you speak
I just hope that if this suceeds, it won’t make all of us artists who don’t make unity-specific assets look less credible.
Probably an irrational concern but still.
The pirates could still just get a Free license and continue as usual.
Lots of artists use the free version to build their packages so it would be kind of pointless for that… unless you were looking for a scripter or extra team members or something that required unity pro you could easily check that. That would be nice.
I don’t like this idea (well I don’t go to collab or commercial so I don’t care about what happens there) because I have my licenses tied up to a separate account (mainly because feedback in the Asset Store is linked to that handle and I don’t want to have people questioning my reviews or retaliating on the open forum.)
Make this a choice. No need to impose this on every single Unity forum member. Make this something like how the Twitter - Verified account system works.
Users could then voluntarily submit themselves to a verification process by Unity and then get the appropriate digital badges/insignias/logos attached to their Unity forum accounts.
This way those who need the credibility that comes from this kind of verification could benefit from it and those who do not require it can skip it
I was the coding contractor of an iOS game. The company I was working for demanded all code to be dumped into a GIT repository. They stole at least several hundred US$ in Unity3D plugins (NGUI, prime31, 2DToolkit, Sprite Manager 2 and so on). How can this company be stopped by using this stolen property? It is the same as them downloading plugins from a pirate website. There needs to be some watermark that can be traced for ownership.
The company is Elementz Interactive, located in Arizona and Cebu City, Philippines.
I think this idea is a good one and has potential. I agree with Mr. T. It should be a choice, and not forced. By forcing it upon users, it could cause some unnecessary discrimination. It might also make it difficult for someone to start freelancing.
It does not make it difficult for people to freelance. In fact, I welcome this move as this cuts down on contractor-fraud. It also helps us because we avoid people who do not want pay for anything.
Off-line, our company declines employment of applicants who bring pirated Unity to our office to show-off their skills.
It’s not stolen. You gave it to them. Both of you are guilty. You should under no circumstances upload, email, distribute ANYTHING you don’t have the explicit right to do so.
Unfortunately this wouldn’t really give the whole picture, and could be misleading in some cases. I use both Unity Pro for my professional work (where it was purchased by my employer) and freebie Unity for hobby projects. Since this account is linked to my personal license rather than my work license it’d quite possibly look like I was being dodgy when I talk about Pro features if there’s a thing next to my name saying I only have a free license.
Handing over source code for assets that don’t belong to you (ie: licensed from a 3rd party) at all is silly.
Well…it depends on the license. If you are doing work for a client and you use NGUI, as a developer you should have an NGUI license… but if you give the source code to the client, do they need to have an NGUI license too?
This is pretty much a grey area for every asset that doesn’t have a comprehensively detailed licensing policy.
In the case of NGUI it’s perfectly clear - there’s a “distribution” package that you can use when giving NGUI-created assets to people who don’t have an NGUI license themselves. You don’t have distribution rights on the rest of NGUI, only its developers/owners have that.
I’m not sure about other assets as it’s not a situation I’ve been in. Don’t take my advice, but I’d expect that if the client is paying for the source then any 3rd party sources purchased as a part of the project would belong to them, not you. And per-seat licenses would work as per any other per-seat license (including Unity itself - ie: yes, you’d most likely both need licenses).
The ethical way to handle this is to just provide the integration codes and then let the other party sort it out.
We also do not buy anything for our contractors. Our contractors do not buy anything for us either. That reduces what the contractor recommends and in 90% of all cases they do not need UnityPro as many of those advanced features are not used.
If the contractor wishes to us to buy something for the contractor, we say - sorry, not our business. It is also time to move on as that contractor is probably scamming for NGUI add-ons or a free copy of UnityPro.
For our company, if we receive integration codes and then the assets are corrupted, I simply tell that guy to get on the WebMeeting with one our developers here and sort it out. If the developers here still cannot import, we terminate our business relationship as that person uses cracked Unity to do business.
Those person and his friends does deaf-mute-shows and gives various excuses - no microphone, unable to join the free WebMeeting (Join.me) or have serious difficulties, wants money upfront, tell lies to everyone, uses pre-paid cell phones so they disconnect weeks after hiring them, have dozens of addresses, have criminal records, use aliases so they need money to be transferred out of state or to their relatives.
This time, we stopped this nonsense as we do due diligence, conduct business checks on contractors before hiring them. I don’t know why several people on this forum put themselves as CEOs of fake LLC companies on their titles. Did they check the Department of State has no records on their company registration or their LLC license got cancelled?
I also do not know why they setup fake gaming websites and call their company as ***** Studios, subsidiary of ********* which is totally illegal.
