Im wondering if a licence covers me having unity installed on both my pc and my mac?
As far as I understand, it does. The license key doesn’t care.
The license allows for two installations. The operating system doesn’t matter, simply the number of times it is installed.
So if I crash my system twice, or if I upgrade to win 7 and snow leopard on either system, Im not able to use the program any more? Dont you mean only two simultaneous installations are allowed on one licence?
I believe that one license is good for one user to install on two machines.
If your machine crashes and you have to reinstall, you should be fine. Your key will still work.
If you actually have to get new hardware, just contact Unity and they’ll help you out.
Come on. Do you really need to ask something like this? :roll:
It’s a completely legit question. Many people have two machines (laptop, desktop).
My previous post didn’t make it clear whether it was two installation instances, (like many downloadable song/ebook sites, allow a limited number of downloads), or two installations coexisting on different operating systems/machines.
The answer is that you are allowed two simultaneous installations. If you find yourself in a situation whether you replace a machine, and you’re already at two installations, you can contact Unity Support to remove one of the locks, and allow this new machine to use your key.
To put it another way, it is the developer who is licensed to use Unity, not the computer. A licence entitles you to install Unity on one Mac and one Windows machine, but two different people are not supposed to be using these computers at the same time. Only the licensed person can use the installation.
if you run out of your installs, simply email unity tech support and they will reactivate your serial for one more install … it will take like 1 day for having your key reactivated, but its fine… it has no problems at all
i myself have reactivated my key a couple of times due to my old pc crashing a lot before it finally died, then again with bootcamp
as far as i know you can have 2 installs at a time… and there will be no problem as long they are not running simoultaneusly (i have unity activated on both win7 and leopard) 8)
Tempest, andeeee, dodongoxp, WinningGuy:
Thanks for informative replies.It’s not an approach Im aware Ive come in contact with when buying software, but I can see how it could decrease the level of piracy. Anyway, as long as I can have my computers crashed/upgraded multiple times without having to worry about my licence getting expired, Im good.
Jesse: Wow, 2500 posts!? Are they all equally informative? Here’s a good rule of thumb - before you get all snippy replying to newcommer’s questions, try a bit harder assessing their validity first. Otherwise youre just infecting the atmosphere, making people less likely to appreciate the community AND consequently less likely to buy the software. In return, Ill do my best not to ask stupid questions, which admittedly can turn even the mellowest veteran into a rabid dog. This, however, might take some effort on my part as Unity is quite a powerful tool and youre bound to get confused at first 
Heres another potentially stupid question, but one which I could not clarify from the licences-page (http://unity3d.com/unity/unity-end-user-license-2.x):
is a licence transferable once youre done with it? Im assuming no since its “personal”, but as with any legal mumbo-jumbo you never assume, you read the fine-print 
But as far as I can see, this isnt covered…
As pointed out in the EULA, your license is non transferable. The legal entity who buys it is the sole and only legal owner during the lifetime of the license. Reselling is not allowed.
Quoting the page you cited
I added the bold to highlight where it’s clearly outlined that these are non-transferrable licenses (to head off any “the EULA isn’t clear” discussions).
And as noted above, we’re here to help if you need to transfer to a new machine whether that’s due to crashing or just upgrading to new gear!
Hi Danneman!
If anyone knows anything about how hard the Unity guys work to make peopel happy then it’s me.
I must have reinstalled and formatted 30 times or more since having my license.
Each time I ran in to license issues support were more than happy to deal with my obnoxious support requests and emails.
My license is still valid and I am still happily deving in Unity.
Something you may want to invest in which I have done now is hd imaging software like Norton Ghost or Paragon software.
When you freshly install your OS install all the OS updates and service packs then install your dev apps including unity and activate them. Then make a fresh HD image of the drive and back that up incase of disaster. Then if you need to reinstall instead of reinstalling just restore the image of the drive and away you go.
This doesn’t work with hardware changes though. If you change hardware contact support and they will help you migrate your license with the hardware changes.
Hope that helps!
No.
Guys,
So the idea is that we want people to be productive with Unity. We completely get it that you guys want to work in the office, and at home in the evenings. Our license is meant to support that way of working. Or, if you fly off somewhere to do a demo to a potential investor, then you’re going to want to be fixing bugs on the plane, so having a laptop that works without an internet connection is a must-have. The license allows that. What both these scenarios have in common is that you only use one of two computers at a time. Some customers only need a single machine, in which case, their second activation is ready and waiting should their main machine suffer hard drive failure. Of course we know it’s frustrating when your machine dies, it’s happened to us all. We really think our license model is flexible enough, and worst case is really the guy who has a machine at work and one at home. If the work machine dies, then I guess you have to spend some time working from home whilst your work machine gets fixed.
We do try hard to help everyone who has a need to migrate. As the good kamikazekrow says, we help and help and help. Whilst getting many migration requests from one user is unusual, so long as we get told what is happening, we are happy to oblige. Our license server records pretty good information so we know when the EULA is being violated. I’ve trained the support crew to politely ask for an explanation, and I’d estimate a couple of times a day we invite migrators to purchase additional licenses for their needs. We regularly get told our EULA was misunderstood, and they didn’t realise that it’s a personal license.
One piece of advice if you want to keep the support guys happy, when you ask for a migration, tell us why you are migrating, the name of the machine that is being replaced/died, the name of the user who the license is used by, the activation code you use and the email address used to make the purchase. That gives us pretty much all we need to figure out how to help, and not have to reply and ask for this info.
Sorry, that turned into a long post.
Best,
Graham