I asked this before the new forum appeared within a larger thread, but seems to have got missed. I think an answer will be useful to anyone considering contracting or hiring contractors, plus many others.
We now have 3 Unity tiers. Some Unity statements say it is possible to mix tiers (highlighted in green below), some say it is not (highlighted in red below), sometimes appearing to contradict itself immediately.
It is not clear what the differentiation is, can someone from Unity give a clear answer please?
You can use assets created by a third party, regardless of the tier of Unity they are using to create that content.
You can not have your team use different tiers of Unity to create your project.
i.e. I can buy @S4G4N 's assets whether he uses Personal, Plus or Pro, but I can not co-develop a project with him if we are not using the same Unity tier.
The differentiation is whether or not the content creator is apart of your team or not. The parts you quoted specifically mentions this as the âthird partyâ which means not your team or Unity.
Itâs still the same as always. You and any of your employees must be on the same lisence that your business qualifies you for.
Third parties such as asset store developers use what ever lisences they qualify for. It does not matter to you.
Contractors and freelancers are a somewhat grey area. Check your local employment law. If your local law would classify them as employees (ie you must deduct taxes, pay insurance, pay super ect) then they should also be using a lisence you paid for. If they are classed as independent contractors then the lisence they use is none of your business.
The exact rules on classification vary from country to country. They consider things like: Is the person working for you of running their own business? Does the person work for multiple clients? Does the person have there own registered business number? Are they hired for specific jobs or general duties? And so on.
Note: This is not legal advice, if you really are concerned, consult a professional.
Which is really disastrous for contractors, usually working on the game in my experience. A situation that is might happen to me, and will happens to others:
I contract for Team A who are using Plus. I need a Plus licence.
I also contract for Team B who are using Plus. I need a Plus licence. But if they get successful and upgrade to Pro, I need to also, but that means I would not be using the same licence as Team A. To be safe I therefore need to have started with a separate Plus licence.
It also works the same way with Pro licences as they can downgrade. Therefore I need a separate licence for every team I work with.
How does that work with the following statements?
Most freelancers I know contract on other teams games. They are earning an awful lot less than $200,000/year, particularly as the work is intermittent, but can be dealing with companies of very different sizes.
I understand having the same licences within a company, but within a project it causes issues.
Just use seperate installs / accounts / machines. My work computers have pro, my personal computers have personal. If you are contracted to work on project that uses pro, youâll have to use pro. (That hasnât changed). With the new licenses plus and pro have license management so the project owners might be able to issue you one of theirs for the length of the project. ( I believe that is how it is intended to work, I could be wrong).
But what if I work for 2 companies with Pro and one downgrades? I cannot downgrade my Pro licence because it is still required to be Pro for the other team, but the company who downgrades needs every licence to downgrade.
I have never worked with a company that has spare licences to issue to contractors. They expect the contractor to have their own.
And I have thought of another issue, I cannot have different licence tiers within my company. So I cannot have separate licences for each company I work for. Therefore if I get a Pro licence I cannot work with any teams using a Plus or Personal licence, and any Pro team cannot downgrade and continue on any project I worked on.
Anyway, Unity said in their blog that professional freelancers can use Plus. Freelancers often work on projects for other companies.
Yeah, anything else would drive up the cost of hiring freelancers to extortionate sums. On the other hand, harshly limiting the tier mixing would increase the chances for serious developers on job boardsâŚ
That is why I suspect they have the new license management ability, to account for that. A contract employee isnât âthird partyâ, so as before, if the project/company is one license, if you are contracting to work on that project you will (or at least did, they may have a new set up with Plus) have to be on the same license. Every contractor we use, must have Pro. The exception being (as before) if we are contracting for third party content. It is the difference between buying a plugin/content and hiring someone to work on you game. âFreelanceâ isnât really a distinction (a freelance or contract employee is still an employee). At least under the previous license.
Besides, with the bar going up to 200k, if you are contracting to companies using you pro, you should be able making enough to cover your licences. If not, raise your rates. As a contractor, you should be getting enough to cover the expenses that would be covered by having a full time employer. Contractors are typically double the rate of staff.
[quote=âorb, post:10, topic: 633060, username:orbâ]
Yeah, anything else would drive up the cost of hiring freelancers to extortionate sums.
[/quote] But, if you were a company using Pro, you couldnât hire a bunch of people using Personal, and call them contractors to avoid buying licences. In many cases, (with game/tech companies) some staff are just long term contractors. The price of freelancing shouldnât change, really. (though there will be some shifting during the migration.)
The expectation is that if theyâre âemployingâ you then they provide the software you need as a part of that employment. If they arenât employing you then you are a âthird partyâ and use a license based on your own needs.
Edit: At least, thatâs how I always did it. Maybe itâs different elsewhere?
Perhaps this is a jurisdiction thing? Australia and NZ have employment laws that prevent you from doing that. There are different tax implications to having an employee and having a contractor. And it can be advantageous to be classified as one or the other, so there are laws that define who is what.
Thatâs why when I see this provision in the license agreement I default to counting contractors as third parties. It makes sense in the context of Australian and NZ employment law.
I know virtually nothing about US employment law. So the rules could be different there.
Edit: If Iâm wrong I need to do some serious reevaluating of my freelancing work.
The Eula specifies âlicensing content from a third partyâ (tier doesnât matter) and differentiates it from âYour Project Contentâ. (Tier does matter). It doesnât really say anything about the status of who is doing the work, only the content itself.
Buying an AI package or plugin from the store would constitute licensing third party content. Hiring someone to work on/build the AI for your game (project) would be ââŚYour Project Content developed simultaneouslyâŚâ. The difference being are you buying existing content to add to your game, or are you hiring someone to work on your game. If they are working in your project/on your game, the tier restrictions apply.
I donât think Unity or any other company can make or enforce rules about your (or your companyâs) relationships with people working on your project. (well, maybe requiring that you donât break any laws while using their software). Whether you are paying someone a little or a lot, paying them to work on just UI or the whole game, or if they are staff, freelance, contract, rev share or some friend you grew up with working for free, or getting paid in cookies, Unity has no say in any of that. The line they can define is usage, whether someone is working on the game(project) or not. While you may license and integrate TextMeshPro, @Stephan-B is not working on âYour Project Contentâ, his tier is irrelevant to your project and vice-versa.
Which part? Long term contractors vs. employees? Hells yea, that has been a big part of the tech industry since forever. Web devs used to be long term contracts, and It even used be nearly a caste system at MS back in the day (though MS abused it). In games, it is pretty common that QA are contractors. (usually employed by a third party, and provide staffing for multiple companies). With the exception of leads (and a few special cases) all our QA are contractors. (they have special prefix on their email addresses). Some other roles as well. Some have been with us for years. Every place I have worked has some type of long term contractor, even indie companies. It can be entry way into a company, but more importantly, it can be steady work in a unstable industry.
this was the reason(s) for the contractor employment law changes here in the US⌠it was so rampant that xpacts and others were brought in as contractors for literally âyearsâ⌠never getting any benefits other than a job.
unfortunately, the law went something like⌠âif employeed for more than 6 months, ⌠blah blah blah, they are considered âemployeesâ, not âcontractorsââŚâ or something similar, the adverse effect was, at about 6 months⌠you got canned.
Also MS was hiring some (many?) contractors doing exactly same work as full time. IIRC, it wasnât intentionally malicious (though it worked out that way), it was more of a creative budgeting thing. A department or project could look leaner if they employed contractors vs staff. (and it was also away around imposed staffing limitations). My cousin worked on a part of Media Center back in the day, and nearly all their team were âtempsâ, who worked on it for years. On internal bookkeeping, their staff was like 4 people, though in reality it was ~30. (he was converted to staff after the lawsuit, and got back compensation for stock and bonuses and such).
very many⌠and it wasnât just MS, it just seemed they got the spotlight⌠unfortunately, it still goes on like wild-fire today.
Iâve only done a few contract jobs myself with Unity, and have no problems⌠but my terms are mine, whereas, like your cousine he was basically being treated like an employee⌠had a âmanagerâ (iâm sure), with strict deadlines and hours of operation⌠etc., so ya, he should have been hired and compensated. A case where the law made some sense for once lol
Yup, he was a full time employee, (they were a startup that got acquired by MS, and moved to Redmond). He worked on the MS campus, regular 9-5. He was the head of his team, but reported up the chain to MS staff. The only difference, practically speaking, was that his paychecks didnât say Microsoft on them. He is still there today, very happy and worked out well. Well⌠after the class action suit, of course.
back to the main topic i guess⌠i just think, that having been doing contract work and having had purchased a Pro license for that work, the new license schemes do seem a bit vauge in regards to the OPâs question.
I would think, and hate to say this, but you as a contractor are going to have to purchase a license according to the needs of the company whoâs contracting you to do the work. If theyâre using Pro, youâll need to subscribe to it as well⌠if they back down to Plus⌠so do you.
âIfâ I had multiple clients, and they used different license schemes, I would personally make the biz decision to purchase both a Plus and Pro (@160$/mo) and bill accordingly. There really shouldnât be any issues on any side with that regards.
