Background
As a publisher, I got several mails if my race cars are allowed to use in games without additional permissions, while the current AS (Asset Store) license allows it. As a customer I found several unlicensed items while AS sold me those as ‘royalty free’. As a user I found people on the forums who seems to have the same concerns.
So I decided to make this ‘Open letter’ to ask for turning AS to a better place (market) for both parties (customers/publishers/AS/3rd party designers and license holders) with rethinking the license types and the procedure for approving assets.
On ‘base level’ it does not require too much effort from Unity and as I got no answers from the regular channels I decided to make it public and I would like to invite everyone who would like to collaborate in a better solution.
Very important: it is not against Unity AS, other publishers, etc. It is about finding a solution with making no harm, but achieving a win-win result.
The issue:
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In lots of cases the Asset Store sells unlicensed/branded content as royalty free content.
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In many cases the AS does not follow their own submission rules related to the asset approval procedure.
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Unity – as legally/financially protected by their EULA – seems to be not really interested in solving issues and seems to actively assist to this with ‘closing their eyes’, putting all the risk on the customers/publishers.
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While the industry - related to digital goods - tries to find a solution with offering different license types for the customers, still no sign from the side of Unity to catch up with the others (TurboSquid, Stock Agencies, even BlenderMarket, etc.).
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With the current license system publishers are forced to ‘cheat’ with their assets, risking their income and putting the customers to a risk, too.
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The current system cannot let legal package creation for specific areas where typically 3rd party designs and brands are used, like architectural visualization, military scenes, etc.
Point of views
As I told, I’m both AS customer, publisher and designer, so I would like to present my point of views.
As a customer:
AS sells ‘royalty free content’. It practically means that if I bought something in the AS, I - as a customer - have to do nothing with additional permissions, extra costs, etc. related to it. I bought it, I could use it within the terms of the EULA. No action needed.
So when I buy something I wanna be sure that there are no ‘surprises’. Of course there is no 100% in these things, but known brands/designs need to get an additional/separate license type and have to be removed from under the ‘royalty free license’ as selling these kind of stuff as royalty free is misleading the customers.
As a publisher:
There is a huge difference in working hours between creating a ‘replica’ and creating an ‘original’ asset. The first one is a very fast process for an experienced modeler, the second one is something where the modeler has to be a designer, too and it requires studying, sketching, etc. It multiplies the efforts – I do not think that it is something what I have to explain for ‘original asset creators’. But – without offering multiple licensing options – all these ‘original’ assets have to compete on the same market, within the same price range against ‘replicas’, while those shouldn’t be in the Asset Store at all if the publishers and Unity would follow the current rules for submissions.
As a designer:
As a designer I have intellectual properties related my designs. By default I definitely do not want other people to sell my designs as their designs, but this area is far more complicated than the former ones.
Let me to explain it:
There are 2 kind of behaviour what could cause problems related to this:
- Simple asset ‘stealing’, when someone uploads an asset what was created by someone else, as his/her one. As far as I know the Asset Store team handles this cases pretty well. No additional action needed.
- Design/intellectual property breach
This is the ‘grey’ zone and related to these issues the ‘digital’ industry decided to make things clarify with proofs/contracts (stock media sites) and pulling in the ‘Editorial license’ (like TurboSquid did it) for 3d models (which is a ‘monster from the past’, but they worked it out this way), with warning customers for probably missing rights (Envato).
The key is in this situation the purpose of usage and the quality check: if a furniture manufactures makes a beautiful designer chair and someone would like to release a beautiful archviz scene what includes this chair, it is a ‘free’ advertisement for the chair (that is how archviz works since decades; even manufacturers themselves offer quality 3d models for visualizers and architects). Almost the same story with cars, etc.
What is the problem then?
Well, there are several problems:
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The current AS EULA does not allow including these kind of branded models into any asset. Period.
It means that any publisher who use these kind of content, risks his/her income, but with affording this risk also affects his customers (who could get into trouble with using unlicensed assets) and other publishers (getting leverage with the simplified modelling process – no design needed). -
The original license holder should have the opportunity to say ‘no’. Or they could give permissions for everyone or for specific publishers, etc., but the current method just leaves them out.
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The items based on someone else’ design cannot be named in the current publishing method (theoretically). So renaming Hummers to Hammers, M1 Abrams’ to M2 Adamas, removing logos is the way publishers work now and that is not just not good, but also doesn’t solve the issues as the core design still bonded to its original creators.
The solution:
The solution is very simple: offer multiple license types.
On base level these would be:
- Standard royalty free license (the actual one)
- Editorial license (or something like that)
(Of course there could be more of these if we want to be more straightforward like ‘certified royalty free’ or ‘Mixed’, etc., but the first 2 (standard royalty free, editorial) would solve the most of the problems).
How would it affect the parties?
Customer’s side:
- It makes licensing transparent; if they need an asset, they could buy it with the license type they need (like Editorial for ‘tinkering’ at home for fun and royalty free for commercial products). It is important to ‘warn’ the customer which license the asset have. Of course there will be assets what will be missing; the ones which have no license to use at all: so it will save the customers from legal consequences, at least related to the stuff they bought in the AS.
Depending on Unity’s effort it could be a 100% safe system, what could make AS to a unique place among the 3d markets.
The customer clearly wins without harm.
Publisher’s side:
The publisher could make models of 3rd party designs without risking income and misleading AS and the customers. As there are more ‘modelers’ than ‘modeler + designers’, it could open a market for them. ‘Original asset creators’ and ‘replica-makers’ would have their own, protected, fairly-operating markets without causing interferes and suffering any harm.
Depending on Unity’s effort it could turn the AS unique with ‘certifying’ permissions.
The publishers clearly win, except the ones who wanna stole IP rights.
3rd -party designer’s side:
As with the ‘Editorial’ license they could easily identify their own products (calling an ‘Abrams’ tank on its real name instead of ‘Adama or Abel’) and as the publisher’s could be forced to properly name the 3rd-party related products (maybe with contact info added to the license holders), copyright issues could be significantly reduced and the 3rd parties get the opportunity to decide if they let asset creators use their IP (Intellectual Property) or not.
It could result ‘alliances’ between content creators and 3rd parties for creating beautiful scenes for the customers, advertising their products, making great cross-marketing.
Depending on the Unity’s effort it could be very well-documented and almost completely legal.
The 3rd party designer’s would win this as momentarily AS not just let copyright breaching happen, but does not offer alternative ways for the publishers.
The Asset Store side:
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Unity’s income massively depends on the AS income, especially from this year. With making this step forward you would not just catch up with the trends of content handling, but would fulfill the needs of the people you live from, even if the most of them did not recognize this need yet: the customers and publishers (it is a fact that most of the people could recognize their ‘needs’ only when it is ‘delivered’ to them).
The transparency what the new license system would offer could open the door for more publishers and more customers, what could make more profit.
From Unity’s side it would be a clear ‘win’ on long term, even if it means a few work need to be invested for making the AS system able to handle the new licenses and some of the questionable models have to be moved to ‘Editorial’ category. (It is far better for both parties than removing them from the market completely.)
Depends on the effort Unity risks to invest, I have some extraordinary ideas to make AS system not just be better, but make it outstanding with additional features related to license-handling, etc., so I’m happy to assist for this if Unity staff contacts me.
Thanks for your time, please support it if you think it’s time up to catch up with the industry and vote!
Also feel free to give suggestions!
Tom Frank
PS: you could vote on 2 options!
