I’ve been unable to get a response from Unity on this, so I’m trying again on the forums. Formerly, the Asset Store EULA had a section saying that any paid assets that you bought were bound by the default Unity Asset Store EULA, which is in the appendix on the main asset store EULA. There was also a section that said free (not paid) assets could have a different license, but that they would have to display that license on the asset store page so that you could see it before you downloaded it. Paid assets were forbidden from having a custom license.
Recently, it seems those sections were deleted. I’ve noticed a few free assets that had “hidden” licenses in a readme file after you download them saying more or less “You can’t actually use this asset”. Worse, it looks like paid assets can now do this too. The Speed Tree assets that are currently on sale have their own EULA as well that you can’t see until after you pay for it, saying that it overrides the default EULA and which contains a pretty baffling paragraph of legalese that seems to say you’re not allowed to actually use the models in a game unless you have a Unity monthly subscription. There’s also some sections I really don’t like saying that they have the right to covertly gather and use all of your information however they want and that if you talk about it they can sue you. I’m sure these are “worst case” legalese failsafes but I still really don’t like the idea that we now need lawyers to comb for special EULAs in all paid assets that might be stopping us from actually using assets that we bought. One of the main reasons I liked the asset store was that everything was covered by a single EULA and we didn’t have to worry about sellers trying to screw people over with “gotcha” clauses in custom EULAs. Why did Unity make this change? And is anyone going to publicly acknowledge it and explain it?
In Platformer PRO I’ve spent time and money contacting authors to get CC licensed assets that I use in samples licensed under asset store terms. Although its inconvenient it seems better than this alternative.
That said I expect these terms were removed to enable bigger companies to publish on the asset store. These companies often spend a lot of money on getting their EULA right, and abiding by another is not necessarily viable.
At the very least they should put back the “custom license must be clearly visible on the asset store page” part. It’s unacceptable to not know what the license terms are until after you buy something. Especially with the hoops you have to jump through to get a refund.
In my own experience even with it clearly marked its easy to miss it, especially if like me you’re focus more on functionality and not necessarily thinking that there are more than one kind of licence. It’s a mistake I will only make once though.
I was lucky and the publisher offered a refund, I ended up not taking it and instead getting behind the licensing which just required an extra one time fee to use in game.
Buuuuump. Still haven’t been able to get any official word on this. Has anyone else? I’ve noticed a disturbing amount of new “secret license” assets on the asset store. For example, the second most popular asset in Complete Projects (second only to the thing that was this month’s Level 11 giveaway) is Shadowgun Deadzone, which does not have any license on the asset store page, but in the docs it links you to a second license that says if you use anything from the asset, their corporation automatically gets full commercial rights to your game. There are a lot of these popping up; one of the only reasons I liked the asset store was that originally, we didn’t have to worry about stupid legal tricks like this. Why was it changed, and is there any way we can verify whether or not the assets we own are usable commercially?
Heh, ironically enough, I just noticed that the first most popular, “Hidden Object Game Template”, this month’s Level 11 sale that I mentioned, also has licensing issues. It has embedded CC-BY licenses which you can’t see until you read the docs. Paid assets used to be guaranteed fully usable and modifiable. Even though CC-BY is not too terrible; you just need to add a bunch of random people to the credits in your docs, it’s still an annoying hoop to jump through that we didn’t formerly have to deal with. If I didn’t have Level 11 and had actually paid the $20 to buy this, I’d be pretty annoyed when I imported the project and saw that there were embedded CC licenses.
Unfortunately, that’s not true. By default, the creator of something owns full copyright of it and all derivative works regardless of whether you pay money for something. You only get to reuse and copy something if you get a license that specifically says you can. Formerly, there was a default license that all assets were bound by, saying you could copy and distribute them in a commercial game. But currently, all the Unity assets are in a sort of gray area due to the removal of the clause saying that all assets are bound by the old EULA, so technically, we don’t really have any license at all saying we’re allowed to copy and redistribute anything we bought.
There was a blog this week about ´ asset store for the greater good´ or something like that. Basically they said they want to crack down on people that buy kits like the one you mentioned and just flip them into a game just using the author´s assets. This at least would give the author some ability to get the item removed from app stores.
If you don’t want someone to make a game with your kit and sell it, then don’t sell it on the asset store. But honestly that has nothing to do with this. It’s fine if someone wants to put a kit that you’re not allowed to actually use at all up there, IF there is a clear license on the download page saying you’re not allowed to actually use it. The current situation where you don’t know if you’re allowed to use something until after you pay for it is complete crap; it makes the store worthless in my opinion.
Thanks makeshiftwings for bringing this up. I wouldn’t have known about this issue if you didnt bring it up.
This sounds rather worrisome, we need to know from Unity what has happened.
I was just about to purchase some tools from the asset store but I think i’ll hold off. I cant be bothered to read through Eula and legal shit everytime.
