Suggestion to protect Unity's name and stem the flow of terrible games on Steam

Hi There,

I want to preface this post with a comment saying that I know this will not appeal to a lot of people, but I think it is worth suggesting. I search for similar posts but did not find anything about this.

It has become a real problem where people make really cruddy games in unity, and then throw them onto Steam Greenlight. Somehow, a major portion of these games pass Greenlight and get into the marketplace.

A lot of these are sullying the reputation Unity has, and makes Indie Game developers generally come off as amatuerish. Some of these games are asset flips. Someone buys a toolset such as UnitZ, and then stamps a new name on it, puts 1 hour of effort into customization, and tries to sell it on Steam Greenlight for 9.99.

I saw one game called Project Catz that is an amalgamation of several of these assets into different game modes sold for 29.99. The game doesn’t even warrant 99 cents.

Unity should really consider implementing its own sort of Greenlight system that allows publication of free games freely, but if someone intends to charge for their game, Unity must give its quality stamp of approval. Perhaps a very quick arbitration process could be done to determine if a game is an asset flip, which is essentially plagiarism. Also, if the game can be played on some basic level, and is not entirely broken, then it gets the thumbs up. If someone attempts to publish the game and charge a fee without receiving the okay from Unity, then Unity can force the project to be removed, thus saving potential customers from a terrible product, and helping repair the quality image of Indie Development.

This doesn’t need to be a deep arbitration process - just something superficial to enforce quality on the people who put almost no effort into their work, and drag Unity’s name through the dirt (Not to mention all indie developers).

Edit#1 I only am referring to the free version of Unity. Not development in Unity Pro!

Edit#2: Two people were unsure what plagiarism is (so just posting here for reference): Here is the definition: Plagiarism: The practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.

This is one of the the worst ideas I’ve ever heard on these forums.

Like, for real, the only reason I’m not giving it the place of “worst” is because I saw that thread where some goober wanted to make a game called Pedophile Simulator before the thread got deleted.

It’s not Unity’s place to determine what games can and can’t be sold for money.

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Unfortunately, that is incorrect. If you are using their free version of the tool, they can dictate how much money you make off of their engine. This can be drawn a parallel to almost anything in the real world.

If someone sells you a product, you do not have a right to make a small modification and then begin mass producing your new version of the product. Of course, if they allow it, then it happens. If that company gives you a basis for a product, say the chassis of a car, and expects you to do the rest, developing an engine and exhaust system, but you decide to buy that product and immediately resell it as your own - well you should get in trouble, that is theft of intellectual property.

There is no excuse for someone to be able to purchase an asset that creates the game world for you, and then immediately sell that as if it was your own intellectual property (with no or minimal customization) - which has happened to UnitZ now several times. That is plagiarism, no matter how you want to twist it. Maybe UnitZ’s developer is okay with that, but that should not be the standard. That hurts EVERYONE except for the terrible developers pumping out that drivel. I honestly can’t wrap my head around anyone thinking this is okay, unless they are one of those developers that likes putting half-arsed work out and giving everyone else, including Unity, a bad name.

Can you explain why this is a bad idea, as you have not given objective evidence, but just your subjective opinion here.

lol no

Unity has no place determining this because they’ve outright said their goal is to democratize game development, not hinder it. If any problem needs to be fixed, it’s on Valve’s end, not Unity’s.

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Well, I certainly hate the reputation Unity developers have gotten from all the garbage and would love for it to be fixed. Something should definitely be done about asset flipping, although I’m not sure what can be done about it.

Really though, the solution probably does have to lie in the hands of the ones running the markets. They’re in the best position to determine whether the game can go into the market or not. If Unity made its own market to host games on, then sure :).

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That’s certainly fair, and in a logical world, Steam would have already tightened its grip on this. However, they have shown that they really don’t give a cr*p about this problem. It has been a problem for a long time, and has never been addressed in any way. Given, they now offer a refund if a game has been played less than 2 hours, but that is only tangentially related to the Greenlight problem, and just helps assuage the problem of end users being out a few bucks, at best.

I think that if Steam refuses to change the policies, then Unity may find it in their best interest to take action to protect their image. It’s unfortunate, but they just can’t rely on a third party to protect their brand for them; especially in this case.

People like you have been saying “UNITY IS DOOMED” ever since Unity Indie went free. Unity will be fine.

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Please point out where I said anything similar to “Unity is doomed”. Straw man argument? Please address the issue and why I am incorrect in suggesting this, preferably using objective evidence - instead of resorting to a sort of amalgamation between a straw man argument with a vague inference to /leaning towards an ad hominem counter argument.

What you have done is decided "I disagree with the original idea, but instead of countering it and arguing with it on its merits, I am going to set up a straw man (aka “Unity is Doomed), which I know the original poster did not say or infer, but it is much easier for me to discredit him and his ideas if I attack that concept, rather than his original idea.”

No, really. This is the “UNITY IS DOOMED BECAUSE X” post all wrapped up in a new package. It’s the exact same formula that has been going on since 2009. I’ve seen this thread more times than I can count and it’s always “oh, now that game development is accessible, Unity’s reputation is going to go down the shitter.”

Newsflash: Unity’s reputation is more than held up by the quality games that have come out with it more than it’s damaged by the poor quality games that have come out. Unity doesn’t need to “protect its reputation” because its reputation is doing fine. If it wasn’t doing fine, the games you’re complaining about never would have existed in the first place.

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I cannot imagine the cost to Unity if they were to be forced to examine every game that comes out on Steam or elsewhere and give their seal of approval, not to mention what this might do to game development in general. Can you imagine Unity giving approval to a game that has some moral implications that could then be attached to Unity? Or a game that turned out later to be violating the law in some way (copyright, etc)?

Unity would be responsible. No, not a good idea.

The market will take care of the bad games eventually. Be patient.

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Again. I never suggested Unity is doomed, or even heading towards anything that can be defined as doomed. Dragging a reputation through the mud hardly dooms anything. It just makes people expect less from that entity. Look at Walmart. Heck look at EA. Electronic Arts is one of the most successful companies ever. It’s name is immediately associated with almost all things wrong in the world (being very over dramatic there - do not take literally).

So again, you are making a straw man argument. I cannot continue to argue with you if your response relies on logical fallacies.

This isn’t highschool and you’re not in debate club. Take it down a few notches.

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Good games dont make money if they dont get press, bad games have no chance of making anything.

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Thanks for a thoughtful reply.

You make a solid point. Focusing on the asset flip aspect of the issue, rather than the umbrella idea of bad games; I am not sure the market can prevent people from plagiarizing. If it did, people wouldn’t plagiarize nearly as much. Those games will eternally be posted on venues like Steam, and then get torn down after the damage is done. That is, unless Steam fixes their market (which would be amazing, but apparently we shouldn’t be holding our breath), or Unity takes action.

But, this is all a suggestion. I’m not some arbiter of an idea that Unity supports, by any means. So I’m glad any time people can offer some logical counters to this. Thanks!

Well, the issue isn’t all about them making money. A few people are losing their money, sure, which isn’t great. The crux of the issue is that people are making all Indie devs look bad, along with Unity.

I think you should go look up the definition of plagiarism.

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Done: Plagiarism: the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.

Exactly what people downloading UnitZ - and not customizing it at all (except changing the name) - and then selling it as their own game are doing.

The only problem with asset flipping is that it’s legal. Why is it legal? That’s my question. Perhaps because it would be quite complicated to effectively make it illegal?

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This is why it is worth it to pay the $1500 to remove the splash when you are ready to release.

I have to admit, the flood of pure crap that displays the Unity logo lately is terrible, not just steam but every market place. I downloaded a car racing game with a really spiffy looking logo on my Amazon FireTV last night to play and saw the unity logo and was like “ok hold on, lets be fair” - then fire it up and it is basically one of the car demos from a kit on the asset store. They had the gall to just rip it and add in-app purchases and some really basic stuff mainly just to support that one feature(monetization).

Sad state of affairs.

I hadn’t put a lot of thought into the legality of it. So if someone flips an asset like that, and the creator of the asset complains that they have been plagiarized, nothing can be done about it? If the answer really is no from a legal perspective, that is depressing. I feel like most forms of plagiarism don’t result in legal ramifications. Normally someone complains - the site hosting the content realizes the issue - and then the content is removed. It’s really only the examples where industrial-level plagiarism occurs, like software or hardware (think Apple/Microsoft/Samsung products), where legal representation is ever brought into the mix.