Unlicensed copy of Unity pro

A few days ago, I saw an interesting thread on Reddit asking about working with teams who use unlicensed copies. Obviously releasing the game could get all involved parties into a lot of trouble, with fines and such.

But now I’m wondering a couple of things with the minimal difference between Unity Free and Unity Pro lately:

  1. What are the consequences for using an unlicensed copy of Unity Pro, and releasing the game for money?
  2. What are the consequences for using an unlicensed copy of Unity Pro, and releasing the game for free?
  3. What are the consequences for using an unlicensed copy of Unity Pro, then when the game is complete you release build the game with Unity Free, and release the game for money?
  4. What are the consequences for using an unlicensed copy of Unity Pro, then when the game is complete you release build the game with Unity Free, and release the game for free?

In my opinion, it’s immoral and unethical to release a product for money when you don’t own the license of the product. But I don’t exactly know my thoughts about the remaining three.

I’m in no way thinking about pirating the software, but I’m all in for seeing people’s opinions.

Since Unreal Engine and the upcoming Source 2 are both free, pirating has no point. But it still has a point in Unity. 2 things: Dark Theme and the Splash Screen at the beginning is gone.

If any Unity staff is reading this: Please rename “Personal Edition” to “Indie Edition”. Releasing the game under a Personal license means that it’s for private use only, but it is not.

It’s still illegal in all of those cases. Consequences will always vary significantly if charges are pressed.

If you’re not ready to fork over the money for a single Unity Pro license then you’re not ready to deal with the consequences of doing any of those things.

Why don’t you read the Unity license page to find out what the conditions are?
They explain them quite clearly.

Everything you refer to is pretty much out of date and no longer applicable to Unity 5.
The main condition that exists is if your annual turnover is > $100 000, then you need to purchase a license.
And if you are involved in real money gambling software, you require a special license too.

As to the actual ‘consequences’ of breaking the Unity law, your mileage may vary.

Am I the only who think its kinda stupid you have to be a pro customer to try out the beta releases?

Having only gotten started with learning unity since late 4.6/5 the 1.5gb patches for 5. releases have been annoying to say the least, so I was checking 5.3 and pleased to see that its download size for patches has been significantly reduced by removing all the extras you might not need in development. I guess a sign of all the bug fix releases 5.3 will have… afterall only pro customers can test it. Still looking at some of the features in it that I wanted to use like built in json support, it seems most of its only half baked implementation, I would have thought alot of the future plans for json support should already be there.

Of course I’ve gotten into liking Unity mainly for its c# support but I can’t help but look at Unreal Engine as the next step. If I ever made a game that was completely finished let alone actually made any money back I still feel the Unity pro license not really that worth it. Not unless I was making back a lot more than the monthly cost of a pro license from the game(s) made from it.

It’s not at all stupid, since when doing completely open betas, 80% of the bug reports are bogus, which is a huge waste of time. Limiting betas to Pro users significantly increases bug report quality. It may seem unfair, but that’s the reality.

Yes, that’s something that people have wanted for a long time and they’re now in a position to make it happen, after having made a lot of internal changes to the way Unity works. It’s nothing to do with Pro users; that’s for everybody.

You’re only required to buy Pro if you make >$100K, so if you don’t think it’s worth it before then, that’s totally fine.

–Eric

The consequences are, breaking our EULA which is breaking the law.

Talking about piracy no matter how hypothetical, is not allowed on this site, closing this topic.

1 Like