Unity, the development engine used by thousands of games, has had it’s terms of service updated and the new wording includes a section which expressly forbids using a service running in the cloud. Unfortunately a lot of games do use that, particularly one called SpatialOS, and as of now every single on those games is now in violation of the TOS.
That means games in development can no longer be worked on, and games that are already released will have to be shut down. Studios including Bossa, Jagex, and Spilt Milk have been affected.
IMPORTANT UPDATE
Terrible news have broke out today: Unity has revoked SpatialOS' license. It seems Unity-as-a-server is no more – a disaster for many of companies, including ours. Pre-Alpha servers will be down until further notice.
More info here: https://t.co/qWicjuLgjy
— Fractured (@FracturedMMO) January 10, 2019
Hi – we’ve got some really bad news.
Due to a dispute between Improbable
& Unity we have to shut down the Lazarus servers.It’s going to be down for an undetermined amount of time, basically until the dispute is resolved, one way or another.https://t.co/MonFIHime0
— Spilt Milk ? (@SpiltMilkStudio) January 10, 2019
It seems that Improbable, who own SpatialOS, had been trying to work out a deal with Unity but for whatever reason Unity threw their toys out of the pram and cut them out completely.
Improbable has said that “all existing SpatialOS and Unity games, including production games and in-development games of all developers, are now in breach of Unity’s license terms.”
Source: ARS
