Unity has backed down in its battle with Improbable over the cloud platfrom SpatialOS. And now Improbable is promising to move forward with Unity Technologies and developers that use the Unity game-dev tools.
On Wednesday, Unity changed its terms of service. It now explicitly permits developers to use its game engine with platforms like SpatialOS. Improbable helped forced this change by revealing that Unity had revoked its Unity license. Epic, which runs the competing Unreal Engine, even stepped in to offer money to move Unity developers to something “more open.”
SpatialOS is a cloud service that makes it easier for developers to add online multiplayer. It works with game engines including Unity, Unreal, CryEngine, and more. And now, that platform has full permission to continue running Unity games.
“Improbable is glad that Unity Technologies has done the right thing by making Unity an open platform,” an Improbable spokesperson said in a statement provided to GamesBeat. “Improbable has access to its Unity licenses again and can provide full support to developers building games with Unity and SpatialOS. [We are] confident that this situation will not arise again. [Our engineers will] continue to update SpatialOS to work with Unity.”
Unity pulled Improbable’s authorization because the two companies don’t have a partnership. This is something that Unity wants for every competing platform company.
And that’s something that Improbable claims it still wants to do.
“We think the best thing for developers would be for Unity and Improbable to formally partner,” an Improbable spokesperson said. “And we hope to be able to discuss this in the future.”
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This is all good news for developers. While Unity claims it was trying to protect its platform, it was doing so at the expense of game creators.
And now that Unity has made a very public commitment to openness, developers are free to make the best games that they can.
Improbable also notes that this ensures uniform openness among Unity, Unreal, and CryEngine.
“The three largest third-party engine makers in the games industry have now confirmed that developers should be able to host engines wherever they want in the cloud,” said the Improbable spokesperson. “This is a key step, technologically, toward making the next generation of virtual worlds possible.”
Source: VentureBeat
