Everyone can agree on VLC being the best video player, right? Game developers can agree on it too, since it is a great utility for playing multimedia in games, and/or have a video player included. However, disaster struck; Unity has now banned VLC from the Unity Store, seemingly due to it being under the LGPL license which is a “Violation of section 5.10.4 of the Provider agreement.” This is a contridiction however. According to Martin Finkel in the linked article, “Unity itself, both the Editor and the runtime (which means your shipped game) is already using LGPL dependencies! Unity is built on libraries such as Lame, libiconv, libwebsockets and websockify.js (at least).” Unity is swiftly coming to it’s demise.
Edit: link to Videolan Blog Post: https://mfkl.github.io/2024/01/10/unity-double-oss-standards.html
You must log in or register to comment.
Found the article where the screenshot came from, and wow it’s even more infuriating! The VideoLAN folks tried to work with them for months, and Unity seems to have cranial rectal inversion.
Unity is probably developing their own video player and they wants devs to pay them for it, not use VLC for free.
This is almost certainly the case
Spot-on, this would be my bet too.
Capitalist making decisions based only on increased ROI?
Say it isn’t so.
Fuck I hate this “single goal” system.
So fucking short sighted.
😑↔️🍑
For anyone wondering:
- There was a plugin on Unity Store that acted a bridge between Unity and libVLC, which allowed developers to make video players inside the game engine. As the post says, it got removed.
- This plugin isn’t made by VideoLAN, it’s made by a company named Videolabs that includes several people who supposedly have contributed a lot on VLC and FFMPEG.
- The Videolan team made a blog post about this, if you want to know more: https://mfkl.github.io/2024/01/10/unity-double-oss-standards.html
VideoLabs is made up of many of the same contributors of VideoLAN, including Jean-Baptiste Kempf themself. It is arguable that this is in fact Unity banning VideoLAN’s VLC bridges for media playback in Unity.
I also thought VLC was a bit shaky on their legality as well, but since their HQ was in a Nordic country (iirc) with more lax copyright laws, they got away with it.
So I wouldn’t blame an app store for not wanting to take on legal gray area risk.
VLC is just a media player. It isn’t on them if anyone is using it to watch or listen pirated content just as much as it isn’t on Adobe or Microsoft if people use them to read pirated books. They aren’t the one hosting or distributing the pirated content
Really, I get an off feeling just by trying to parse out what is your reasoning here. Did we get to a point that technology is so corporately-controlled that the idea of a program can freely open files of a certain type is inherently subversive, as opposed to a service or storefront where everything is tied to some corporately-owned licenses?
But I shouldn’t be alarmist and make too many assumptions. What is the “legal gray area risk” that you mean here?
For context.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/if-vlc-can-ship-a-free-dvd-player-why-cant-microsoft/
Under French law DVD and Blu-ray codecs aren’t patentable and VLC is based in France. The organisation isn’t breaking any laws.
Whether using VLC in the US is the legal grey area.
So it’s not VideoLAN who might be breaking a law, it’s you by circumventing the anti piracy keys in DVDs and Blurays. Millennium copyright act and anywhere that signs up to a treaty containing reciprocal copyright law might have an issue.
Patent infringements might also be possible in the US if you edited that open source code in that country, but US to EU patent treaties don’t cover software France deems unpatentable so distributing the codec is probably fine as long as it’s of French origin (and non-commercial use as per the GPL licence)
In the UK, the codec might be patentable now after Brexit interestingly but we haven’t yet diverged on patent treaties with the EU yet as far as I know and we’re part of the US patent treaty still.
Similar things happened with MP3 codecs in Linux before it was also made free. You’d either be prompted to make the choice to install yourself during or after the install. Or perhaps 2 downloads offered, one with and one without.
All to show you as an individual made the choice to use those codecs. If there were any possible damages from an individual download is would be less than $40 in licencing. So a lawyer would have to submit a case for each individual for that as a possible settlement, not even guaranteed.
As long as a large organisation isn’t liable for the codec install, it falls into “de minimis” legal territory.
I remember a Live CD install of Ubuntu required some hoops to get codecs at one point in the distant past. I looked it up then out of curiosity.
The “legal grey area” is about codec patents and dvd playback.
There’s no software patents in the EU, when it comes to codecs the only thing patentable would be hardware implementations and if you have one of those whoever produces your CPU/GPU already paid for a license. DVD region-locking is at least sus to the commission but they never went ahead with antitrust etc. stuff probably because the market became irrelevant, also, the industry was smart enough to make the whole of the EU a single region. DeCSS is more of a grey area and currently unsettled but a Finnish court judged it legal because the mechanism circumvented is not effective. That’s a legal, not technical, thing, they’re basically saying that it’s closer to “circumventing” a copy blocker by disabling autostart when inserting a CD into your computer than it is to circumventing by actual decryption, which makes sense as the scheme is weak AF. That said if the industry were to upgrade the scheme they nowadays might run into a different set of anti-trust issues. Generally speaking nobody, not even the industry, really seems to care as physical media is pretty much dead.
Exactly.
Also, I think there was some question about whether it was legal to use ffmpeg under the hood depending on the use case (commercial). I imagine a plugin used inside commercial games would certainly violate licenses based on non-commercial use.
But seeing how my original comment was received, I doubt many here are actually interested in why it may be necessary. Let the anti Unity circle jerk continue.
If you’re using it commercially you should be building it such that it only supports what you need, and what you need should be something not patent encumbered. Because why would you shell out money for an inferior codec when you can choose freely what to encode your stuff with.
“Should” and what’s actual reality in multi national copywrite / license / patent law are rarely the same. Especially in this case where you have to include other people’s work (codecs and media players) just by the nature of the problem.
I only told you what you should do if you don’t want to get into legal trouble, that it’s simple, easy, and a good idea even if it wasn’t for US-specific bullshit. If people don’t to act sensibly, well that’s on them.
I think the discussion below your comment is good, but your comment, and the community response (in the form of comment votes), illustrates a problem I have with the lemmy community.
Counter arguments are important.
It seems Lemmy has an even bigger problem than Reddit did with circle jerks. Any counter argument that goes against the grain is immediately pounced on here. Especially if you don’t write a page long disclaimer that you don’t necessarily agree with the decision, I’m one of you, etc.
I simply pointed out that <hated company> may have had a good reason to consider <3rd party plugin> a big enough legal liability to triage out of their store for the time being, based on some half remembered related knowledge of murky legal details of the past.
You immediately implied that I’m some sort of corporate shill, even if it was politely worded. And the community piled on in response.
It would be nice if there was at least an attempt to understand both sides of an argument here.
Are,…we,…the baddies?
But what about all those highly voted articles about how OTHER social media sites are dangerous echo chambers!
Very fair!
Ha. The downvotes - to what seems like a reasonable reply (even if people disagree) - seem like they’re proving you right :)
If Unity had a problem with VLC playing copyrighted content they should have said so, not issued a takedown on LGPL grounds. Regardless of whether they’re right or not from a lawyer perspective, it’s a bad look for Unity to show the double standard here.
but since their HQ was in a Nordic country (iirc)
It’s French. And there’s nothing shaky about it. It’s even fully endorsed by the EU.
Most of the people downvoting you dont seem to understand why VLC is only quasi legal in the US.
Because it can read DVDs. Which is evil (because they ought to pay a license). That’s all there is to it.
They’re stealing money from the mom and pop DVD technology license holders!!! 😡😡😡
Wait, people are still using Unity after they clearly demonstrated they’ll fuck you on a whim? Honestly, seems like everyone’s been given a fair warning about dealing with these scumbags. I get migrating a codebase is a motherfucker, and sometimes it is even easier to redevelop much or all of the project. But again, if you’re renting retail space from someone who is a psychopath, bipolar, and an arsonist (Unity in this case), and they might burn your shop down at any moment, sometimes you gotta move!
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: when a company does something that shows it doesn’t have its customers’ best interests in mind, it’s imperative that it be immediately and wholly abandoned.
Companies have long since learned that we’ll ignore major red flags for the sake of convenience, and at this point they’re not even trying to hide the flags - they’re proudly flying them and laughing as we continue to give them business.
This is a good policy, but it’s not always that simple for people who have been making games on the engine. Many people have spent years of their lives working on projects using Unity, or have already released products using Unity which they are now supporting. Changing a project to another game engine is a massive undertaking, so Unity has a semi-captive consumer base in the short term.
This is the same reason oracle is still in business. AKA the ol’ trap and gouge.
deleted by creator
Changing a project to another game engine is a massive undertaking
That’s the price they pay for not doing things right the first time.
Oh come on! They’re software developers! The code they wrote three years ago is total shit and you (we) know it, haha.
Take the time to learn something new, today. It’s practically what makes a software developer a software developer. If you’re not learning a new language, engine, or technique pretty regularly you’re going to have a hard time (eventually).
The reason why software developers reinvent the wheel so often is because we know that the old wheel is garbage. It at least, the way we used it was. After being a software dev for a few decades, looking at your old code should always give you a feeling of, “I could’ve done that better.”
Yeah! Everyone stop using Microsoft products today! I’m serious.
I took this same advice in 1999. Been using Linux on my desktop ever since 👍
Just like with unity: You have to learn some new skills if you switch to something else but the benefits outweigh the costs. It’s so much easier today than it was back then and this seems to be a universal truth: The sooner you switch off of any abusive platform the more quickly you’ll reap the rewards.
Even better: Later, after everyone who didn’t switch is bitching about the latest nonsense from their abusive vendor of choice you can rub it in their faces and be like, “I switched to Godot ages ago and I am so glad I don’t have to deal with this kind of shit anymore.” Just like how Linux users say similar things about the latest bullshit from Microsoft whenever it comes up in the news (which is often, which is why it’s become a trope).
New stuff would go well to end up under Godot. Porting your old s*** over and replicating all the assets and plugins is an insurmountable feet for most.
Uh… Ofc they are?
Even after all this I’m about to start a new game using unity. Why?
Because there’s no way I can bring it to market with the ecosystems available in any other major engine given the type of game that it is. I’ve already prototyped for almost a year using various options to narrow it down.
I would be forced to build so much from scratch for the mapping tech that I’d never ship it in say Godot.
Do I want to use unity? Hell no, but am I going to give up on my dream because screw unity? Hell no. I’m not into pyric victories.
There are a lot of ways to bring a game to market without Unity or Unreal. But if you can’t envision doing an input mapping system yourself just stop right now. It’s only going to get worse, engine or not.
It is classic internet outrage complely disconnected from what smaller game devs have to go through. Don’t get in the way of a good internet outrage as a legit, actual gamedev who knows why this is damn near impossible, or you’ll get downvoted.
The whole argument of leaving Unity hinge on the fact that Godot is a close replacement, it is not.
I get migrating a codebase is a motherfucker, and sometimes it is even easier to redevelop much or all of the project.
This is the price they pay for not doing things right the first time.
Front VLC blog, link in post above
"After months of slow back-and-forth over email trying to find a compromise, including offering to exclude LGPL code from the assets, Unity basically told us we were not welcome back to their Store, ever. Even if we were to remove all LGPL code from the Unity package.
Where it gets fun is that there are currently hundreds if not thousands of Unity assets that include LGPL dependencies (such as FFmpeg) in the Store right now. Enforcement is seemingly totally random, unless you get reported by someone, apparently."
Imagine not using FFmpeg or anything that uses FFmpeg 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I suppose there are a lot of companies who would be glad to make you pay for their proprietary video standard, we would just pay for something formerly free 😟
Any reason not to expect all the others to get reported now? If Unity wants to tear themselves down, might as well speed it up.
Is there legal grounds for selective enforcement of policies like that?
Depends on the reason they chose to have selective enforcement.
A good analogy is kicking someone out of a bar. If you do it because they’re a dickhead… perfectly fine. But if it’s because they’re black… not OK.
… so what you do is set up a rule that everybody will break - “no drinking with shoes on” - and only enforce it against people you want to kick out 👍
Hey that sounds familiar!
What pisses me off about the whole Unity thing is that if Unity makes itself eat shit then it just further consolidates engines into fewer hands. Godot is great and all but it doesn’t have everything Unreal has (I’m not throwing shade it’ll get there dw) and I really really don’t want Epic to have a bigger stranglehold on the games industry than it already does.
Unity had its niche and if the executives could stop fucking around it would be lovely to have as a competitor in the landscape.
Also to everyone saying “just don’t use Unity”: there are a lot of people who have put a lot of time and money and effort into learning Unity and it’s not exactly as easy as you think to just switch to an entirely new workflow. You also have to consider how impractical it is to switch engines mid-development. There’s a reason why Unreal 5 has been out for multiple years and we’re only just seeing games developed with it now. Developers (especially ones with big budgets and all the caveats they come with) don’t want to ship a game with the latest and greatest engine if there’s kinks to be worked out. This is why you still see Unreal 4 in games released today.
It almost makes me think the higher ups got paid to kill Unity. All the C-suite got golden parachutes if they kill the project now.
Then I remember OGL and the fat lack of competition they had, and remember C-suite often don’t know what they’re actually in charge of. Malice vs stupidity and such.
Epic donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to Godot when Unity was being dumb this summer, so either they think an open-source project is on the brink of making their competitor unprofitable and collapse, and think enough of the studios jumping ship will come to Unreal to cover that sum, or they’re concerned that someone will start enforcing antitrust laws and want something to point at to say they’re not a monopoly.
Epic is just a troll company. They donated to Godot when it served as a jab in the side of their competition (unity). Their entire business model is to inflict Stockholm Syndrome on their users via free games.
Their entire business model is Fortnite
Both. Definitely both.
I think they saw it as an opportunity to wash their image. “Look, we’re the good guys” kind of thing.
Both and also Embrace, Extend, Extinguish.
You are 100% correct of course. I do want to add that depending on the works/software of others is also a risk as well. It’s the tradeoff made when the developer decided not to build an engine from scratch. If the game engine company becomes shaky, the developers have to weigh that in when looking at the cost of switching or not. Or maybe everything will be fine.
there are a lot of people who have put a lot of time and money and effort into learning Unity and it’s not exactly as easy as you think to just switch to an entirely new workflow.
Honestly, that’s the price they pay we pay for not doing things right the first time.
I’m not sure why people have convinced themselves that they can just ignore problems and they will go away. Software licensing is an issue that pervades all development. Ignoring it is asinine and will lead you to wasting time and money on bullshit.
When I was picking an engine to learn, I chose Godot. Now I’m not bitching when Unity is dying because I said it was going to die years ago. People just like to ignore problems until they can’t.
Godot is fine for solo/very small indies and people trying to learn gamedev, but it is not ready quite yet. Most devs still are stuck using proprietary engines.
Lmao they really don’t want anyone to keep using their engine anymore
Go help out Godot or perhaps Bevy, financially, by contributing code &/or bug reports or by any other means you may be capable of.
When Unity dies you’ll be thankful you did.LGPL requires distributing the license with any code. I imagine unity does that with the core code, but it would be difficult to enforce that for assets distributed in their store, which they would be liable for legally. I imagine this will be resolved, but I no longer use Unity so idfc
From my understanding there are other third-party assets in the Unity store which use the LGPL but are not being removed.
Is there any information on them being given a pass?
Generally stuff like this goes in waves. I have no experience with the unity store, but it wouldn’t shock me to find out they haven’t always (and still might not…) required “apps” to list their licensing. Meaning this would be a somewhat manual effort done by a severely reduced staff.
And I’ll just add on that I expect this to happen to the other “asset” stores. In industry, “GPL is cancer” and “LGPL is herpes”. GPL can straight up “kill” a project and LGPL is usually a mass of headaches that are mostly manageable but can still “cause problems” at times.
I expect they will be unless they’re small enough to fly under the radar
No it won’t. This is 5.10.4 of the Unity Provider agreement, it’s total bullshit.
Provider represents and warrants that its Assets shall not contain (a) any software licensed under the GNU General Public License or GNU Library or Lesser General Public License, or any other license with terms that include a requirement to extend such license to any modification or combined work and provide for the distribution of the combined or modified product’s source code upon demand so that Customer content becomes subject to the terms of such license; or (b) any software that is a modification or derivative of any software licensed under the GNU General Public License or Library or Lesser Public License, or any other license with terms similar thereto so that Customer content become subject to the terms of such license.
Why is it bullshit? AFAIK, Unity wouldn’t be able to comply with LGPL without supplying their own source code, so then this would be the only logical outcome.
Unity let me go earlier this week, so I’m really not in the mood to defend them, but this is correct. I’m on the Unity hate train as much as the next guy and i feel this is pretty cut and dry.
Sad to hear it, hope you’ll find something else soon.
Thankfully I’m in Canada where Collective Layoffs are heavily protected, and I have a generous package to keep me afloat until I find the right job.
It is a sad week for tech because not everyone has these protections.
No, it’s not correct. Unity’s management might think that’s how the LGPL works, but they’re wrong.
The fact that they prefer to not do something at all instead of going through the hassle of doing something properly has always been a thing at Unity. It’s correct that it is for business reasons and not necessarily logical ones.
You are only required to give source code for changes to that part for LGPL code. So only the library requires that.
Other game engines supply source code. If Unity wants any hope of redemption they should let us inspect wtf it actually does on our computers (edit: and let us make it work for our needs).
You CAN access the source code, but it’s for corporate/enterprise partners. afaik
Charging for access is actually fine under L/GPL but after that you’re then free to redistribute at your own price. I imagine Unity heavily control how you use and distribute your modified engine (nonfree).
Unity uses the LGPL for parts of their own products. The GPL in most cases only requires that derivative work must also be shipped with the same license. The source code from providers doesn’t have to be distributed by unity, it has to be distributed by the provider. In this case that would be videoLAN, which has all their source code on GitHub. You can read the text of the LGPL here, and this is VideoLAN’s post about the situation.
That puts things into perspective, thanks!
The GPL in most cases only requires that derivative work must also be shipped with the same license. The source code from providers doesn’t have to be distributed by unity, it has to be distributed by the provider.
This is incorrect. The distributor of derivative works in binary form is responsible for providing the source code. They can refer to a server operated by a third party, but if that third party stops providing the source code the distributor remains obligated to ensure that it is still available. The only exception is for binaries which were originally received with a written offer of source code, where the offer can be passed on as-is, but that only applies for “occasional and non-commercial” distribution which wouldn’t work here.
Can you point to the section of the LGPL that describes what you’re claiming?
Section 6 of the GPLv3, which the LGPLv3 includes by reference as one of the required distribution terms in paragraph 4.d.0:
Convey the Minimal Corresponding Source under the terms of this License, and the Corresponding Application Code in a form suitable for, and under terms that permit, the user to recombine or relink the Application with a modified version of the Linked Version to produce a modified Combined Work, in the manner specified by section 6 of the GNU GPL for conveying Corresponding Source.
(emphasis added) There is the alternative of following 4.d.1 instead, but that’s only if the application links against a shared library already present on the user’s computer system—it couldn’t be distributed with the program.
GPLv3 section six offers five alternative methods of satisfying the obligation to provide source code. The first (6.a) applies only to physical distribution and must include source code with the physical media. The second (6.b) also requires physical distribution plus a written offer to provide the source code to anyone possessing the object code. The third (6.c) is the one I mentioned that applies only “occasionally and noncommercially” for those who received a written offer themselves under the previous clause. The fourth option (6.d) allows for the source to be provided through a network server:
If the place to copy the object code is a network server, the Corresponding Source may be on a different server (operated by you or a third party) that supports equivalent copying facilities, provided you maintain clear directions next to the object code saying where to find the Corresponding Source. Regardless of what server hosts the Corresponding Source, you remain obligated to ensure that it is available for as long as needed to satisfy these requirements.
The fifth and final alternative (6.e) pertains to object code provided through P2P distribution, with the same requirements as the fourth method for the source code.
Section A in section 3 of the LGPL is the out here for unity:
a) Give prominent notice with each copy of the object code that the Library is used in it and that the Library and its use are covered by this License.
As long as there is prominent notice with the distribution of the plugin, unity doesn’t need to distribute the source code.
I thought the point of the LGPL was to allow this sort of usage without requiring the release of source code. It’s an extension of the GPL to remove those requirements isn’t it?
I admit this is totally not my area, but couldn’t you say that about literally any online source that sold software from Steam to the Apple App Store?
Not just license. You also need to link to it as a shared library and allow users to replace it with their own build of the library. Meaning you can’t use stuff like DRM and anticheats.
Yup fair point I didn’t know that. Unity presumably does this with dlls that a technical user can easily swap out. In principle an asset store script could do this, but it would be very difficult to verify and enforce so I can see why they’d just ban the license outright as a CYA thing.
Maybe the answer is to distribute a vlc dll separately and only ship a linking/driving script via the asset store.
Technically it can be statically linked, but then you would need to provide artifacts (for example, object files for the non-LGPL modules) enabling the end user to “recombine or relink” the program with a modified version of the LGPL code.
Dynamic linking is usually simpler, though. And the DRM issues apply either way.
Not exactly. The LGPL inherits the methods of conveying source code from section 6 of the GPL, which has a number of different options. You can bundle the source code along with the compiled version, but you can also do it simply by including an offer the end user can redeem to get a copy of the source. For example you could include a link to the source code.
Okay but what’s the real reason?
💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵💵
Yes but how
Other folks in this thread are speculating that they want to put their own video player in the store.
And charge extra?
Well the VLC one was free, and I’m guessing theirs won’t be.
Just report every other package that includes ffmpeg.
Their asset store will dry up faster than a puddle of water in Death Valley if you do that. ◉‿◉
Why does VLC need to be in the Unity store when you can download it directly from videolan.org?
It’s for including it in Unity games as a component.
I thought we all agreed that building games in Unity was a bad idea.
This is further proof of that.
lots of games in active development still use it while others who were/are planning to use it will find this information useful in evaluating whether their project can still move forward using unity. not everyone can just choose to not use unity, as they’re already too heavily invested to pivot away.
Many people did, but humanity is not a hive mind. “We all” never agree on anything with 100% unanimity.
I’m pretty sure you’re wrong about that. I distinctly remember the meeting, there were cookies and Tim’s grandma made those brownies with the peanut butter M&Ms, and then we all voted and everyone agreed. It might not have been unanimous but everyone agreed to abide by the decision of the group.
In fact, I remember you were there. We talked about shopping for gifts, and how hard it is to find new indie music these days. You were wearing a sweatshirt with the cool design that everybody liked.
I think I’d remember wearing a sweatshirt, and I’m not at all into indie music, so that must have been someone else.
I’m mostly deer so I guess I don’t get invited to humanity’s all-hands meetings where decisions like this get made. :(
It was a joke
Yes we do.
Not enough of us, it seems.
It is.
Oh 🤦♂️
I saw Unity and talk about open licences and just assumed that this was talk about Ubuntu and the interface that comes with it…
Not a game developer but I have a hunch that its for displaying videos within the game. Like a cut scene.
Ohhh no, VLC has some problems with… who’s this Unity fellow again?
Wasn’t that the hivemimd robot guy from Mass Effect
No no. He’s the evil robot from the Marvel universe.
Nope, its the hive mind lady from Rick and Morty
Nope it’s that EA game with Creed the boxer
Some of these comments are wack. “Just stop using Unity” bro some people don’t get that choice.
I went out for a walk earlier, not too far just couple of miles to clear my head. Get some fresh air. Anyway, regardless of how many signs my council like to spend money on to display the consequence of leaving your dogs shit, people still do it. Fact is, I saw a dog shit and it’s getting harder to differentiate that dog shit and Unity.
Unity has an app store?
So does most popular game engines (like Unreal and Godot) to give game developers easier access to certain content they can use in their games.
Godot doesn’t have an asset store yet actually, but they’re planning on releasing one soon.
They do have an Asset Library currently, but it is all free, thus not a store.
