According to what Unity reps said elsewhere, they have no way of knowing what's a bought install, what's a demo, what's a charity bundle, what's a pirated install, and what is someone loading a webpage with a WebGL program integrated (every page view = 1 install).

Instead, they want to estimate how much people owe them. Using secret methods with no accountability.

It would mean every Unity game was not-so-secretly shipped with code that phones home to the Unity company upon install.

Either they've been egregiously spying on gamers for years (and by extension, game developers using Unity have just been fine with that), or they're lying through their teeth.

RED FLAGS!! red flaaags. RED FLAAAGS, get your red flags heeeeere folks 🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩🚩

I love their response to (paraphrasing) "Are you going to do another Darth Vader and alter the deal on us in the future?" - "Oh yes, potentially every year."

Why couldn't someone set up a script to install, uninstall, and reinstall Unity games on a loop? That would fuck with their numbers hardcore.

If they could tell an install is pirated then they would lock it down

They either count all installs as legitimate or pirated copies are not picked up by their telemetry

All points made in that post are LMAO.

They estimate the installs. Or least thats what remains between they wont track installs and they have a proprietary data model to calculate them.

Enshittification takes its course.

No, they can not. This is just a standard PR response.

Can I pirate just the Unity bits, so they don't telemetrize?

Oh it's our fault for being confused is it, ok.

What a jackass.

Oh and look at that they are 100% going to increase the price on you down the line.

Which company will become insolvent 1st, Twitter or Unity?

So those who aren't victims of piracy will be "fairly hurt"?

Unity jumped the shark.

Engine was trash anyway. Unreal for lyfe.

I'm sure they can track the installation. Not sure if they can tell it was pirated.

Will probably be enforced via licensing. Maybe even self reported. Probably has a clause giving them permission to perform audits of your sales.

Not really, they just go by if the game isn't selling well, or rather isn't selling well enough for them, obviously they have to be careful not to do it too aggressively otherwise otherwise they'll come off as being greedy or whiny about poor sales, which isn't a good look on any dev (especially if it's not actually related to piracy, then it hurts their argument).

They've just been careful enough to only whip out the crybaby arguments when it'll work in their favor and seem enough like piracy, as opposed to doing it too much or at the wrong time and seeming salty about low sales (to be fair that's exactly what's happening, but people think they know more about who buys vs who pirates, rather than who buys vs who doesn't).

They can obviously track pirated installs.

They use computational predictions and quantum mathematical calculations through a software called trust me bro.