My late cat Dinah had the full name: Dinahsaurus Dinah the Dinahnator, but we often called her a list of other names. Dinahsaur was her favorite.

Now I have Ryuji aka chicken nugget, nuggie, tiny tiger

Yusuke aka Void Boy, Boy, Mr. Yusker

Yonah aka Yoyo, Demon, Evil One, Brat Cat, Yoner

Kimchi aka Kimmers, Kimmy, Kims, Kimcher

Unity is a game engine used by a lot of developers, many of them indies. Some popular games that use Unity are Among Us, Cuphead, Cult of the Lamb, and Tunic. They recently made several changes to their TOS that has upset the gaming community.

Unity used to have a clause in the TOS stating:

“if the Updated Terms adversely impact your rights, you may elect to continue to use any current-year versions of the Unity Software (e.g., 2018.x and 2018.y and any Long Term Supported (LTS) versions for that current-year release) according to the terms that applied just prior to the Updated Terms (the “Prior Terms”)”

This meant that if you didn’t agree with the new terms, you could continue using a different version of Unity and the new terms wouldn’t apply to you. In April 2023, they removed that clause completely. A week ago, they announced new terms: every game install will be charged a fee of up to $0.20 starting next year, depending on what Unity subscription the developers have and how much revenue/installs the game receives.

This change was set to cover all existing Unity games, even ones made on older versions. Any time anyone installed the game, even if they had installed it previously, the developer would be charged a fee. Many of the games made with Unity are under $20, with some of the popular ones being $5 or less. Immediately people thought of ways this could be trouble: Scripts to install the same game over and over, people sharing their game libraries with family/friends, those with multiple computers/laptops/tablets.

Unity announced on Sep 17, 2023 that they would not be going forward with this new policy:

We have heard you. We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused. We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of days. Thank you for your honest and critical feedback.

It’s unclear what Unity will do now. Many developers have started looking at an alternative called Godot, and some even plan on canceling their Unity subscription because they have lost faith in the company.

I always hate it when certain characters and quests in games don’t have as many options as other ones. It feels bad when you can’t save or help a character you really like, especially if there’s 100% a way it would work in the story, if it had been written in.

It seems to happen more often with animals and beasts. I really like dragons too, so it sucks that the only dragon isn’t able to be saved. I haven’t played BG3 yet. I remember being able to help a dragon in Divinity II, and not too far into the game either. If you haven’t played that, you could give it a try.