Unity is merging with ironSource a know malware provider

[gingisep]

Any dev using Unity for their games can tell that Unity is literally a blank canvas when a new project is made, it does not even contain a renderer, or post processing. Literally nothing, until you start to import all the things you need as it is based on packages, that includes analytics and monetization related stuff (Prior to their acquisition), and the latter is basically used only for Mobile Games. People would rage to see ads in their PC games, and those are not allowed for adult games anyways.

You're speaking feature-wise, but that's oversimplification on what software can do if not properly sandboxed.
By any chance.. could you disassemble/reverse engineer unity as an editor, and/or a game on its own and state the code has no telemetry or other malewares?

No, the games made in Unity will not suddenly turn into malwares.
Many AAA companies use Unity, and even if they went mad and want to destroy their Game Engine, updates for the Engine are never automatic or mandatory, in fact... For my current project, I am still using 2019.4.30f1.
Even in the impossible worst case scenarios, you could still use an older version of Unity just fine.

Speaking for myself, I know that no unity game will have network permissions on my machine, for as far as I can tune the system to block it (assumed I still want to risk to play some of them).

The company was suspicious from a lot of time, they probably have a lot of dormant telemetry code released in years.
This move is just a reveal of their own true color, and its teaching a lot of gamedev what's the deal with open source and community driven projects.

I respect your opinion, and at the same time I won't accept to downplay the associated risk.

 

[cavjustica]

Unity literally promised investors to spy on users by going around Apple rules, and failed to do so, losing 5 billion market cap. What makes you think they won't try that using IronSource regardless of plugins developers install? And how a random user will know what plugins the developer of the particular game he wants, were used?

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[lobotomist]

The company was suspicious from a lot of time, they probably have a

I respect your opinion, and at the same time I won't accept to downplay the associated risk.

To be fair what you are saying is borderline tinfoil hat territory, so i guess I won't accept to overplay the risk.

 

[Winterfire]

Any code with the right knowledge can be altered.

Except that there is no auto patcher and no mandatory updates.
Even if they added such a thing (which would be absurd for a Game Engine), they would do so in the newer releases of Unity which are unusable for production to begin with.

Even if they forced ads in everyone's games somehow, there's no way that would be an issue for NSFW games. If I wanted to add monetization right now, I would not be able to. Not only because it is not a mobile game, but because it's NSFW and ads are not allowed in such games.

Fact is, unity developers themselves decided to ally with a known malware spreader.

True.
It is one of the many bad choices they have done lately, but the worst one is still:

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There is no telling what will happen now with this engine, so again, avoid like plague.

There is no telling what can happen with anything, but the only ones that should avoid this Game Engine are future devs simply because there are better alternatives that offer much more.
When it comes to players, their only concern is whether a game is good or not.

You're speaking feature-wise, but that's oversimplification on what software can do if not properly sandboxed.
By any chance.. could you disassemble/reverse engineer unity as an editor, and/or a game on its own and state the code has no telemetry or other malewares?

AAA companies can access the source code and edit it, I am using the free version as anyone else does with the Unity Logo displayed at the beginning of their games.
You can easily see for yourself if Unity or an Unity game is trying to connect somewhere, if you are highly paranoid you can also make sure it cannot connect anywhere, and you'll see that every game works just fine.
Some game devs use analytics, but again that's an optional and harmless package.

Speaking for myself, I know that no unity game will have network permissions on my machine, for as far as I can tune the system to block it (assumed I still want to risk to play some of them).

The only thing that'll affect is Online Games (which will prevent you from playing for obvious reasons), games using Patreon API (which can get easily cracked anyways), and those who installed analytics (which doesn't prevent you from playing them).

its teaching a lot of gamedev what's the deal with open source and community driven projects.

That's the only good thing from all of this, there are many open source and better alternatives.
Even if you do not want to go for them, you can always go for Unreal.

I respect your opinion, and at the same time I won't accept to downplay the associated risk.

I am not downplaying any risk, I just know what I am talking about and I detest fear mongering in any context.
Those are bad news, and no one is questioning that, but saying "Unity games are now malware!" is false and I am explaining why.

Of course if you were to say "Mobile games containg ads using Unity might now contain malwares!" - that would be a totally different thing. I mean, I use adblock all the time and I'd feel naked without it. For all I know, all ads have potential malware, but it's a non issue for the nsfw scene.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

Unity literally promised investors to spy on users by going around Apple rules, and failed to do so, losing 5 billion market cap. What makes you think they won't try that using IronSource regardless of plugins developers install? And how a random user will know what plugins the developer of the particular game he wants, were used?

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Hot damn.

 

[gingisep]

To be fair what you are saying is borderline tinfoil hat territory, so i guess I won't accept to overplay the risk.

No, its not: its software.

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If you know software, you don't trust software.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

There is no telling what can happen with anything

Not with anything, but with companies that are LITERALLY WANT TO SPY ON YOU and ALLY WITH A MALWARE SPREADER.

Ya dig the difference yet bruh?
I'm fucking amazed anyone would go to such lengths to white knight for a fucking malware company.

 

[Winterfire]

Unity literally promised investors to spy on users by going around Apple rules, and failed to do so, losing 5 billion market cap. What makes you think they won't try that using IronSource regardless of plugins developers install? And how a random user will know what plugins the developer of the particular game he wants, were used?

You must be registered to see the links

Because there is no auto patching, or any way for them to do so.
That could be a possibility for the newest releases, and people would quickly discover that.

Once discovered, Unity would be fucked because as you have said, there'd be no way for users to be able to tell which Unity version a game uses... I do not really see them killing their own engine like that, but then again, I wouldn't be too surprised if that happened, since they made a lot of dumb choices in the past, especially recently.

Not with anything, but with companies that are LITERALLY WANT TO SPY ON YOU and ALLY WITH A MALWARE SPREADER.

Ya dig the difference yet bruh?
I'm fucking amazed anyone would go to such lengths to white knight for a fucking malware company.

Again, I am not "White knighting" for them, I am just being a realist because I have been using this Game Engine for a very long time and I know how it works.

I mean... Come on, do you really believe that they have a big red button in their HQ and once pressed, all the unity games ever made suddenly turn into malware? I am not sure if you are fear mongering because you have a really gross misunderstanding of how this works, or you are just doing this for fun.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

I mean... Come on, do you really believe that they have a big red button in their HQ and once pressed, all the unity games ever made suddenly turn into malware? I am not sure if you are fear mongering because you have a really gross misunderstanding of how this works, or you are just doing this for fun.

Who know what they have?
That's why i said better safe than sorry, old wisdom bruh.

 

[Winterfire]

Who know what they have?
That's why i said better safe than sorry, old wisdom bruh.

That's true for everything.

I mean, if we want to be paranoid, then let's ask ourselves "I wonder what they are doing in the background those new AAA games that require constant access to our internet even if they are single player games".
Do you trust every one of those games only because they are made by AAA companies?

If you want to be paranoid, you are free to disable internet access to all games you play, and on the great majority of them you'll have no issues.
However, that would hardly change anything since I have never seen an Unity Game here with ADS, people would rage at that even prior to these news.

I'd be paranoid about mobile games with ads, rightfully so since I use adblock, unity or not.

 

[gingisep]

I mean, if we want to be paranoid,

no we are not paranoid.

log4shell was a non intentional maleware spread all over the world.

think what could intentional maleware be

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

"I wonder what they are doing in the background those new AAA games that require constant access to our internet even if they are single player games".

Good question.
That's why i avoid those, too.
Not about to have the dubious fun of finding out one day when somebody will finally discover something.

since I have never seen

Yeah and because YOU have NEVER seen something it's ABSOLUTELY FUCKING SAFE.
Indeed.

 

[anne O'nymous]

No, the games made in Unity will not suddenly turn into malwares.

Totally agree. The risk will not be higher now, nor lower...

Any code with the right knowledge can be altered.

And with the right knowledge, any code can be created. Any unity game is already a potential malware, it's only the faith we have in its author (or the lack of faith in its codding knowledge), that make us trust it.

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, post: 8552486, member: 3590149"]
Fact is, unity developers themselves decided to ally with a known malware spreader.

The fact is that Unity developers are not at all happy with the decision, made by the board of the company which employ them, to ally with a society that spread malware in the past.

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, post: 8552486, member: 3590149"]
There is no telling what will happen now with this engine, so again, avoid like plague.

Unless a module is mandatory, what devs will see really quickly, there's absolutely no risk.

 

[Winterfire]

Yeah and because YOU have NEVER seen something it's ABSOLUTELY FUCKING SAFE.
Indeed.

I mean... If they can spread malware without network access on an old (2019) release which means they had been planning this for a very long ago, I'd be damn impressed.

I am fairly sure that is impossible, hence why I am also fairly sure that it is safe.
Also, ever since a Ren'Py game caused a false positive for me because of an icon, I have been dropping my release on VirusTotal to test it... Now, I am not going to say that if it doesn't get detected by VirusTotal, then it means it's 100% safe, but... What is, at that point?

Also, dumb decisions aside, what would they gain from killing their own Game Engine?

I am just considering all those facts and being realistic about it, but you think I am a White Knight when I just do not follow the whole fear thingie.

 

[Winterfire]

And with the right knowledge, any code can be created. Any unity game is already a potential malware, it's only the faith we have in its author (or the lack of faith in its codding knowledge), that make us trust it.

Any software, game or not, is a potential malware.
It is the reason why you won't run any executable, or anything really, blindly from a not reliable source.
Funnily enough, software can harm a device even unintentionally.

Unless a module is mandatory, what devs will see really quickly, there's absolutely no risk.

Thing is, nothing in Unity is mandatory.
Everything is an optional package, and even if you want to be paranoid about it, both devs and players can block network access and everything will work just fine.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

Any unity game is already a potential malware

Even bigger reason to jump ship from it faster rather than later.
Especially for the devs i'm guessing.
Unity ain't getting it's reputation back after this one, and that reputation will only serve to drag down developers who chose Unity.

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

Ren'Py game caused a false positive for me because of an icon

Alright this one cracked me up.

 

[anne O'nymous]

Even bigger reason to jump ship from it faster rather than later.

And to jump on what other ship ? Every RPG Maker game is a potential malware. Every Unreal game is a potential malware. Every Ren'Py Game is a potential malware. Every Game Maker game is a potential malware... Every fucking piece of software that is proceeded on your computer is a potential malware. Even this forum is a potential malware, through it's javascript applets and its ads.

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, post: 8552842, member: 3590149"]
Especially for the devs i'm guessing.

Read again what you answer to. I explicitly pointed the dev itself as reason why his game is a malware.

Thing is, nothing in Unity is mandatory.

I know. I probably should have wrote it "unless a package become mandatory".

 

[♍VoidTraveler]

Also, dumb decisions aside, what would they gain from killing their own Game Engine?

Maybe some embezzling is in the works within the firm... so they created all this noise to divert attention...
Well, at any rate, Unity is done i think.

 

[sharpys]

I know they're trying to pivot hard into the mobile development scene but Zynga already tried that & it wasn't enough. Results were they fell from grace and eventually got bought out by Take Two. I can probably see the same thing happening here except this time, because the majority of management are ex-EA execs, & in true American business acumen, they'll try to butter up Unity Tech. for some type of corporate sale or merger to another company later on. Probably not EA as they themselves are also looking to be acquired up.

Edit: In fact, if you can understand the vision & thought of the current CEO, you'll know where's unity's going next: