koobas.hobune.stream
Can someone use Unity Personal Edition on company's computer for private purposes?
Hi all,
I'm working on small project using Unity with my friends. We don't have a company so we use Personal Edition. We would like to let our other friend test the game we make but he has a company (owns it) that makes probably 100k$+ per year (and spends most of it investing in some stuff so after all he doesn't earn much). He only has one notebook which is a property of his company and doesn't want to buy another one just to install Unity free of charge. My question is can he use Unity Personal Edition (paying nothing)? We plan to publish that game after that so technically he would participate in the process of creating it BUT we would start our own bussiness then, so the game would be a property of our new company and all income also would be collected by it. It's really tricky situation so I need your help to be 100% sure. @DonkeyMalonkey, maybe you could help here? I saw you answered in a similar question.
Thank you in advance :)
I almost feel honored to be mentioned in your question, but i think it has already been answered quite thoroughly.
Good luck anyway! Greetings Donkey$$anonymous$$.
Standard disclaimer: this is just opinion from someone who isn't your lawyer.
I think you have it backwards. A group of you and some guys who have never made money from selling games can definitely use Unity personal. The problem is your friend's business shouldn't be loaning out company property to a start-up (your game-making.) The laptop was probably claimed as a business expense, so your friend is about to commit tax fraud.
Now, people do that stuff all the time, and if by some crazy coincidence the tax people catch your friend and care, the deduction is disallowed and maybe there's a fine (source: the episode of Burn Notice where Sam gets audited.)
The problem happens, and it does, when more and more company resources are moved over to game-making, maybe your friend's accountant does some some work on the company dime, you make a small App for your friend's business ... . Pretty soon "we're just some friends making a game with our own resources" is a thin fiction.
In addition to what Owen said, we the UA community are not selling, or licensing Unity. You should technically be asking Unity Technologies about legal information.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm afraid of: we wouldn't use any resource of my friend's company to improve our product - if he hadn't that notebook he would have a private one. So in moral way we are fully fair BUT before the law he would commit tax fraud (the laptop is claimed a business expense).
I am really far from creating apps for his buisness - in his profession I can't even imagine any usefull programm created by few people, even in Unity. It's not a coincidence he spends that much money, software he uses is a real high-end stuff. So in that matter I am sure we would be able to keep things separated: our buisness, his buisness and his Unity version on company's hardware. But I appreciate your warning; it's easy to step by step commit worse and worse felonys.
You can try to directly contact the Unity Support Team, I don't think anyone here can answer this. I would also like to know the answer. If we are to think about it, A payed license is required if your revenue hits a certain limit by selling the game you created. But since the company doesn't get money by selling the game, I guess it's ok to use it. But just to make sure, use this link to contact them https://unity3d.com/contact and select the appropriate category. Please post the answer after you get it. Thanks.
Thank you for the advice. Surely I will post any feedback I get from the support ASAP.
@SkorpionX, did you get an answer from the support $$anonymous$$m?
