Found the terms allowing Unity to change/revoke the contract. The ToS was changed in October 2022 to include the following:

>23.2 Changes to Terms
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>To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, Unity reserves the right from time to time to (and you acknowledge that Unity may) modify these Terms (including, for the avoidance of doubt, the Additional Terms) without prior notice. If we modify these Terms, we will post the modification on the Site or otherwise provide you with notice of the modification. We will also update the “Last updated” date at the top of these Terms. By continuing to access or use the Offerings after we have provided you with notice of a modification, you agree to be bound by the modified Terms. If the modified Terms are not acceptable to you, your only recourse is to cease using the Services.
>
>Notwithstanding this section, if the Additional Terms, Commercial Terms, Offering Identification, Documentation or Policies include different terms or procedures related to modification of those policies and terms, modification may, at Unity’s option, be handled as described in those policies and terms.
>
>You acknowledge that your commitments with respect to the Offerings are not contingent on delivery of future features or functionality (or oral or written statements about future features or functionality).

and

>22.4 Effect of Termination of Terms
>
>Upon any termination of these Terms for any reason, (a) your account and your subscriptions and other Offerings, including those of your Authorized Users, and all rights granted to you under these Terms will immediately terminate, and (b) the effects described above with respect to expiration or termination of a subscription or other Offering will apply to all subscriptions and other Offerings. Your payment obligations, your responsibility for anyone who has obtains, accesses or uses Offerings through you or your account, and the following sections of these Terms will survive termination for any reason: User Content (Section 6), Data (Section 7), Unity Materials (Section 12.3), Use of Third-Party Materials and Services (Section 12.4), Third Party Software (Section 12.5) Use of User Content (Section 12.6), Collaboration and Sharing of User Content (Section 12.7), Feedback (Section 15), Limitations on Use (Section 16), Confidentiality (Section 17), Unity Proprietary Rights (Section 19), Disclaimers, Limitations on Liability (Section 20), Indemnity (Section 21), Effect of Termination of Terms (Section 22.4), Miscellaneous (Section 23), Country-Specific Terms (Section 24) and Definitions (Section 25).

Will it fly in court? Who knows, but at least indie devs can't afford to take that risk. Apparently Unity isn't backing down, so this seems to be the end of Unity.

>The point, Riccitiello said, is that the underpinning nature of free-to-play games like Clash of Clans is that they rely on whales who may spend $5,000 or $10,000 a month to pay for all those who don't spend a dime.
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>"With Unity, it's capped," Riccitiello said. "It's $75 a month or $1,500 for a perpetual license; we're not nickel-and-diming people and we're not charging them a royalty. When we say it's free, it's free. When we say $75 a month, it's $75 a month. Yeah, you can buy other stuff from us. [Unity 5 still offers supplemental subscriptions like Android Pro and iOS Pro.] We're not a one-trick pony, but we're not charging a royalty, which I think is akin to looking for whales. For example, if Candy Crush had a 5 percent royalty, the licensing fee for that would be billions over time, maybe $50 million in a given year. You have to pay $75 a month a lot of times to get to $50 million.
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>"I do think you could argue that royalties are quite a bit like free-to-play," he continued. "They sort of hook you and then try to exploit that relationship. That's not what we're trying to do. If you were to walk around Unity, you'll find this point about transparency, clarity... democracy is like every other paragraph of every other conversation. It's a deeply embedded value. We thought for a while about things like royalties, [but] we just didn't think it was right. We thought about the nickel-and-dime model of free-to-play, not to implement it, just to see whether it had any implications for us, but we didn't think so."

(March 3rd, 2015)

never liked everyone using unity but i also never liked the alternative (ue4-5) that everyone is probably going to switch to after this

Alternative is was and always will be rolling your own
But cashgrabs (led by el cheapo horror stuff) had mostly already moved on to UE before this anyway

>>1831
I assumed that they're going to switch to Godot instead. I believe a lot people use Unity because it was free below a certain revenue threshold. Godot fills that market niche better than UE, because it's completely free.

>>1833
Godot is literally a worse platform than Scratch, both from the dev and the user perspective.
More restrictive license, too
Go play PornEmpire if you want a representative experience of the quality of godot's native UI tools compared to e.g. unitytrash.

They've changed the terms. The runtime fee now applies only to games made with Unity versions released in 2024 or later (so no existing games) and is based on the number of sales (rather than installs or whatever) for games that aren't F2P.