Hey guys,

I just wanted to thank our forum users for their support and thoughtful analyses about Apple’s new ToS (terms of service) for its iPhone OS 4.0, due to be released this summer. As you are probably all aware by now, the new ToS has led to widespread speculation on blogs and in the trade press about how the change in wording could affect products marketed on the Apple AppStore.

As is so often the case with “legalese,” the new ToS are difficult to parse with certainty and open to broad interpretation—particularly by Apple itself. Some have noted that the strictest possible interpretation could prohibit many products from being marketed on the App Store. Others have argued that under more benign interpretations of the new terms, Unity and others will be just fine.

Apple has built a tremendous marketplace for all of us, and it’s great for those who successfully take advantage of it. The flipside, of course, is that the power there so clearly resides with Apple.

This is certainly not the first time that developers of all types of apps have faced sometimes confusing changes in rules, or their interpretation. It’s a risk we all run in basing parts of our businesses on Apple.

Here at Unity, we are working hard on getting good information, and working to understand whether – or how – the new changes could affect the developer community and others. We have reached out to both official and unofficial contacts at Apple, we are talking to other companies in a similar situation to us, and we’ve been diligent in reading the ToS to get to the best legal (and business-wise) analysis of it.

We haven’t heard anything from Apple about this affecting us, and we believe that with hundreds of titles (or probably over a thousand by now), including a significant proportion of the best selling ones, we’re adding so much value to the iPhone ecosystem that Apple can’t possibly want to shut that down.

Our current best guess is that we’ll be fine. But it would obviously be irresponsible to guarantee that. What I can guarantee is that we’ll continue to do everything in our power to make this work, and that we will be here to inform you when we know more – as soon as we know more.

PS. In the ancient days of the App Store (July 2008), Apple very late changed the kernel to disallow JIT (just-in-time) compilation. What we did instead was spend several months changing Mono to AOT (ahead of time) compile scripts instead (this is why some dynamic constructs in our JavaScript doesn’t work on the iPhone). It was a lot of work, but we made it work to enable all these amazing Unity games to be sold in the App Store, many of which have gone on to be bestsellers and made their creators rich and famous.

Thanks again for your support. We’re so very proud of you all.

First I would like to thank our forum users for their support and thoughtful analyses about Apple’s new ToS (terms of service) for iPhone OS 4.0, due to be released this summer. As you are probably all aware by now, the new ToS has led to widespread speculation on blogs and in the press about how the change in wording could affect apps sold on Apple’s App Store.

As is so often the case with “legalese,” the new ToS are difficult to parse with certainty and open to broad interpretation – not least by Apple itself. Some have noted that the strictest possible interpretation could prohibit many products from being marketed on the App Store. Others have argued that under more benign interpretations of the new terms, Unity and others will be just fine.

Apple has built a tremendous marketplace for all of us, and it’s great for those who successfully take advantage of it. The flipside, of course, is that the power there so clearly resides with Apple.

This is certainly not the first time that developers of all types of apps have faced sometimes confusing changes in rules, or their interpretation. It’s a risk we all run in basing parts of our businesses on Apple.

Here at Unity, we are working hard on getting good information, and working to understand whether – or how – the new changes could affect the developer community and others. We have reached out to both official and unofficial contacts at Apple, we are talking to other companies in a similar situation to us, and we’ve been diligent in reading the ToS to get to the best legal (and business-wise) analysis of it.

We haven’t heard anything from Apple about this affecting us, and we believe that with hundreds of titles (or probably over a thousand by now), including a significant proportion of the best selling ones, we’re adding so much value to the iPhone ecosystem that Apple can’t possibly want to shut that down.

Our current best guess is that we’ll be fine. But it would obviously be irresponsible to guarantee that. What I can guarantee is that we’ll continue to do everything in our power to make this work, and that we will be here to inform you when we know more – as soon as we know more.

PS. In the ancient days of the App Store (July 2008), Apple changed the kernel to disallow JIT (just-in-time) compilation. We worked around this by changing Mono to AOT (ahead of time) compile scripts instead (this is why some dynamic constructs in our JavaScript doesn’t work on the iPhone). It was a lot of work, but we made it work to enable all these amazing Unity games to be sold in the App Store, many of which have gone on to be bestsellers and made their creators rich and famous. We’re so very proud of you.

Thanks again for your support.