Where and how to check if game was developed with bought Unity3D licence (not cracked app)?

Question

We hired an external team from Eastern country. They built our mobile game app using Unity3d which we paid a lot of $K. We asked them to only use the software with bought license, not cracked one, and they said they will do it.

Now, we're ready to publish apps to official stores and I read on the net that guys from unity3d can always check if the app was made via bought license or via cracked software. If they discover it's been made with cracked software, they will ban the app and probably prosecute us.

Where can we find such tool to confirm that our software was indeed made by 100% licensed unity3d piece of software?

Answer 1

I don't know if it's true that Unity can validate that a deployment of a game was made with a valid license or not, but it looks like if it is true they haven't released any tools you can use to perform this validation yourself (which is not uncommon, offhand the only company I'm aware of that does make it possible for you to do this yourself is Microsoft with Windows and Office).

Your best bet, then, is likely to

• Get in touch with your developer and ask them to provide some kind of validation or proof that a valid license was used.

• Get in touch with Unity and ask them if they can help resolve your situation.

It's not really, strictly speaking, Unity's problem but they may be willing to help you out if you explain your situation.

Answer 2

As Josh mentioned in his answer, asking for proof is pretty much the only thing you can do -- something like a screenshot of purchase confirmation, or the email they send you when the purchase goes through.

Better yet, next time, you buy it and send them the license key.

Better still, put something in your contract next time if you don't trust them -- some sort of penalty/punishment/contingency. Since it seems like you don't trust them, I would go so far are putting a clause like "you get paid when the app successfully makes it to the app store, and not before." (Of course, you will probably still need some sort of good faith down payment.)

Answer 3

Generally for contracted work you might want to require Errors and Omissions ("E&O") insurance (see Gamasutra , Also an indemnation clause. If it's too late to amend the contract I would check with Unity themselves. There is a 'am I legal' option in unity, but I think it only phones home to the app store and verifies that the 'app' itself is legit (its for you not 'the engine'.)