[HN Gopher] Unity's oldest community announces dissolution
___________________________________________________________________
Unity's oldest community announces dissolution
Author : Morizero
Score : 303 points
Date : 2023-09-25 18:05 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (farewell.bostonunitygroup.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (farewell.bostonunitygroup.com)
| karaterobot wrote:
| I grant the premise that Unity sucks and has made changes that
| make it much harder to be an indie developer using its runtime.
|
| That said, I don't understand the decision to shut the group and
| encourage members to move to a more general game dev group
| instead. If the reason is "everyone stopped using Unity, we don't
| have any members" then I understand, but the press release didn't
| say that. In fact it implied there might be thousands of members.
|
| The closest thing to a reason they gave was that Unity has become
| hostile to indie devs. But Unity doesn't run BUG, so if some
| people are still using Unity, which I assume is the case,
| wouldn't they still benefit from having a users group? If it's an
| act of protest by the group organizers, that seems annoying for
| the people who still use Unity and got value out of having access
| to that community.
|
| Without sufficient context to understand the decision, I find I'm
| not sure what this act accomplishes, or what it intended to
| accomplish.
| starkparker wrote:
| If the volunteer organizers of a group don't want to organize
| the group anymore, the group ceases to exist. If BUG members
| want BUG to continue to exist, they can volunteer to organize
| it. Nobody has any obligations past that.
| deely3 wrote:
| I think one of the reason of the group existing is because
| members trusted Unity. Now this trust is throwed out in trash.
| They can't force Unity to be good to users and they don't want
| to support Untity anymore. Thats all.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| Given the meetup group has 2,000+ members, and they haven't
| had an event since the announcement, I have a hard time
| believing all, or even a majority, (since it's so rare for
| the majority to even speak) had much input on this decision.
|
| The wording sounds like a few key members felt a certain way
| and decided to take the ball home with them instead of
| stepping down and leaving whoever didn't feel as strongly
| hurt to continue in their stead.
|
| _
|
| It happens often with groups past a certain size: Some people
| argue that having contributed to the growth up to that size
| justifies being able to take unilateral actions like this
|
| But in my opinion, once you get past a certain size, it's
| larger than you. Even if you've poured blood sweat and tears
| in, it's obviously taken contributions from many small
| players, who may have been willing to step up as big players.
|
| It's hard to believe that out of 2,000 people there's no
| group of people who couldn't have continued to get value out
| of the existence of the group post-Unity's actions.
| kdottt wrote:
| "More importantly, we've seen how easily and flippantly an
| executive-led business decision can risk bankrupting the studios
| we've worked so hard to build, threaten our livelihoods as
| professionals, and challenge the longevity of our industry. The
| Unity of today isn't the same company that it was when the group
| was founded, and the trust we used to have in the company has
| been completely eroded."
|
| Profoundly sad, and completely avoidable. Have never seen a
| company so quickly and completely just throw away all of their
| public good will.
| Mystery-Machine wrote:
| Have you ever heard of Twitter and Reddit?
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| "Good will" is an asset just like any other to be spent when
| the time is right. Sometimes a company will make the wrong bet
| and accidentally go out of business. Far more often there is a
| ton of backlash, their reputation goes in the tank, then they
| spend the next couple years building good will back up until
| the majority of people forget all about the past
| transgressions. Meanwhile the unpopular decision makes stacks
| of cash. Repeat the cycle ad-infinitum.
|
| To clarify, I don't endorse this behavior, but unfortunately,
| it's the modern way of business.
| Aditya_Garg wrote:
| Besides Reddit, do you have other examples ?
| [deleted]
| red_hare wrote:
| Etsy. Ever since the 2017 activist investor event, it feels
| like they've been trading good will with sellers for
| profits.
| [deleted]
| transcriptase wrote:
| I used to be able to buy amazing handmade items for
| reasonable prices and reasonable shipping from actual
| people running small storefronts on Etsy.
|
| Now it's just another e-commerce site that's been
| completely and utterly overrun with marked up Aliexpress
| junk and low quality copies of anything novel that gains
| the slightest bit of popularity. The few remaining
| authentic sellers now charge so much it's laughable
| unless you're wealthy enough that cost isn't a concern.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Where do you find authentic sellers?
| notpachet wrote:
| It began with the IPO; the investor takeover was just the
| logical conclusion.
| wetpaws wrote:
| [dead]
| rany_ wrote:
| I guess it's a gamble on whether you could gain users faster
| than you'd be losing them. Either way I don't think this can
| be the case with Unity due to how niche their product is with
| many alternatives (including free ones).
| brookst wrote:
| But isn't that as it should be?
|
| Just like you never step in the same river twice, you never
| do business with the same company twice. Staff and executives
| change over time, and companies shift for better or worse.
|
| Should we hold grudges against brands for things totally
| different people did 10? 20? 50? years ago? That seems weird
| to me.
|
| Unity specifically deserves loss of trust and all the pain
| they get. But in 5 years, or 10 years or whatever, should we
| assume they are less trustworthy than other companies because
| of what this group of managers did?
| nwiswell wrote:
| If you drink from a river and get cholera, would you drink
| from that river again in the future?
|
| It might be fine! Maybe on that particular day, somebody
| with cholera had just taken a shit upstream, and the
| bacteria are totally gone now. But it's still a useful
| prior, and that's the case here with whom you choose to
| conduct business.
|
| I think it's a question of burden of proof. You'd
| ordinarily not worry too much about cholera, but after an
| incident you'd want the water thoroughly and repeatedly
| tested. You probably would not say "eh, it's been 5 or 10
| years, it's most likely fine."
|
| Similarly you'd want some concrete evidence that _a company
| has actually changed_ , in a degree sufficient to offset
| your negative prior, before you'd consider engaging in any
| further business with them.
|
| But actually doing that research is a pain in the ass, so I
| think it's a reasonable strategy to simply prefer companies
| that _haven 't_ screwed you over wherever good options
| exist.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > If you drink from a river and get cholera, would you
| drink from that river again in the future?
|
| No. Further, I'd stop drinking untreated water from _all_
| rivers. (Just answering your hypothetical. I spend a lot
| of time in the wilderness and wouldn 't drink untreated
| water from a river or lake to begin with.)
|
| This effect, though, has happened with software for me
| years ago. Enough bad actors exist that I've reached the
| place where I trust very few software houses (and I trust
| exactly zero SV-style companies). Not that all of those
| rivers are polluted, of course, but that it's impossible
| to tell which ones are and which ones aren't by looking
| at them.
|
| I would never dare to start a business that depended on
| any of them. The risk is simply too great.
| nwiswell wrote:
| I was going to observe that another totally-
| understandable reaction to getting fucked in a business
| transaction (or getting cholera from untreated water) is
| to begin researching _everyone_ you do business with (or
| testing /treating _all_ the water you drink).
|
| I may be stretching the limits of the analogy here, but
| either way that "verify, then trust" approach is more
| work than "adaptive blissful ignorance", and a lot of
| people aren't going to do it, or will at least slack off
| as the pain of the original incident becomes a more
| distant memory.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| I think the correct analogue here are the people saying
| "open source or GTFO".
| __d wrote:
| There are limits to what open source can do too. Perhaps
| it's necessary, but not sufficient?
|
| There's limited benefit to having the source code when
| the community has been splintered, and the future
| direction is contrary to your needs. Sure, you can make
| your own fixes, etc, but you no longer enjoy the leverage
| community development.
| JohnFen wrote:
| "verify, then trust" is problematic in a world where
| companies get bought and sold, management changes,
| business goals shift, etc.
|
| The only protection against this is contracts, but when a
| company -- like Unity has done twice now -- decides to
| retroactively change the terms of existing contracts,
| that means that you cannot trust them at all going into
| the future even if they're solidly "good" right now.
| prerok wrote:
| The thing is, I think no amount of research would have
| pointed to this possibility. At least it would not a
| couple of years back. The mere fact that this group in OP
| exists/existed would have pointed to their
| trustworthiness.
| mindslight wrote:
| > _Should we hold grudges against brands for things totally
| different people did 10? 20? 50? years ago? That seems
| weird to me._
|
| You've inverted the sense here, by treating reputation as
| something based on default trust and exceptional "grudges".
| What has really happened is that they've destroyed the
| exceptional positive reputation they spent the past decade
| and a half building. A new reputation can certainly be
| built over the next decade, but for now they're mostly back
| to the default state of deserving no trust.
| olddustytrail wrote:
| > Should we hold grudges against brands for things totally
| different people did 10? 20? 50? years ago? That seems
| weird to me.
|
| It only seems weird because it's irrational, but the
| irrationality of vengeance is what has made humans the
| dominant species on the planet.
|
| If your child is killed by a lion it makes sense to avoid
| lions. It makes no rational sense to seek out lions to
| kill, but guess what a human will do. And see what the
| result is.
| neilv wrote:
| Does it depend on the company culture, which can persist
| awhile?
|
| For example, the first company that comes to mind has
| seemed to have shameless underhandedness deep in its DNA,
| and to exhibit its malevolent side each new chance it gets,
| as much as it can. This has repeated over the course of
| decades, and over multiple top leadership changes.
|
| If it's true that certain kinds of underhandedness are in
| that company's DNA, to a degree unlike most other
| companies, I wonder how deep they'd have to decapitate the
| org chart, to cut out the roots of that culture. Including
| SVPs? VPs? Further? It's in the board, too?
| infamia wrote:
| People change but cultures endure. The larger the
| organization becomes, the more this is true.
| prerok wrote:
| Except when they let go a few key personnel and mandate
| culture change from above. It's not as enduring,
| unfortunately, even if most of us would like it so.
| digging wrote:
| Maybe, if new people are in charge.
| jsmith45 wrote:
| And the dumb thing is that if they had listened to the
| engineers who were telling them the customer base was going to
| freak out at this, the company could have avoided large parts
| of the drama, since a few of their fixes were not even really a
| change in plan, so much as better more clear wording.
|
| The big drama causes 1. People assuming unity was going to add
| additional telemetry to track installs. (Reality: Unity seemed
| to always be planning on using App store numbers and the
| numbers from any opt-in unity services as the basis of their
| model). This one was a complete communication failure by unity.
|
| 2. Announcing a new payment model never before used by the
| industry. This alone (without looking at the details) is not a
| huge deal, but it makes people nervous.
|
| 3. This metric is hard to measure, and unity's initial
| announcement was basically that they would be estimating it in
| their sole discretion, which makes people uncomfortable. Their
| fix was to allow self reporting the data, which must be based
| on something that reliably approximates the revised install
| count definition.
|
| 4. Unclear definition of install was used. What they eventually
| settled on: once per unique end user per distribution platform
| (e.g. app store), was pretty much what Unity was going for
| anyway, but the initial announcement royally messed up here.
|
| 5. The metric was abusable, and there was apparently no cap to
| it. This was honestly one of the biggest issues. This got fixed
| by adding the 2.5% revenue share cap.
|
| 6. Trying to make this apply retroactively to previously
| published applications. This was the other biggest issue. This
| was especially bad because only a few years ago the company had
| another smaller scandal, and promised to allow people to keep
| using the terms of service of each version as it was when
| people downloaded it. Indeed, for a while this was explicitly
| part of the terms, and people who used those versions probably
| could get a court to side with them.
|
| If they had listened to their engineers, I think they could
| have fixed/avoided 1, 4, and 6. Numbers 3 and 5 may have
| remained, still causing huge outcry, and eventually getting
| fixed, but at least if number 6 were addressed before initial
| announcement, it would not have been a loss-of-trust issue so
| much as a: you are a moron for proposing this without the
| needed backstop, and requiring companies to blindly trust your
| estimations.
| miohtama wrote:
| This is why it is good to build on the top of open source
| solutions
| bmitc wrote:
| Open source solutions are not a magical solution to every
| problem. Open source solutions are often, if not more so,
| subject to the whims of just a few people.
| jameshart wrote:
| Great advice... Unless you're a game studio who wants to ship
| on PlayStation and Switch some day. If you want to build on
| an engine that lets you target proprietary platforms your
| options are, in practice, limited.
| follower wrote:
| That would be an issue with e.g. GPL-licensed game engine
| but not an Open Source licensed one (e.g. MIT).
|
| Obligatory relevant Godot-related links:
|
| * https://docs.godotengine.org/en/4.1/tutorials/platform/co
| nso...
|
| * https://godotengine.org/article/godot-consoles-all-you-
| need-...
|
| * https://w4games.com/2023/08/06/w4-games-
| unveils-w4-consoles-...
|
| Couple of Godot-based games available on console:
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassette_Beasts#Development
| / https://godotengine.org/article/godot-showcase-cassette-
| beas...
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Colors#Reception_2
| jameshart wrote:
| Providing these links without context, after claiming
| that MIT licensed engines won't have any issues, sort of
| implies that open source engines can be used fine to
| target consoles.
|
| The fact developers have been able to ship Godot games on
| console doesn't help much unless those developers are
| willing to share whatever proprietary engine-to-console-
| SDK-interface code they wrote.
|
| Unity and Unreal, in contrast, will happily license
| equivalent code to you.
|
| I think this section of the second Godot link is worth
| pulling out and quoting:
|
| > ... it is impossible for Godot to include first-party
| console support out of the box. Even if someone would
| contribute it, we simply could not host this code legally
| in our Git repository for anyone to use.
|
| > Additionally, it would not be possible to distribute
| this code under the same license that Godot uses (MIT)
| because this is in direct conflict with the proprietary
| licenses and non-disclosure terms that console
| manufacturers require to have access to the knowledge
| needed to write this code.
|
| > To make it simple, it is not possible for Godot to
| support consoles as an open source project.
| eropple wrote:
| The Godot core developers have a company you can partner
| with for a Godot build for those platforms. It's not
| really a big deal if you're making the kind of money to
| make that port worth it.
| amrocha wrote:
| Are open source tools banned on playstation and switch?
| cableshaft wrote:
| Not banned, just that every build platform has to be
| supported and not every open source project prioritizes
| each platform.
|
| Godot, for example, doesn't support console builds, only
| working with a third party to facilitate porting to those
| platforms (that may change in the future now that they're
| getting a lot more support from the community after all
| this).
| amrocha wrote:
| Gotcha, so it's not that open source isn't possible, the
| industry just needs to invest in community support for an
| engine
| follower wrote:
| > Godot, for example, doesn't support console builds,
| only working with a third party to facilitate porting to
| those platforms
|
| For the full nuanced details I've listed the relevant
| links here:
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37649430
| amrocha wrote:
| That's a really useful comment, thank you!
| [deleted]
| ndiddy wrote:
| The issue is that console SDKs are under NDA, meaning
| that open source tools can't target consoles because they
| would reveal details about the SDK. Some projects have
| workarounds for this, for example SDL maintains a private
| Switch port that you can get access to by emailing one of
| the maintainers with proof you're a Nintendo licensee.
| miohtama wrote:
| There is no one open source, but various open source
| licenses.
|
| Nintendo Switch and Playstation and titles from Sony and
| Nintendo incorporate BSD-licensed open source code, so it
| is obvious that "open source is banned" is not true. It's
| only GPL and other viral licenses that lawyers argue is
| too risky, because it might require disclosing
| proprietary source when linked.
|
| Same goes for Apple App Store as well
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12827624
| amrocha wrote:
| Look at the other comments in this thread, the reason is
| more complicated than that. Open source tools might be
| fine but game engines can't be open source if they want
| to support console builds because that would disclose
| proprietary information.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > game engines can't be open source if they want to
| support console builds because that would disclose
| proprietary information.
|
| Technically, they _could_. It would require someone who
| hasn 't actually licensed the SDK, and so aren't
| subjected to an NDA, to reverse-engineer things and
| produce their own implementation under an open source
| license.
|
| Certainly would be an enormous project, but it is well
| within the realm of the possible. It's been done with
| complex systems before.
| amrocha wrote:
| We're talking about a viable alternative to proprietary
| game engines.
|
| Yes, I know it's possible to reverse engineer the
| consoles, but that doesn't make it a viable alternative
| for the games industry.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > that doesn't make it a viable alternative for the games
| industry.
|
| It makes it legally viable, in that it would allow the
| production of an SDK that isn't restricted by any NDA,
| and therefore could be incorporated into opens source
| projects.
| d3w4s9 wrote:
| Ah, these comments again. Open source is great and I have my
| self contributed to several open source projects, but it is
| not the solution to everything. Products like
| Word/Excel/PowerPoint/etc, Visual Studio, Photoshop, Figma,
| Windows and Mac all have many open source alternatives, but
| the fact that these products and companies have been hugely
| successfully and continue to do so says something --
| commercial companies can organize and reward work in a way
| hardly found in open source projects, and their products
| often provide added value (more features/specific support for
| certain workflows/professionally designed UX/product support
| etc) that can be rare or nonexistent in open source projects.
| For some thing that is as complicated as a game engine, maybe
| there is a reason open source solutions are not mainstream
| yet.
| solardev wrote:
| Does that really help? Even when open-source, it's only a
| matter of time before an Oracle or Google or Microsoft or
| Meta takes it over (if they didn't develop it to begin with).
|
| I wonder if it's less about the source code here but about
| the people involved, and how to prevent a consolidation of
| capital and power in the hands of greedy financiers. Maybe
| developing the projects as nonprofits (like Blender or
| Mozilla), or at least employee co-ownership rather than VC
| money or institutional funders?
|
| If only the laid off FAANGers could pool their fat checks and
| start up something employee-driven and not subject to outside
| influences, in the style of Valve or similar. And preferably
| with legal protections against "selling out".
| [deleted]
| TheCraiggers wrote:
| > Does that really help? Even when open-source, it's only a
| matter of time before an Oracle or Google or Microsoft or
| Meta takes it over (if they didn't develop it to begin
| with).
|
| Of course it can help. For example, when Oracle bought
| MySQL, it was forked and we got Maria. When Emby pissed off
| people, it was forked and we got Jellyfin. There are plenty
| of other examples.
|
| Whether or not you like these products, the point is that
| open source gives the community the ability to continue
| development if the original project gets bought and/or
| otherwise changes its philosophy for the worse.
| Modified3019 wrote:
| OpenZFS is another great example.
| wiktor-k wrote:
| Also OpenTofu (Terraform).
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Even when open-source, it's only a matter of time before
| an Oracle or Google or Microsoft or Meta takes it over (if
| they didn't develop it to begin with).
|
| True, but there's no rule that says you have to update when
| they do. You can just stick with what you have until/unless
| you find or create another option.
| nottorp wrote:
| > Even when open-source, it's only a matter of time before
| an Oracle or Google or Microsoft or Meta takes it over
|
| Except you can fork the last open source version and
| continue as before. See ... mariadb?
| linkdd wrote:
| MariaDB, OpenTofu, etc... Those are the exceptions.
|
| Forking is easy. Maintaining a fork, keeping the quality
| and innovation alive, and the community involved is hard.
|
| There are many more failed forks than successful forks.
| So saying "you can fork" is utopist at best. Sure you
| can, but you'll probably be the only one maintaining it
| and it will slowly rot as there won't be a community to
| keep it bug-free and compatible with new
| hardware/standards.
| xmprt wrote:
| I think it's a self regulating system. If the product was
| so important and so many people relied on it (eg. Unity)
| where a cash grab by the Unity development team results
| in the entire community considering switching to a
| completely different product (eg. Godot), then I'm sure
| the community would rather fork the existing product and
| make it better. On the other hand, if the product wasn't
| that important or the cash grab wasn't that bad, then
| fewer people will be likely to fork and the current
| product will continue to be the mainline. Open source
| gives users more options which is always better.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Maintaining a fork, keeping the quality and innovation
| alive, and the community involved is hard.
|
| It's hard, but the FOSS model has a long, successful
| history at this point.
| nottorp wrote:
| However that doesn't matter when you have an existing
| game title already in the market. You just maintain your
| title, which you need to do anyway.
| amrocha wrote:
| The idea is that the community decides on a fork and
| maintainers move over.
|
| Are those really the exception? Do we have examples of
| large projects that made a monetization TOS change and
| didn't immediately get forked?
|
| The only one I can think of is Docker maybe?
| throw0101c wrote:
| > _Forking is easy. Maintaining a fork, keeping the
| quality and innovation alive, and the community involved
| is hard._
|
| LibreOffice is doing pretty well compared to OpenOffice:
|
| * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37645160
|
| EGCS was eventually merged back into GCC (or rather it
| became the new GCC?). I don't pay attention recently, but
| XEmacs was/is pretty active along with Emacs.
| linkdd wrote:
| More anecdotal examples of "survivor's bias" do not
| dismiss the initial argument.
| shmatt wrote:
| I don't know how much people know or have heard about
| ironSource. It's kind of an open secret in Israel on how they
| built a company to profit by building what is essentially
| malware (installers disguised as OEM while they're really
| adding extra trackers to your computer). They always paid 25%
| more than most of the other tech companies, but still had
| issues recruiting because it takes a special kind of person to
| be willing to do these kinds of things
|
| I didn't really understand the merger when it happened, but I
| have no doubt all these new policies are a result of the
| ironSource people integrating into Unity
| eevo wrote:
| Rumor has it that an IronSource guy was installed on the
| board and pushed very hard for this (and the anticompetitive
| stance with AppLovin)
| ketzo wrote:
| The merger makes a ton of sense -- Unity was super late to
| the game building their own Demand-Side Platform for ads, and
| that's how you make money in mobile games now, so they had to
| buy their way out of the problem.
|
| I mean, it's horrible for consumers/gamers/developers,
| obviously, but from a business perspective it was the correct
| move.
| intrasight wrote:
| It's really more nuanced than that - from a business/financial
| perspective. "goodwill" is a major component of a companies
| financial accounting. It's an asset and can be invested or
| squandered like any other asset. A large and well-run public
| company will have a risk management team evaluate the impact of
| major decisions on the financial health of the business.
| Clearly Unity did not do that. They are public, right? Seems to
| me (IANAL) this is a breach of fiduciary duty that could be
| actionable.
| ChicagoDave wrote:
| I got food poisoning from a very well known fast food chain
| about 25 years ago. I haven't eaten there since.
|
| Unity just gave every one of their developers food poisoning.
|
| I suspect similar results.
| aetherspawn wrote:
| I've been food poisoned from KFC probably 10 times, but I
| still eat there once or twice a fortnight for the last IDK 20
| years.
|
| Because they have the cheap crispy chicken.
| lovich wrote:
| I guess that's the opposite problem of having an overly
| sensitive sense of pattern recognition
| duped wrote:
| Reminds me of something I once heard a VP say at a very old,
| established company. Something along the lines of, "Our brand
| is trust. It took 90 years to build it, but it would take just
| one day to destroy it."
|
| The point he was making was that this old, established
| company's biggest asset was its brand, and its brand identity
| was just "trust" (they made professional products, and others
| could undercut them, but pros would always return to buy from
| them because they knew they would get what they paid for).
|
| It's the kind of attitude I think every toolmaker (software or
| otherwise) should keep in mind. Professionals value trust more
| than they do dollars in their pocket, and the companies with
| the best reputation and longevity understand that.
|
| But also that company was privately owned by a family, and
| their name is still over the front door. I think that when the
| execs answer to people whose name is synonymous with the
| products and culture of the organization, avoiding short term
| profit motivated garbage strategy is part of your MO.
| the-dude wrote:
| _Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback_
|
| Dutch : Vertrouwen komt te voet en gaat te paard ( Thorbecke
| )
|
| https://thalein.medium.com/trust-arrives-on-foot-and-
| leaves-...
| jmkd wrote:
| Wonderful saying (a new one to me) and appreciate the
| explanatory article, thanks.
| gameman144 wrote:
| As an example here, my father and grandfather used to swear
| by Craftsman tools. No matter the context, if there was a
| Craftsman version, they'd go for it because they implicitly
| trusted the quality.
|
| Then the Craftsman brand downshifted its production quality
| to compete in price and their reliability fell through the
| floor. Now my family will skip over Craftsman entirely even
| if it's competitive in price, since the breach of perceived
| trust soured them on the brand so completely.
| taylodl wrote:
| Lowe's supposedly honors the Craftsman lifetime warranty. I
| haven't tried it, last time I needed to use the warranty
| was 30 years ago when in the middle of some car repair job
| I was doing I took the busted wrench into Sears, still
| dressed in my grimy clothes I was wearing and covered in
| grease, I handed them the broken wrench and they simply
| handed me a new one. No questions asked, no paperwork. They
| handed me a new one and I walked out the door.
| berniedurfee wrote:
| Had the same experience many years ago. I have a bunch of
| old Craftsman tools that are superb quality and will last
| decades more.
|
| Sad to see them as an empty house brand now. Just like GE
| appliances, all that's left is a sticker.
| Moto7451 wrote:
| On the bright side, due to how the Power Tool industry
| works, that Craftsman is in many cases the previous gen
| Dewalt for 1/3 the price. Others are Porter Cable in red
| and without a sales rep. I'm tied to Ryobi batteries but
| I happily pick up Craftsman corded tools when those are
| an option.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Same thing happened with Canadian Tire's "Mastercraft"
| brand. I think it was always viewed as a Craftsman knock
| off, but they used to have a lifetime warranty and pretty
| good quality. I now mostly regard Mastercraft as disposable
| junk.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| Sadly, I just assume that no company can be trusted these
| days.
|
| It wasn't too long ago that the leadership of companies was
| often fairly stable. Now you see people rotating through
| every couple of years, rarely having to face the fallout of
| their bad decisions.
| berniedurfee wrote:
| There are a few. Cockos makes an amazing Digital Audio
| Workstation (DAW) that competes with the top names in the
| industry.
|
| While much of the rest of the industry is moving to
| subscriptions or jacking prices, Cockos has kept their
| prices extremely low and push new releases consistently.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| A history of doing the right thing doesn't matter in the
| slightest, unless you can somehow guarantee their
| leadership won't change (or is unlikely to, at least).
| willio58 wrote:
| The only thing that could save face in this situation is the
| immediate removal of the CEO and any leadership that allowed
| this to happen. Short of that, Unity will always hold this
| badge of shame in the eyes of developers.
| dickersnoodle wrote:
| u/spez from Reddit would like a word...
| musicale wrote:
| > Have never seen a company so quickly and completely just
| throw away all of their public good will.
|
| Over the past year Docker and D&D/Wizards of the Coast come to
| mind...
| all2 wrote:
| What happened with Docker? (WotC have been killing goodwill
| for years at this point, but I guess the MtG folks have a bad
| case of Stockholm Syndrome.)
| musicale wrote:
| "Docker is sunsetting Free Team organizations"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35154025
| nisa wrote:
| They charge you now when your crappy ci pipeline
| redownloads 10gb of images on each ci run :)
| labster wrote:
| WotC's trust bonfire was about D&D, revoking the perpetual
| license OGL. That said I don't contest that MtG players
| have Stockholm Syndrome.
| [deleted]
| mackwell wrote:
| Let's not forget Reddit
| musicale wrote:
| Can't believe I omitted reddit and possibly
| stackoverflow...
| Karellen wrote:
| And tumblr, when they announced they would no longer support
| creators of "adult" content.
|
| And (nearly) OnlyFans, when they announced they would no
| longer support creators of "adult" content (aka, "did a
| tumblr"). They just about backpedalled quickly enough, and
| had enough stickyness (no pun intended) from followers, to
| contain most of the damage.
| malfist wrote:
| I think enshitification will be the word of the year this year
| raytopia wrote:
| It's honestly a great word. Describes the decay of so many
| platforms/tools so well.
| robotnikman wrote:
| I hope so, to make more people aware of the phenomenon and the
| types of companies which practice it.
| robocat wrote:
| Cory Doctorow coined it to mean something different from how it
| is now used: Here is how platforms die: First,
| they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to
| make things better for their business customers; finally, they
| abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for
| themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification.
|
| It now means something like "the process where products or
| services become worse as a vendor tries to make them more
| profitable".
|
| Cory's definition doesn't really apply to B2B transactions
| (e.g. the word makes no sense for RedHat especially given
| abundance of other distros).
| wilburTheDog wrote:
| I don't see that much of a difference between those two
| definitions. Cory's explanation was more specific, but it
| still referred to a service taking steps to be more
| profitable and in the process making the experience shittier
| for users and business customers.
| shmatt wrote:
| I think we need to decide on its meaning first. Most people
| these days use it as a death mark. Except the original op-ed
| often quoted used Meta, Uber, TikTok and Google - companies who
| make billions of clean profit per quarter, and more profits
| than they ever have, as examples
|
| Enshitification = more profits is unfortunately correct in my
| mind, but most people use it with a much different meaning. I
| don't think Unity is going to break all profit records soon
| dgunay wrote:
| It's not the actual profitability of the move that's
| important, it's the motive. Enshittification comes from the
| ever-expanding _desire_ for profit. At some point the golden
| goose is killed to make next quarter's goals. Just so happens
| it was killed immediately in this case.
| hnreport wrote:
| What is the etymology of this term "enshitification"?
| [deleted]
| jaggs wrote:
| https://doctorow.medium.com/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-
| in...
| pocketarc wrote:
| There's a Wikipedia article on it!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
| yieldcrv wrote:
| this is the only forum I see it on
|
| so even databrokers saw that word and were like "nah"
| Buttons840 wrote:
| I have mixed feelings about the word "enshitification".
|
| Like a politician shutting down thought and debate by simply
| labeling something "socialism", half the people using the word
| don't really know what it means, or at least, they don't know
| the original meaning. The word comes to be fake form of
| intellectual sophistication. A politician says the word and
| people think "oh, he knows the fancy word, he must be right",
| and thought ends, further discussion is difficult because
| nobody would dare speak in defense of something after it has
| been labeled. Just hearing the word raises certain peoples
| blood pressure 10 points and causes them to raise their voice.
|
| And yet, I'm happy to see the good guys play psyops for a
| change. Like the world "socialism", "enshitification" will
| originally mean a specific social phenomenon, but most people
| will come to use it as a catch-all word for all bad corporate
| behavior and it will shut down thought and just hearing the
| world will rile people up to fight against the evil
| corporations. And I'm okay with that; words have power and,
| again, I'm glad to see words being invented to help the common
| people organize.
| malfist wrote:
| All it is is a fun sounding word for "rent-seeking"
| Buttons840 wrote:
| It's supposed to refer to a company's priorities shifting
| away from the customer's, "rent seeking" is instead about
| profiting from owning limited resources. They are different
| things.
| malfist wrote:
| Fair point. There is more nuance than just rent seeking.
| ajcp wrote:
| Sounds lazy and crass to me. Instead of a word meant to
| accurately convey a concept it's meant to broadly convey a
| concept and ones feelings on it in the same breath; much
| like the term "woke". I'd rather use something around a
| historical event that can also be used to help understand a
| concept through allegory, like "Dutch disease", or "cargo
| cult". Those are fun.
| malfist wrote:
| "Fun" is subjective and we're free to disagree, neither
| of us is any more right than the other.
|
| I think it's crass nature gives it a sort of charm and
| really gets the point across.
| TylerE wrote:
| You think "rent seeking" is crass and "enshitification"
| isn't?
|
| I know which one I would say in polite company.
| ajcp wrote:
| You misunderstood me. The subject of his statement, the
| "fun sounding word", that I don't think is fun sounding
| is "enshitification".
| MrRadar wrote:
| "Enshittification" is not a hard word. It's describes itself:
| "En-" to make, "shit" bad, "-ification" the process of; in
| sum the process of making something bad. I think everyone
| understands that the products and services they use daily are
| getting worse and now they have a word to describe that
| experience. I think that by basing itself on the mild swear
| "shit" it actually distances itself from academic jargon or
| other fancy words to try to be something that is closer to
| the common person.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I think it is a more specific thing that just "things get
| bad." Lots of tech services start by giving things away, or
| providing services for cheap/free unsustainably, and then
| start making unpopular moves when the free money dries up
| and they have to become profitable.
|
| It is sort of like a subset of anticompetitive behavior
| (dumping) but done by a small player using investor funds
| instead of a large company throwing weight around. Or in a
| field where the "cost" is something nebulous like ads, so
| it is harder to actually spot.
|
| A weakness of the name is that it invites the broader
| definition, I think.
|
| https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/enshittification
| hnreport wrote:
| I suppose the polite version of the word would be
| Entropy.
| TylerE wrote:
| Please no.
| readyplayernull wrote:
| To cancel, please read these retroactive revenue terms and
| hit "I accept, thank you, and sign me up for Prime"...
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Over the past few years, Unity has unfortunately shifted its
| focus away from the games industry and away from supporting
| developer communities. Following the IPO, the company has
| seemingly put profit over all else, with several acquisitions and
| layoffs of core personnel. Many key systems that developers need
| are still left in a confusing and often incomplete state, with
| the messaging that advertising and revenue matter more to Unity
| than the functionality game developers care about.
|
| > Recently, Unity unveiled a set of unthinkably hostile terms of
| service and pricing changes for its users. The resounding,
| unequivocal condemnation from the games industry was
| unprecedented and Unity had no choice but to rescind some of the
| most egregious changes. Even with these new concessions, the
| revised pricing model disproportionately affects the success of
| indie studios in our community.
|
| That strategy, including hyper-aggressive changes in terms, seems
| common across different businesses and industries. A recent one
| in the news was Hasbro's move with some of their leading game
| products.
|
| I asked something similar in another thread: Does anyone know the
| story behind this phenomenon? Is there a name for it? A paper or
| book or 'expert' that is its genesis?
| PrimeDirective wrote:
| enshittification? No papers as far as I'm aware
| withinboredom wrote:
| A common strategy taught in MBA school in the US, is to "hire a
| bunch of assholes to push non-dedicated people out of the org;
| then fire the assholes and hire actually good people." This was
| nearly 15 years ago since I learned about it in class, I don't
| remember if there is a name for it. I just remember thinking
| "this can't be real."
|
| I wonder if people are idiotically applying the same thing to
| the marketplace.
| VladimirGolovin wrote:
| This might work in a company where institutional knowledge is
| insignificant or can be easily rebuilt. In companies that
| maintain big complex products like Unity (or Diablo, for that
| matter) this strategy can result in the company becoming
| irreversibly incompetent at maintaining its own product.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > Does anyone know the story behind this phenomenon?
|
| People on the left wing generally call it "late stage
| capitalism" or "the end game of rent seeking": dumping
| competitors on price, subsidized by seemingly infinite amounts
| of VC money (domestic, foreign and dark/blood - i.e. Saudi oil
| money) until you achieve total and utter dominance, and then
| jack up prices while letting the product itself rot. After all
| why invest into a product's maintenance or development when
| your users don't have any other choice left?
|
| > Is there a name for it?
|
| Cory Doctorow coined the term "enshittification" [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| A name for it is Gouging. The motivation behind it is called
| Greed.
| CountVonGuetzli wrote:
| Yes, Milton Friedman, 1970, New York Times:
| https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctr...
|
| Wikipedia has a summary on the idea behind the essay
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine
| soulbadguy wrote:
| like getting blood from a stone...
|
| Most of those open-source companies turn "evil" stories (like
| IBM/redhat ) seems to follow the same pattern. IMO, there is a
| limit of the amount of value one can extract from those venture.
| Trying to increase revenue beyond a certain limit will always
| result very bad outcome.
|
| But i also think it's a lesson for the gaming industry. Why is
| something as core are a game engine, not something properly open-
| source and license such as QT, LLVM or GCC...
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Was unity ever open source? I don't think so
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Why would I even want to build a game if I'm going to have to
| give between 4-8% of everything I make to steam and unity? I
| completely understand why nearly every AAA studio builds their
| own client and game engine, it's cheaper in the long run.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| > it's cheaper in the long run.
|
| It depends on how much you're actually selling. Consider how
| much would it cost to hire devs to build your own custom
| engine? (Don't forget console support). Your game needs to
| pull in 20x higher than that in revenue for it to be worth
| the choice over a 5% rev share.
| qwytw wrote:
| > 4-8% of everything
|
| To be fair Unity is asking you to give them somewhere between
| 0.05% and 2.5% while Steam/Apple/etc. want 30%.
|
| > AAA studio builds their own client and game engine, it's
| cheaper in the long run
|
| I don't think it's because of the rev share. If they were
| able to acquire an engine which fully suits their needs for
| only 5% that'd would be a great deal. Unfortunately adapting
| an off the shelf for a AAA game might be just as expensive as
| building (or at least upgrading) your own engine.
| __d wrote:
| You know that the retail margin for a lot of products is at
| least 100%, right? And that's on the wholesale price, not the
| original cost of production.
|
| Everyone takes their cut.
| sebzim4500 wrote:
| Surely steam takes way more than 8%?
| ixwt wrote:
| Last I heard it was 30%.
| jimmaswell wrote:
| Redhat is evil now?
| chucksta wrote:
| indirectly yes
|
| https://newsroom.ibm.com/2019-07-09-IBM-Closes-Landmark-
| Acqu...
|
| more importantly; https://www.servethehome.com/red-hat-goes-
| full-ibm-and-says-...
| codetrotter wrote:
| https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/im-done-red-hat-
| enter...
| thorncorona wrote:
| Hard to run an open source enterprise company when Amazon's
| playbook is to take your shit for free and host it
| themselves.
| axus wrote:
| Red Hat had over a billion dollars in revenue last year
| and it's never stopped growing. Free Red Hat-compatible
| operating systems did not stop them from making a lot of
| money.
| azemetre wrote:
| Wouldn't using an AGPL license be better for this than
| just GPL?
| insanitybit wrote:
| That would be a hilarious way to lose every customer over
| night.
| tristan957 wrote:
| Why would customers leave you if your product was AGPL?
| withinboredom wrote:
| Because people are stupid. Never underestimate stupidity.
|
| In all seriousness, it's just that the AGPL considers
| network use to be distribution and thus entitled to the
| source[https://medium.com/swlh/understanding-the-agpl-
| the-most-misu...]
|
| This terrifies people for some reason. Basically because
| they want the freedom to modify open source projects and
| call it their own without giving back to the project that
| actually created it.
| insanitybit wrote:
| The stupid people are lawyers and they definitely seem to
| think they have a good reason.
| insanitybit wrote:
| I think it's extremely common for companies to sit every
| engineer down during onboarding and say "never touch code
| with these licenses". Certainly in my experience it is.
| nottorp wrote:
| ... more like dead for all practical purposes ?
| JohnFen wrote:
| I've considered Red Hat a bad actor for a number of years
| now.
| gumballindie wrote:
| The difference between game developers and other types of
| developers is that they figured out how to fire companies and
| mediocre executives. Should take notes. Well done, and hopefully
| Unity's done, along with all other mediocre MBAs that think their
| clientelle works for them and not the other way around. Game devs
| are badass.
| napierzaza wrote:
| It took me a little while to get it but now I do. They want their
| community to continue on even if some of their members are moving
| off of Unity.
| hartator wrote:
| I remember at a game trade show, there was an Unity stand. I was
| really excited by Unity at the time, was in line to ask the
| representation random questions, and was trying to get my friend
| excited as well. The representant (I think some head of Sales)
| took my excitement talking to my friend as impatience and was
| rude about us "he is busy and us having to wait our time" when we
| weren't trying to talk to him. We left and never got excited by
| Unity again. I guess that was a premise of things to come.
| taikahessu wrote:
| I have a hard time coming up with a worse decision in the history
| of game industry.
|
| Why did it come to this? Just more profits? I mean the landscape
| is highly competitive with free tools getting better and Unreal
| Engine eating all the highlights. Unity's stock price was even
| before this decision a third of it's all time high.
|
| I mean there must've been a dramatic cultural twist quite some
| time ago. That would've lead champions to leave and the codebase
| comes crashing down. This will be a great lecture material for
| business schools, goes in the same bucket as Nokia.
| asynchronous wrote:
| Unity really showing the world how to tank a business by letting
| a few MBA's at the top make a decision for profit.
| harpiaharpyja wrote:
| This "for profit" thing seems like the wrong framing. Customer
| goodwill and community are extremely valuable. It seems like
| what we are looking at is more about short-termism and the
| distortive effects of suddenly (post-IPO) having to report to
| investors who are essentially outsiders to the business and
| have no knowledge or stake in the operation-as-an-entity-in-a-
| larger-ecosystem other than having dumped a bunch of money into
| it.
|
| Sure, you can argue that said investors are treating the
| business as nothing but a vehicle "for profit", but that
| framing loses something essential. You can have profit and be a
| player in something mutually beneficial. In fact you need
| profit to be sustainable.
| finite_depth wrote:
| [dead]
| dylan604 wrote:
| i remember back when Avid decided they were no longer going to
| offer a Mac version of their NLEs because Apple's new machines
| were only going to have 3 expansion slots. while admittedly,
| there were probably a much smaller number of affected users
| than the Unity decision, it did cause a huge amount of turmoil.
| urban legend has people dumping their Avid stations on the
| doorstep of the Avid offices.
|
| Avid survived. Unity will too
| raytopia wrote:
| Unity will survive but this could be the start of a steady
| decline of users, which isn't good for any game engine. Leads
| to a loss of knowledge which makes the engine even less
| popular.
|
| Ghe whole situation is somewhat similar to when GameMaker
| Studio switched to subscription model.
| dylan604 wrote:
| what would be better for the community would be not just a
| decline in devs using the engine, but also the devs working
| on the engine. working for Unity should now be a stain just
| like working for FB/socials/ad-tech. there will be tons of
| people willing to do it, but hopefully the great minds
| leave the rot
| ditonal wrote:
| That's the opposite of what would be better. We need more
| engineer solidarity not more divisiveness. Give me a list
| of your past employers and I can guarantee I can find
| some sketchball business practice you indirectly
| contributed to and make some tenuous argument for you to
| be blackballed.
|
| 95% of shitty tech industry practices can be root caused
| to people identify more strongly with their employer than
| with their profession. We desperately need a professional
| organization / union with teeth and the main thing that
| should be shunned is rhetoric that divides rather than
| unites it .
|
| Engineers can hang together or hang separately.
| dylan604 wrote:
| You must subscribe to the idea that the employees can
| change the culture of a company from bottom up. I
| strongly disagree. Company culture is dictated from top
| down, and only rarely does the bottom get to make
| substantive changes. However, I'm willing to have my mind
| change with examples of companies changing their culture
| based on employees changing the minds of the execs.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| We can't, but many of us are forced by circumstances we
| can't control to stay on board even if we don't like
| where the company is heading. The most recent and
| probably most nastiest story I'm aware of is post-Musk
| Twitter - Musk ordered that everyone put in effort like
| hell, people slept in conference rooms... so, naturally,
| many people left but one group had to stay because their
| literal legal existence in the US was tied to that job:
| H1B employees.
|
| Other cases include if you've got a house that's not paid
| off, a child on the way... that's where common sense says
| to not change anything major due to the consequences of
| shit going down very very VERY hard.
| TylerE wrote:
| Avid is still around, but it's not looking very healthy.
| They've fired whole dev teams - one of whom was largely hired
| by a competitor, who have now developed a competing project
| that is eating Avid alive in that (fiarly niche) space.
| MrDrMcCoy wrote:
| Where can we read more about this? I'm at least curious to
| know who that competitor is.
| TylerE wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorico
| dylan604 wrote:
| man, i was hoping this was going to be a serious
| discussion on NLEs. instead, we get some niche product of
| a niche field. i'm not really sure this counts. that's
| like the team that works for lighting within Unity left
| to build a new tool that exports settings to JSON.
| TylerE wrote:
| You're being overly dismissive. There are thousands of
| people working in such software every day - from serious
| composers, professional music engravers, orchestra
| libraians, down to church choirmasters and the like.
|
| It's a several hundred dollar product that supports a dev
| team in the low double digits. It's niche, but it's not
| THAT niche.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Avid also just did a deal to go private under a private
| equity group; I wouldn't say the prognosis is looking good.
| duped wrote:
| Are you talking about Sibelius? That was over a decade ago
| and AVID had a killer run financially afterwards.
| Gansejunge wrote:
| I was wondering why the name Avid was familiar but also had
| a negative connotation in my head, then I remembered it was
| from a YouTube video [1] about how horrible its interface
| is.
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI
| rmbyrro wrote:
| Expect MBAs to show up here condemning the derogatory use of
| MBA
| dingosity wrote:
| FWIW, I have an MBA and Unity's behaviour doesn't make sense
| to me either.
|
| Oh... and... "Not all MBAs"
| troymc wrote:
| Main-belt asteroids don't have a very cohesive lobby group.
| rmbyrro wrote:
| MBA asteroids are well motivated on their own. No need for
| asteroid cohesion to complain on HN
| TylerE wrote:
| To play devil's advocate... Unity isn't close to profitable,
| and never has been. At some point money has to be made or the
| lights get turned off.
| SolarNet wrote:
| > Unity isn't close to profitable, and never has been
|
| This isn't really true though, their core business is and was
| profitable if you exclude all the of acquisitions junk, stock
| shenanigans, and loans to pay for it they have been doing.
|
| It just didn't have the margins expected of a public company
| and so they did all that other junk to pump those numbers.
| jeffchien wrote:
| I don't think this is true. Unless I'm misreading their S1,
| they have been operating at a loss:
| https://www.meritechcapital.com/blog/unity-software-
| ipo-s-1-...
| maccard wrote:
| > This isn't really true though, their core business is and
| was profitable if you exclude all the of acquisitions junk,
| stock shenanigans, and loans to pay for it they have been
| doing.
|
| "We're profitable if you ignore all the things we're
| spending money on"
| fineIllregister wrote:
| The claim here is that none of that spending is
| generating revenue. They could stop spending that money,
| their income would remain the same, and then they would
| be profitable.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| > if you ignore all the things
|
| Not all the things, just their unprofitable side business
| attempts. It's like knowing a guy with a well paying job
| who always complains he is broke. But he conveniently
| never mentions that he's spending $4500 per month on a
| Lamborghini lease.
| qwytw wrote:
| > stock shenanigans
|
| They pay their employees and executives in stock. They'd
| have to spend much more cash if they stopped doing that.
| TylerE wrote:
| Could it not be argued that the situation they're in is
| exactly because "big number go brrrr" over building a
| sustainable business?
| andrewclunn wrote:
| Build product / service at a loss. Product becomes popular
| because it provides so much value so cheaply (because is
| being sold at loss). Maintain through continual investment
| and chasing "growth." Bill comes due. Investors left holding
| the bag and ecosystems built around assuming bubble was real
| have a bad time.
|
| In many ways it's the best form of socialism, cheaper
| products and services provided to the people, paid for by
| investors who are rolling the dice on a pyramid scheme posing
| as a business model. Completely voluntary and works even
| within a capitalist system.
|
| Now all we have to do is hope Unity goes under really
| quickly, then gets bought up for cheap by a business either
| willing to make far less as their investment was well below
| the cost of development for the tools... or that another
| sucker comes along to buy them at a higher price to either
| enter the market or expand their own dominance in it as they
| are still on their "chase growth" curve.
| hightrix wrote:
| I would argue that Unity is about 10x the size it needs to
| be. They could shed a significant portion of their employees
| and still produce a good product.
|
| They are in the perpetual growth trap that so many of these
| companies fall into when they get bigger than a niche
| audience
| rmbyrro wrote:
| That sounds like a Musk job
| AlexandrB wrote:
| He would just fold it under "X" so he can claim to be
| closer to an "everything app". I'm sure he's annoyed that
| "Xbox" is already taken.
| qwytw wrote:
| Hiring is too much people is much easier than firing
| them. If you cut 90% of the staff keeping the people
| you'd want to retain is pretty much impossible (since
| obviously the management won't have any clue who they
| are).
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Unity isn't close to profitable, and never has been
|
| Talk about the consequences of letting a bunch of incompetent
| MBAs loose at the top.
|
| They had more than enough revenue to be profitable.
| ROFISH wrote:
| Unity has been on a buying spree including traditional
| TV/Movie CGI firms for some insane reason+. They're just
| plain _bad_ at spending money.
|
| (+ Yes, I know the growth potential from real-time to
| rendered. I still think it's a terrible investment.)
| neurostimulant wrote:
| Is unity used for movie's CGI? I can only think of one
| example of shows made with unity (it's bad):
| https://myanimelist.net/anime/38853/Ex-Arm
| kevinmchugh wrote:
| Unreal has enjoyed a ton of success for tv/movie
| production lately, being used in "the Volume", I have to
| guess they're trying to keep up.
| generalizations wrote:
| Well, that kinda makes sense then. If they weren't
| profitable, then this could be seen as a last-ditch survival
| strategy.
| gs17 wrote:
| This strategy is still pretty awful. If 2.5% revenue share
| after $1,000,000 would be enough to survive on, they
| probably could have opened with matching Unreal's 5%
| instead of all the bullshit and won people over.
| kevingadd wrote:
| Yeah their new pricing model is quite literally more
| expensive than Unreal for many of their customers (mostly
| the ones who make less money - for massive studios it's
| cheaper) and it's ALSO more complex to comply with. A
| simple "we're doing revshare now, and the per-seat fee is
| going away" would have been viewed more favorably I
| think.
| tetha wrote:
| I mean in my naive world, you'd slap some minimum revenue
| onto the rev-share and you'd have a clear separation
| between hobbyists, unsuccessful indies, indies, and huge
| successes. It'd be muddled in the middle, sure, but if
| some companies hits jackpot with a unity project, you'll
| know and could act on it.
| TylerE wrote:
| That's what they did though. It was several hundred
| thousand dollars in revenue before any of it kicked in.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| ^H^Hby going public without a business model.
| dbingham wrote:
| I feel like we've seen a bunch of businesses show what
| happens when you take private capital and scale on a
| community based product with out a clear business model that
| doesn't involve retroactively screwing the community in some
| way.
|
| I mean, Unity's just the latest example. Before it came
| Hashicorp and Docker. I'm sure we could think of many more
| examples if we tried.
|
| And what's really frustrating is that if these businesses had
| focused on simply "building a product the community wanted,
| supporting that community, and making enough money to
| comfortably keep going" - all of them could have been
| successful.
|
| I'd really love to see the tech community try more models
| that simply aim for comfortable sustainability - not
| astronomical growth. You know, enough to pay a modest
| engineering team market salaries indefinitely while they
| continue to support and develop the product.
| rmelton wrote:
| My company is actively using this model now. It's really
| hard watching competitors raise multi-million dollar rounds
| though.
| Eisenstein wrote:
| Unless your plan is to vest and cash out, you shouldn't
| envy them.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| That's why it happens so often though -- the very people
| who are directly enriched by doing it (holders of the
| majority of the company's equity) are the only ones asked
| to decide to do it (board votes).
|
| Canonical example: MailChimp
|
| The founders retained essentially all the equity
| (Atlanta), so when push came to shove they decided "Fuck
| it, we'd rather be rich than work" and sold the company.
|
| It feels like the only way to avoid this would be
| aligning the equity structure with employees and
| customers in a better way.
| dylan604 wrote:
| VCs don't like this. How are they going to get their ROI
| immediately? Having normal investors vs funders changes the
| mentality of long term to cash grab.
| harpiaharpyja wrote:
| Exactly. I think what we are seeing is the result of
| decision makers at these businesses now having to report to
| investors who are essentially outsiders to the community.
| Their only stake or interest in the operation comes from
| having dumped a bunch of money into it. But now they get to
| call the shots or if not, exert a ton of pressure.
|
| I think the takeaway is that businesses built around a
| community really should not go public.
| qwytw wrote:
| They have a business model and they would've been fine if
| they hadn't started increasing their headcount by 50% every
| year and focused on their core products.
| indymike wrote:
| > letting a few MBA's at the top make a decision for profit.
|
| I'm not sure the profit part will work out for them in the long
| run.
| asynchronous wrote:
| Really I should have stated "short term profits"
| dang wrote:
| We changed the URL from https://bostonunitygroup.s3.us-
| east-1.amazonaws.com/index.ht..., which is what the submitted URL
| redirects to. Our software follows redirect; in this case it
| seems worth reversing. Thanks to the user who pointed this out!
| Willish42 wrote:
| I wish I had a large enough Twitter following to make a public
| claim about this before Unity "went back" on the first version of
| the recently-announced pricing changes, but I was nearly certain
| this was an intentional move to make the "Update on our update"
| second version more palatable.
|
| There's probably a wiki link somewhere to the Proper Noun PR
| phenomenon in business school for this strategy, but the
| "terrible plan then less terrible plan but still worse than
| before the initial terrible plan" strategy seems like essentially
| a confirmation Unity is not to be trusted for small developers.
| It's sad to lose a great dev community but it sounds like BUG is
| making the right call here.
| wredue wrote:
| I was also considering this, but while this strategy works
| wonders on the consumer, I don't know how well it works in more
| B2B offerings.
|
| Video games specifically get away with this because, as we saw
| with Diablo 4, people are going to give game companies money
| regardless how bad and unpalatable the game is.
|
| Man. My Reddit account became limited in the Diablo subreddit
| for saying that I cancelled my preorder after the beta.
| ilc wrote:
| Some of us saw what was going to happen with D4. It was
| pretty obvious.
|
| After DI, and D3, to expect D4 to launch in any decent state
| would have been naive at best.
|
| I've said as much in the Diablo subreddit. D3 is now a good
| game, if it is what you are looking for. It's a fun romp,
| but... It isn't a truly heavy ARPG. If you want that POE is
| calling you.
| tacticalmook wrote:
| Historically, subreddits were run by community volunteers
| because people were tired of being censored on official
| forums. Now subreddits are the official channel more often
| than not, and we're back to square one.
| revlolz wrote:
| Yes, thank you, it was bothering me I could not remember the
| label for this. The 'update' and responses all felt like a
| planned and intentional campaign with the disaster/consequences
| being completely miscalculated by Unity.
| a_e_k wrote:
| I think the noun phrase and wiki link you're looking for is
| "door-in-the-face technique",
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Door-in-the-face_technique.
| kulahan wrote:
| It's all just based on the idea of anchoring.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anchoring_effect
| Quindecillion wrote:
| Best thing about this _divisive_ action by Unity is all the
| attention it 's giving Godot.
|
| It's a project that deserves far more attention, and I hope in a
| few years that it's far more common in popular game development.
| jconley wrote:
| Unity's just outgrowing the early adopters. The starving indies
| will move on to the next up and coming engine. Professionals will
| continue using Unity (and UE, which also charges royalties)
| because of the breadth and depth of the toolsets.
|
| I first used Unity when their WebGL system was in private beta.
| IIRC they tried charging royalties early on but then reverted
| that for marketshare, but I don't have time to look it up. In any
| case the royalties aren't burdensome at that scale. I don't think
| it'll affect much. Vocal minority, yada yada. Maybe it'll even
| get them to profitability next year!
| junon wrote:
| This is way, way beyond charging royalties. Nobody has been
| upset about existing royalty models.
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