[HN Gopher] Unity U-turns on controversial runtime fee and begs ...
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Unity U-turns on controversial runtime fee and begs forgiveness
Author : qwytw
Score : 115 points
Date : 2023-09-26 14:55 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| xyst wrote:
| This has already been discussed but under a less click bait title
| ("... begs forgiveness" -- lol)
|
| Trust already violated which took years to build. 1 C-level
| executive decision ruined and betrayed that trust. There is no
| going back.
|
| Open source game engine or bust. Individually, I support GoDot
| with donations and time (contributions to codebase). If I ever
| become a game studio, would definitely have a team to continue to
| contribute to godot as well as monthly monetary contributions for
| other maintainers.
| thangngoc89 wrote:
| Well, trust is easily broken and impossible to repair. I have no
| skins in the game but I wouldn't touch Unity for my next
| projects.
| asah wrote:
| "Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback."
|
| https://thalein.medium.com/trust-arrives-on-foot-and-leaves-...
| jtriangle wrote:
| Oddly, I heard that quote yesterday in a youtube
| video...about a completely different topic.
|
| What a curious synchronicity
| eimrine wrote:
| Baader-Meinhof phenomenon
| raphman wrote:
| The systemic problem with Unity is not only that the leadership
| makes bad decisions on a whim. Apparently, they made these
| decisions despite explicit internal opposition from their
| developers. When a company's leadership ignores their internal
| expertise, the company starts to rot from the inside.
| marcodiego wrote:
| I'll repost my comment:
|
| I have no involvement and I'm not a game developer (except for
| small weekend projects). Please do not make any change "to the
| policy" you have announced! Your decision seemed to be the straw
| that was lacking for many people to support Godot and I'm rooting
| for them. Please don't let us down now.
| Uehreka wrote:
| I think this take is a little overtorqued. Like, yes, this has
| caused more people to pay attention to Godot. But for those of
| us with upcoming projects in the next year, we're all just
| gonna have to train up on Unreal because Godot is years away
| from parity with the big engines. So really the outcome here is
| going to be that Epic/TenCent is going to massively consolidate
| the gamedev market.
| bccdee wrote:
| > Under the revised terms, there is no runtime fee whatever for
| any game developed with a current version of Unity, only for
| those developers who adopt the latest version in 2024.
|
| So they haven't done a 180. They're no longer going to try and
| retroactively inflict the runtime fee on existing projects, but
| it is still going to be a thing going forward.
| WA wrote:
| Furthermore, a 180 implies that you go the other way onwards.
| As in: they pay you to use Unity. Which of course is
| ridiculous, just like the headline.
| karmakaze wrote:
| I haven't been following closely and find the rest of the
| paragraph good to know, if not entirely reassuring.
|
| > The free Unity Personal will stay free, and the revenue
| ceiling above which users must upgrade to the next tier has
| been raised to $200,000. And above $1 million, users will be
| able to choose between a per-user fee or a 2.5% revenue share,
| whichever is lesser.
|
| If this was the first and only news delivered with the users'
| concerns in mind, none of this would be such a big deal--that
| whole retroactive version value extraction play was going too
| far. The net effect is that the current crop of near-completion
| Unity-based games may be completed and supported with the now
| current version.
| incrudible wrote:
| > entirely reassuring
|
| It's reassuring in the sense that some theoretical problem
| (costly installs) can be avoided.
|
| Otherwise, not really. The big selling point with Unity was
| that you pay per seat, and that's that. You don't owe them
| anything beyond that particular fee, no money, no
| confidential information, nothing. The change of terms is a
| not-so-tacit admission that their business model does not
| work and that the whims of the MBA-types are going to dictate
| the future of the platform. Unreal Engine has basically the
| same revenue share type of deal (but no per-seat cost), but
| then its leadership has a proven track record in developing
| actual games.
|
| > The net effect is that the current crop of near-completion
| Unity-based games may be completed and supported with the now
| current version.
|
| Of course, in the short term nobody is going to switch
| engines mid-flight. However, in a few years time, when we ask
| ourselves "How did Unity die?" this change of terms is likely
| to be identified as the point of no return.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| How could they possibly have done that? Dont they have a EULA
| that users have to consent to? At least the PR disaster raise a
| big red flag.
| phpisthebest wrote:
| >>Dont they have a EULA
|
| Most EULA's say "we can change this when ever we want... " so
| likely they were banking on that.
|
| Most EULA's in a sane legal system would be considered
| unconscionable contracts and thus unenforceable,
| unfortunately the US Legal system is far from sane,
|
| That said, I am sure they heard from lawyers at major studios
| who said "yea try to retro active bill us and we will
| bankrupt you in legal fees" so they changed their tune.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Exactly.
|
| How is "We've decided not to open ourselves up to legal
| liability by retroactively modifying TOS conditions, and
| instead only make the same changes in the future" a 180deg?
|
| Fuck Unity's corporate ownership. And so fuck Unity.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I don't think either of the claims in the headline of the article
| are supported by the content of the article. They didn't u-turn,
| they modified their terms but are making the same set of changes
| with new parameters. They did not beg forgiveness, they said they
| were sorry for how they handled it, but did not say they were
| sorry for their new policy, or that they were asking anyone to
| forgive them for it.
|
| They basically did the standard thing of "we're sorry for how we
| communicated this the first time around, but we're still doing
| it, and we've scheduled a Q&A so we can give you more
| information".
|
| Should I think of articles like this as news or opinion? It's
| packaged as news, with the reporting standards of a tweet.
| dartos wrote:
| _checks url_
|
| Pretty sure TechCrunch is mostly PR for tech companies.
| DonHopkins wrote:
| You don't say?
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GVd_HLlps
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex1JuIN0eaA
| thiht wrote:
| > they said they were sorry for how they handled it
|
| More like sorry the peasants didn't understand their master
| plan. It gives more money to Unity! What's not to like?
| bangonkeyboard wrote:
| _> Should I think of articles like this as news or opinion?_
|
| As PR.
| fnordpiglet wrote:
| As attracting your click with bait.
| dwallin wrote:
| The devil is in the details (which was the problem with the
| original terms). The original plan seemed reasonable at face
| value but when you dived into the details it was really
| problematic. The revised terms are transformatively better, but
| might seem similar just looking at them shallowly. The key bits
| are
|
| 1) It is no longer retroactive. Existing games on the market
| using unity can continue distributing without their business
| getting immediately impacted.
|
| 2) It's no longer per install, it's now "new people engaging
| with your game each month" and the numbers are now all self-
| reported. Originally Unity was going to calculate installs on
| their end in an opaque way.
|
| 3) You can choose to just use a revenue share arrangement
| instead of per install. Since it's the lower of the two you can
| effectively ignore whichever one isn't favorable to your
| business.
| usefulcat wrote:
| Isn't the elephant in the room the fact that they can still
| unilaterally change the terms at any time in the future?
| qwytw wrote:
| Presumably not retroactively though? The pricing model
| seems to only be applicable starting 2024 LTS version.
| Which seems pretty reasonable? I mean you can't really
| expect them to never change TOS for future versions.
| themoonisachees wrote:
| If i was starting a multi-year, potentially billion-
| dollar project right now, what has unity done to
| guarantee my project won't be axed because of their
| greed? Personally, i'd expect them to actually not change
| TOS for a given version ever, enabling me to at least
| have the safety net of never updating the engine, but
| they removed that guarantee from the TOS. This isn't a
| SaaS app used to sync your photos we're talking about,
| this is the underlying tech for massive swathes of some
| people's entire lives.
|
| This is like saying "you can't really expect linux TOS to
| never change for future versions" (pretend that makes
| sense). Like yeah they might be subject to change, but as
| someone basing my entire work on it, i am making the bet
| that i will continue to be able to do that, and unity has
| just showed that not only they can change it, but that
| they will, without hesitation and possibly retroactively.
| qwytw wrote:
| I can't and I won't in any way justify the retroactive
| part (even though they seemingly promised not to do that
| again, they already made the same promise a couple of
| years ago..).
|
| But I'm not quite sure I understand your overall
| argument. Are you saying that if you release any type of
| software you're should never be allowed to change the TOS
| in subsequent version? e.g. Windows 11 should have
| exactly the same TOS as Windows 95?
| autoexec wrote:
| Yeah, I can't really see why anyone should trust them now.
| They've already shown themselves as being willing to screw
| over their users to satisfy their greed. They'll do it
| again.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| This was actually the SECOND time they tried to do TOS
| shenanigans, which is why they had that dumb git repo of
| TOS that they tried to stealthily delete before running
| this change.
|
| Surely they won't do it a third time, right? Especially
| after this "U-turn" sitll includes all the tech and legal
| for setting up a "fee for each installation"
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| The amount of mental gymnastics on display here (not to mention
| bloodthirstiness) to not acknowledge that the new terms are
| genuinely a huge improvement and likely palatable to the majority
| of game actual developers in crazy.
|
| I have a few friends who work on relatively medium-scale game
| development operations and every one of them is basically saying
| "oh thank god, we can work with this". But reading this thread
| you'd think it was still a catastrophe, just a slightly smaller
| one.
| rybosworld wrote:
| I don't see any comments in this thread that argue the new
| terms are worse than before. I also don't see any comments that
| argue the new terms aren't palatable.
|
| As far as I can tell, most of the discussion is to the effect
| of: "does a reversion to only slightly shitty pricing terms
| make up for initially trying to get away with _super_ shitty
| terms? "
| JohnFen wrote:
| > to not acknowledge that the new terms are genuinely a huge
| improvement
|
| I'll acknowledge that!
|
| But it doesn't matter. This is the second time that Unity
| retroactively changed the terms of their deal. That they
| removed the retroactive part is great, but that they've done it
| twice also indicates that it will happen again at some point in
| the future.
|
| So, for me, it doesn't matter in the slightest how favorable
| their new terms are. They've shown their true colors and they
| can't take that back.
|
| That's why I won't be buying any Unity-based games in the
| future. Unity is a bad actor, and I don't want to support their
| business.
| unitylol wrote:
| This isn't the kind of situation for forgiveness. The management
| promoting these unpopular changes this needs to go, and if
| Unity's board won't take action, developers and customers will.
| ekanes wrote:
| This seems almost impossible to fix: When a person or company is
| caught violating their promises, it's a big hurdle to
| differentiate between:
|
| A: "Sorry we got caught / sorry you're upset" and
|
| B: "Oh snap. Our internal values are obviously way wrong. The
| board has fired the CEO, we are going to solve this in the open
| along with the community, and then we'll bind our own hands in
| every way legal that we won't do this again."
|
| So far this still smells a lot like A.
| xyst wrote:
| They have taken the FB approach. Backpeddle on changes. Wait
| for heat to cool off. Then back to fucking you over.
| sbarre wrote:
| Yeah if you look at the Unity leadership and board, you can see
| clearly who is in charge and what their values are. If that
| doesn't change, then talk is cheap.
|
| Unity has entered the enshittification (or more generously
| "value extraction") phase of their existence, and you should
| assume that going forward no matter what they do, it will be in
| the context of prioritizing value extraction over customer
| success or happiness.
|
| Companies are allowed to make money, but how it's done really
| matters.
| TheGRS wrote:
| They likely won't ever escape it. Unity entered the market as a
| free, batteries-included game engine. It rose to prominence in
| the indie community because it was free and it had a LOT of
| user-generated materials. Their whole brand has this foundation
| of being friendly to small developers. You take that away in
| even the smallest way and they have nothing to stand on.
|
| By comparison, Epic didn't have that sort of baggage. They were
| a big company with a big engine made for big games. And over
| time they made that engine cheaper and more accessible to
| smaller devs.
| failbuffer wrote:
| Exactly. Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you
| can find a big enough rock.
| xwdv wrote:
| The damage is done. This whole debacle only confirms what I
| always knew to be true: you must build your own game engines and
| tooling.
| baal80spam wrote:
| This is my belief as well. In addition (I might be in the
| minority here) but I can always tell when a game is made in
| Unity - it has this cheap, plastic feel to it.
| SXX wrote:
| Building own engine and tools is not financially viable for 99%
| of game development companies.
| valianteffort wrote:
| Major developers are too focused on things that hardly matter
| like cutting edge graphics, and hardly interested in things
| that do like gameplay. Indie is where people are more
| forgiving, and keeping as much profit matters. Thus in house
| engine development is a more viable strategy.
| SXX wrote:
| I am co-founder of indie game company. Like in any business
| there is tons of things you have to deal with: hr and
| managing people, making good game prototypes and pitches,
| finding funding or publisher, negotiating contracts,
| crunching for milestones and release.
|
| In case of majorify of indie games you only can only get
| $100,000-500,000 of funding total for one game with
| development time of 6-18 months. And like 50%+ of this
| money will go into creating art assets especially if we
| talk of pixel art.
|
| Go look what is the salary of senior C++ programmer with
| experience working with graphics, audio and little bit of
| everything. And one person can hardly create anything close
| to game engine tooling unless he work for several years.
|
| Making own game engine is the last any game developer gonna
| consider.
| superkuh wrote:
| That's too bad. I guess for profit companies won't then and
| actual decent human people with more incentives in their
| lives than only profit will continue to do so.
| the_af wrote:
| Even without profit in mind: sometimes you just want to
| build a game.
|
| It's easy to get sidetracked by "the engine" when all you
| wanted was to create a game... Most amateur gamedevs I know
| all started creating "the engine" and then the actual game
| never happened.
| simonw wrote:
| That position doesn't make any sense to me.
|
| Why should "decent human people" who want to build a cool
| game be forced to first build an engine for it?
| SXX wrote:
| I wish to just work on making cool games, but unfortunately
| my damn landlord and grocery store only care about profit
| and charge me money every time I have to deal with them.
| rondini wrote:
| If anything ONLY huge for-profit companies have the
| knowledge and resources to build their own engines. Without
| Unity or whatever takes its place thousands of indie devs
| would never have get off the ground.
| chc wrote:
| Humans actually need to eat more than for-profit companies
| do.
| raytopia wrote:
| There are lots of frameworks people can build on. So it
| doesn't have to be from scratch.
| Zambyte wrote:
| > you must build your own game engines and tooling.
|
| From source perhaps
| jayd16 wrote:
| Not to be snide but how many games have you shipped like that?
| Its really a massive undertaking to build a game engine. Not to
| mention a distraction as well.
| JohnFen wrote:
| You don't need to build a game engine, though. Just build a
| game. Game engines exist basically to be able to reuse code
| across the development of many games.
|
| If you don't worry about writing an engine, and just write
| games without one, then as a side-effect you'll also be
| developing the core of an engine that's more specifically
| optimized for the sort of work that you actually do.
|
| Eventually, it may become advantageous to make that into a
| formal engine, or it may not. Either way, you're still
| creating games.
| SXX wrote:
| What you describing is only possible for hobby game
| developers with extremely small scale of a game or
| development time of 4-5 years. Majority of game developers
| simply dont have skillset to work with audio, graphics APIs
| and cross platform support.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > What you describing is only possible for hobby game
| developers with extremely small scale of a game or
| development time of 4-5 years.
|
| This is demonstrably untrue. It wasn't all that long ago
| that there were no game engines available for use, and
| yet small devs managed to produce a ton of great games
| anyway. It is true that a small developer is unlikely to
| be able to produce a grand AAA-scale game in a reasonable
| time, though.
|
| > Majority of game developers simply dont have skillset
| to work with audio, graphics APIs and cross platform
| support.
|
| Then perhaps they should gain that skillset? I would have
| assumed that any game dev is well-versed in doing these
| things regardless, but if not, isn't that a problem?
| SXX wrote:
| > This is demonstrably untrue. It wasn't all that long
| ago that there were no game engines available for use,
| and yet small devs managed to produce a ton of great
| games anyway.
|
| Audience expectations for production quality of art,
| animations and overall gameplay has grown accordingly
| over the years. To become a success game dont have to be
| best of the best, but it's just cant be much worse than
| baseline of modern successful games.
|
| If there is any indie games that you like and they were
| released less than 10 years ago please do a little
| research of how long they actually took to build. There
| are reasons why one-guy indie game production take 5-7
| years.
|
| > Then perhaps they should gain that skillset?
|
| It's just too many skills and each of them take years of
| practice. If you take any modern game engine there will
| be dedicated programmers working on audio, graphics,
| networking, physics, etc.
|
| If you have group of 3 rock start programmer buddies who
| can work full time for free then you might have some
| chances, but I doubt you will have any time left to
| actually make games.
|
| Also even with your 3 buddies working for free process of
| making a game costs money. And if you tell the publishers
| or investors that your company building their own game
| engine no one will ever invest money into your project.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > If there is any indie games that you like and they were
| released less than 10 years ago please do a little
| research of how long they actually took to build.
|
| I know a number of successful game developers that are
| counterexamples to your thesis.
|
| > If you take any modern game engine there will be
| dedicated programmers working on audio, graphics,
| networking, physics, etc.
|
| Right, but that's to make a full engine. I'm arguing that
| you shouldn't make an engine at all.
|
| Yes, if you're aiming at high production values, then
| you're looking at millions of dollars of investment and a
| full team.
|
| But if you're looking to produce an excellent and
| successful game, the equation can be entirely different.
| You don't need top-notch graphics, top-notch sounds, etc.
| You just need to make a great game, and a great game is
| defined by the gameplay, not by the window dressing.
|
| If you're a one-man shop, it absolutely is major factor
| in terms of what sort of games you can produce. There's
| no question about it. But it doesn't mean you can't
| produce excellent and successful games.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Might as well write a custom language and model editor too.
| These are all worthwhile endeavors but they are
| distractions if your goal is the game itself.
|
| >you're still creating games.
|
| No, every moment you're writing or debugging engine code is
| a moment you're not working on content.
| fragmede wrote:
| The Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis, but for gaming. If the game
| engine won't let you, say, jump, then the content being
| generated is limited by that facet of the game engine. So
| in working on the game engine, and adding the ability to
| jump, you're unlocking the possibility of new content.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Or you could pick a modern engine, already have those
| things and focus on the novel content and not the
| possibility of content.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Now's the time to see if the CEO bought back any of the stock he
| sold before the announcement.
| ajuc wrote:
| Once a company tries sth like this there's no point going back.
| They will fuck you up again the moment people stop watching every
| step their make.
| epa wrote:
| Thats the problem with expectations. When you have a free model
| you need to be freemium with additional features, not adjust
| pricing to the whole group.
| WillPostForFood wrote:
| That's what Unity did, they are ~freemium, and tried to raise
| prices on paying users. They just showed you can do it
| incredibly stupidly.
| capableweb wrote:
| > the runtime fee policy has been almost completely reversed
|
| Oh, that sounds good!
|
| > Under the revised terms, there is no runtime fee whatever for
| any game developed with a current version of Unity, only for
| those developers who adopt the latest version in 2024.
|
| So, not at all reversed, just pushed further into the future?
|
| > Overall the changes seem to address most of the issues people
| had with the new terms, and importantly it is more or less opt-in
|
| This makes it seem like this is a submarine post trying to help
| Unity to regain some sort of control, rather than a journalistic
| investigation into the event, where the journalist at least would
| try to be impartial.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Well, it _is_ a TechCruch article, so that 's not surprising.
| You need to adjust your filters accordingly.
| raziel2701 wrote:
| Trust is not a boomerang, when you throw it away it doesn't come
| back.
| LadyCailin wrote:
| Depends, if you're big enough, it will come back to you after
| it orbits once.
| iamsaitam wrote:
| Great metaphor.
| olliecornelia wrote:
| Sadly many game developers are also Gamers.
| bobsmith432 wrote:
| The real problem is sadly most video game companies are public
| traded greasefestivals. See Valve for a good honest game
| company.
| louwrentius wrote:
| You can never trust them as they may still just choose to
| implement it somewhere in the future.
|
| The thing is: Capitalism demands perpetual (growing) growth. Pay-
| per-download would have helped tremendously with this.
|
| I don't believe pay-per-download is dead.
|
| Money isn't free anymore, but companies are desperate for growth.
| Inflation is currently caused by companies issuing significant
| price hikes to appease shareholders. I expect more pay-per-
| download-style shenanigans from other companies or outrageous
| price hikes going forward, to sustain growth.
| rybosworld wrote:
| > You can never trust them as they may still just choose to
| implement it somewhere in the future
|
| Completely agree.
|
| > The thing is: Capitalism demands perpetual (growing) growth.
| Pay-per-download would have helped tremendously with this.
|
| Disagree. The market provided a strong answer in the form of:
| "No, we hate this model and will literally do extra work
| (switch game engines) to avoid it".
| mordae wrote:
| That's OK. Capitalism demands growth, but infinite growth on a
| finite planet is impossible. As the attempts to extract value
| at all (especially reputational) costs ramp up, reputation of
| the whole system is going to crumble. People are going to look
| into alternatives then. Godot and Blender.
| gigatexal wrote:
| Did Apple talk to them I wonder?
| isk517 wrote:
| Maybe if they got there early enough, I suspect there was a
| line up composed of all of the larger developers, publishers,
| and platform holders.
| glimshe wrote:
| Unity, if one of your employees makes an egregious move that is
| not only immoral, but also destroys the trusts of coworkers, do
| you fire them or forgive?
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| Developers were already moving away from Unity (at least
| traditional pc/console game publishers) months and years before
| this and this will only accelerate the decline.
|
| I've been told that Unity remains one of the best engines for
| mobile development so maybe those folks will continue to linger
| around, but I think for everyone else it's accelerated their move
| to the exit.
| maxFlow wrote:
| As a side note, Godot's Development Fund [0] is currently sitting
| at 51.1k euros/month. Does anybody know where it was at before
| the Unity pricing revamp announcement?
|
| [0] https://fund.godotengine.org/
| lukasus wrote:
| 25k euros on September 12th
| https://web.archive.org/web/20230912192257/https://fund.godo...
| SXX wrote:
| Accidentally Godot's Development Fund was announced like a day
| before Unity debacle.
| dmonitor wrote:
| It was the same day, even
| [deleted]
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| Seems like Unity are really going to get punished.
|
| Plenty of companies renege on promises, or stiff their customers,
| and we just suck it up and keep coming back. Take Sony, discussed
| earlier as "deserving" of being hacked, but all the same we keep
| buying their stuff no matter how despicable their behaviour.
|
| Something is different about this.
|
| There's a community that seems to have solidity. And they seem
| hell-bent on rubbing Unity's nose in its own poop.
|
| And Unity is small and dependent enough to be really hurt. I
| expect they will survive, but as markets get more specialised I
| wonder if in times to come coordinated action will totally take
| down companies.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| I think it's that Unity actually isn't that big and evil that
| (unfortunately?) makes it so they are more likely to pay a
| price for their egregiousness than truly Machiavellian entities
| operating at world scale.
|
| I wish the world would get likewise up in arms at being
| similarly abused by the likes of true industrial titans (in and
| out of the tech sector).
| nonrandomstring wrote:
| > I think it's that Unity actually isn't that big and evil
|
| Yep, I remember when they were getting together, was it
| around 2006 maybe, when they were the kid on the block and
| Unreal was heavy.
|
| > that (unfortunately?) makes it so they are more likely to
| pay a price
|
| Kinda how the second or third biggest kid attracts the
| bullies. Not saying the game community are "bullying" Unity,
| but there are bigger fish to fry.
| rybosworld wrote:
| There's a really simple fix: Fire the execs.
|
| It's difficult to take this company seriously when they are run
| by out of touch MBA's who routinely make objectively poor
| business decisions and then reward themselves handsomely. I think
| people are increasingly tired of business leaders paying
| themselves millions when things go well, but facing no
| repercussions when they don't.
|
| "STAT | $494 million - The cumulative stock-based compensation
| Unity reported paying out over its past three quarters.
|
| STAT | $152 million - The cumulative "profit" Unity reported over
| those same three quarters."
|
| https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unitys-self-combustion-engine-...
|
| NOBODY believes they won't try something like this again, because
| the people responsible are still there. Get rid of the people
| that broke the trust and I guarantee you'll see the community
| praise the decision.
| poutinepapi wrote:
| OI! Can we get this person cookie?
|
| I remember when it dawned on my poor team lead that they had
| gone from being a team lead to being alone and in charge of a
| massive portion of Unity's systems. Just like me, they're an
| immigrant. However, they also have a family to consider, so
| what options are available to them?
|
| Being honest mate, it's not much better out there, the games
| industry is wall to wall owned and operated by mostly
| borderline-sociopathic MBAs who are as useful as a chocolate
| teapot and nowhere near as delicious when you bite into them.
|
| It's sad because I've been using Unity since it was only
| available on MacOS and it used Boo, but hey, c'est
| l'capitalisme, nes't pas? And already two prospective jobs that
| were using Unity ghosted me so hard that I know who I gotta
| call.
|
| So I shrug my shoulders, and keep studying for my third post-
| graduate[1] that I can barely afford to get more skills so
| another useless MBA fuck hires me and pays me a pittance.
|
| Oh! And I switched to Godot too, but that was out of spite
| mostly.
|
| [1] Insert joke about over-educated millennial
| itsafarqueue wrote:
| Another way to interpret these stats are that these MBAs are
| staggeringly good at what they do (extracting cash for
| themselves).
| autoexec wrote:
| > Fire the execs...I think people are increasingly tired of
| business leaders paying themselves millions when things go
| well, but facing no repercussions when they don't.
|
| Does firing execs even count as repercussions when they've got
| golden parachutes to make sure they can fail with no
| consequences
| shmatt wrote:
| I wrote a similar comment yesterday but worth noting again.
| This isn't the usual group of MBAs looking for a quick buck.
| These are the people who have come in from ironSource. A
| company who has made billions by attaching malware in disguise
| to personal computers[1]. Executives who green lit projects
| like mentioned in this post really don't care about their
| users, its all about maximizing profits while stepping on
| everyone else
|
| [1] https://www.benedelman.org/news-021815/
| qwytw wrote:
| > This isn't the usual group of MBAs looking for a quick
| buck. These are the people who have come in from ironSource
|
| I'm sure that Riccitello and Unity's execs who didn't come
| from IronSource are more than capable of coming up with
| something like this.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > This isn't the usual group of MBAs looking for a quick
| buck.
|
| > Executives who green lit projects like mentioned in this
| post really don't care about their users, its all about
| maximizing profits while stepping on everyone else
|
| Uh...that sounds _exactly_ like a group of MBAs looking for a
| quick buck.
| cacois wrote:
| I think the implication was that this is a more insidious
| "milk them for all they are worth, damn the consequences"
| group
| hresvelgr wrote:
| Unity would not have pulled this stunt if it wasn't going to make
| money and they knew they couldn't get away with it. My suspicion
| is that developers below the 90th percentile likely don't impact
| their revenue at all and they are likely trying to hit 99th
| percentile titles like Genshin Impact and Hearthstone, titles
| which are extremely cross platform and would need to be at the
| latest engine version to use the console SDKs.
|
| This may very well be an intentional shedding of a demographic,
| as typically lower price tier and free customers tend to be the
| largest support burden for SaaS companies.
| TheGRS wrote:
| Yea another odd thing with Unity is that since it was free and
| very accessible to small game makers, they were also heavily
| associated with shovelware. Maybe this is also an attempt to
| get away from that. I just don't see how they have the funds to
| weather through this shift though, their whole identity was
| being the small studio engine.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| The board meeting:
|
| Exec:"they'd have no choice but to pay this new fee, they are
| fked now"
|
| A week later..
| gumballindie wrote:
| Have they fired that toxic CEO yet? It won't make much of a
| difference, but the guy's career should come to an end. Time to
| be freed to focus on other, more important, things.
| sbarre wrote:
| Everyone seems really focused on JR (the CEO) but I haven't
| heard much talk about Tomer Bar-Zeev who came to Unity via the
| ironSource merger (he was a founder), and is "President, Grow"
| of Unity, and also on the board.
|
| I suspect this guy, considering ironSource's past and his
| current title, may have been more responsible for these changes
| than the CEO. I assume the CEO has to sign off but the whole
| strategy of value extraction and nebulous fees just stinks of
| ironSource.
| BudaDude wrote:
| While this may be true, JR has made a number of decisions
| over the years that has harmed Unity before the merge.
| KronisLV wrote:
| I think this is probably a net positive at least in some regards.
|
| Unity (and other company execs) saw that pricing per install will
| most likely generate a lot of outrage, so profit seeking must be
| kept to more moderate means.
|
| Unity settled on terms that will still generate them some income
| (which is probably good, given how fast they're burning money),
| the revenue share is still lower than that of Unreal and if the
| fireside chat is to be believed, then these terms should hold for
| a while.
|
| Unity won't be making every game/program phone home, at least if
| you don't use their analytics, the install figures will be self-
| reported and also the splash screen will be optional.
|
| The people with years of Unity experience and purchased assets
| won't be forced to migrate to something else and will be able to
| use their good tech and tools (even if the editor can be
| annoying), and their businesses won't have to pay insane amounts
| of money for runtime fees.
|
| In addition, engines like Godot get a nice boost in popularity
| and also some funding, which should secure them a better future.
| Probably not much is changing for the niche engines that I like,
| but it's still to nice see Godot succeeding in some ways!
|
| That whole fiasco could have been avoided altogether, though -
| just consider the new policies for like half a year and run some
| numbers first, I'm not sure how they missed out on how their
| initial plans would affect mobile games!
| Lord-Jobo wrote:
| I think the actual weight of this incident over long term will
| fall on whether or not Unity reports noticeable losses of
| revenue after this. If they don't, the industry wont care and
| wont learn from their mistake.
|
| The people making these decisions dont really pay attention to
| anything else besides quarterly reports and stock movement, and
| they rarely actually know much about the industry they work
| in(from my observations). these are broad generalizations,
| there will be exceptions definitely.
| Verdex wrote:
| I was probably never going to learn unity in the first place. But
| when the news came out that shifted to, "Well, now I'm definitely
| never going to learn unity."
|
| However, I missed the news that Unity merged with ironSource. The
| runtime fees news filled me in on that and also filled me in on
| some of the less than savory things that ironSource has been up
| to in the past.
|
| Now my position has moved towards, "I guess I shouldn't play
| anything made in Unity (at least not on machines where I care
| about their security)." And cancelling the runtime fee isn't
| likely to shift my position.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > Now my position has moved towards, "I guess I shouldn't play
| anything made in Unity
|
| I'm not a game dev at all, but this is where the whole thing
| has brought me as well. If it's based on Unity, I'll pass.
| TheGRS wrote:
| This is a really weird takeaway for an end-user. This is
| punishing game developers for using a certain tool. Unless
| Unity is doing something adverse to the end user I don't see
| why that should be a factor in your game purchases. I've
| played plenty of great games made with Unity.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I don't like how Unity conducts their business, and I now
| actively distrust them, so it makes sense to add them to my
| list of "companies to avoid".
|
| I don't want to support businesses that operate as they do.
| The intent isn't to punish developers, of course, but
| continuing to give money to a company that I don't want to
| support is asking more of me than I'm willing to do.
|
| In the end, it's just me and my decision will have no
| effect on anybody. If enough other people also avoid Unity,
| then devs will have to adapt. That's just life.
| SXX wrote:
| So you don't like Unity because of everything happen and how
| they threated game developers. And for that reason you want
| to refuse to pay those game developers?
|
| As it's now Unity dont collect any telemetry.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Unity already showed they were willing to change contract
| terms unilaterally, so why anyone should trust that they
| will stay doing what they currently do is beyond me.
| JohnFen wrote:
| Not exactly. I don't trust Unity because they've clearly
| demonstrated that they can't be trusted. I'm not avoiding
| Unity as some sort of solidarity with wronged developers,
| I'm avoiding Unity because I don't want to support a
| company that behaves that way.
|
| > As it's now Unity dont collect any telemetry.
|
| Maybe not (but maybe -- how would I know?), but Unity
| clearly has no problems throwing people under the bus if it
| suits them, so again -- they can't be trusted. On this
| point or any other.
| Uehreka wrote:
| Ah, I wish it were that easy, but a number of my favorite
| games (KSP, Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium off the top of my
| head) are made in Unity. If you play indie PC games you can't
| boycott Unity without missing a ton of really good games.
| syncbehind wrote:
| > If you play indie PC games you can't boycott Unity
| without missing a ton of really good games.
|
| The naivete involved in expecting to boycott a product
| without having any inconveniences never ceases to amuse me.
|
| The very nature of boycotting necessitates that you will
| miss out on things. If you never used the
| product/byproduct, what effect would your boycott have?
| It's like a bald person boycotting a hair cuttery, who
| cares?
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| In the gaming world, boycotts are an absolute joke. I
| think many gamers don't even know what the word means and
| will pre-order and play the hell out of a game they're
| claiming to be boycotting.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > If you play indie PC games you can't boycott Unity
| without missing a ton of really good games.
|
| That may be true, but so what? There are more great non-
| Unity-based games than I have time in my life to play
| anyway.
| fcsp wrote:
| I suppose this is going to change drastically going forward
| as game devs probably won't want to risk their livelihood
| on the whims of a company that is ok with making such
| changes
| srinivgp wrote:
| If you play games you can't play games without missing a
| ton of really good games. There are _a ton_ of really good
| games.
| Uehreka wrote:
| The games market is large, but not infinite. Like, there
| may be many space games, but only one space sim that has
| the depth and complexity of KSP 1, and that's KSP 1. Not
| to mention that a lot of gamers have no idea what engine
| their favorite games use. For instance, I was shocked to
| discover that Disco Elysium used Unity because it looks
| so different from the "stock Unity look".
| syncbehind wrote:
| >Not to mention that a lot of gamers have no idea what
| engine their favorite games use.
|
| If you start to boycott something, you typically have
| done some research (why else would you have wanted to
| boycott it in the first place). I.e boycotting Nestle
| means that you research where the company may have their
| fingers in and avoid that.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| I suspect that kind of boycott would hurt the independent
| developers more than it hurts Unity.
| syncbehind wrote:
| Those developers will then need to pivot in response to
| market changes. But yes, that's often how it goes.
|
| If you boycott a child-labor produced coffee, and it just
| so happens that your favourite indie cafe uses that as
| their main coffee because it's so cheap! Yea, that cafe
| will suffer.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| I'd be all for a boycott in your example, but not in the
| case of Unity... as a purchaser of games. As a developer,
| you'd better believe I'd be looking hard at Godot /
| Defold / Unreal... or turning off the Unity ads in my
| products. I don't think Unity's intended pricing change
| is morally equivalent to child labor.
| syncbehind wrote:
| I used a hyperbole to get my point across. I'm not
| equating the two.
|
| I mean, even not using them as a development platform is
| something. But I don't get the logic behind supporting
| them as a purchaser of games? Is it just FOMO?
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| No. It's because I don't believe it strikes at the right
| targets, for lack of a better metaphor. You get
| collateral damage that I don't think is worthwhile. If
| the desired goal is to have developers move away from
| Unity, Unity themselves have given enough incentive.
|
| You suggested boycotting the developers that use Unity. I
| don't get your scorched earth logic. It seems
| unreasonable to me.
| syncbehind wrote:
| It isn't "Scorched earth". It's boycotting by proxy.
|
| >Unity themselves have given enough incentive.
|
| Sure, if they change on their own volition, then I have
| no need to boycott those developers. This adds to that
| incentive should they not do so.
|
| (copied from my other comment)
|
| I.e. I have no real way to boycott Nestle, but if enough
| people stop buying their products, the stores will carry
| fewer of them. Yea, the stores (or devs, or cafes) will
| get hurt in the short term, but only if they're insistent
| on not listening to their users/the market.
| apetresc wrote:
| This analogy doesn't work; in your coffee example, the
| cafe is complicit in benefiting from the manufacturer's
| cost-cutting (at the expense of the children). But the
| only injured party in the Unity case is the game
| developers themselves, who presumably are already aware
| what their own interests are.
|
| To fix your analogy, it would be like a coffee
| manufacturer who apparently somehow screws over their
| customers (cafes), so you decide to retaliate by
| boycotting the cafe.
| syncbehind wrote:
| Is it really though? As an end user, I don't actively buy
| things from massive coffee distributors, just as I do not
| use unity to develop things. If the cafe, in this
| example, carries other beans- I'd have no reason not to
| buy those instead.
|
| The boycotting happens by proxy. This isn't a hard
| concept to understand.
|
| I.e. I have no real way to boycott Nestle, but if enough
| people stop buying their products, the stores will carry
| fewer of them. Yea, the stores (or devs, or cafes) will
| get hurt in the short term, but only if they're insistent
| on not listening to their users/the market.
| jonplackett wrote:
| You're just going to be punishing game devs who are locked in.
| Sure, make your own games with something else (although unreal
| has similar rev share) but it seems cruel to take this out on
| unity devs who have no option
| debaserab2 wrote:
| If the tool they use to make their game requires customers to
| install malware onto their machine you can't really blame the
| customer for avoiding software that is built with said tool.
| EricE wrote:
| Declaring they are installing malware is a pretty bold
| assertion. Care to back that up with something other than
| feelings?
| debaserab2 wrote:
| If you've followed the Unity debacle I assume you've
| already read about this, but a cursory search for
| "Ironsource malware" on google yields:
|
| https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unity-ironsource-malware-
| came-...
|
| https://www.pcgamer.com/unity-is-merging-with-a-company-
| who-...
| qwytw wrote:
| Is there any indication all of the IronSource or other ad
| stuff will not be optional?
|
| Not allowing developers to remove it from their games
| would certainly be a step too far (at this time anyway,
| who know what will they come up with in a couple of
| years).
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Another thread said it best (paraphrased): they felt the power,
| and fear, of how one CEO's action that could change their
| livelihood.
|
| I've felt this when Flash was canceled for iOS. Steve Jobs's
| "letter about Flash" changed my job outlook in just one day.
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