One of the issue here, and I am in absolutely no way defending Unity, is that legally an executive team works for the shareholders. They must ensure shareholder return no matter what as they are in the hook for it.
Unity’s biggest issue is that they like many successful companies stopped innovating and have moved from a company run by technical people to one run by sales and marketing. Sales and marketing only know how to extract more out of the product they already have and not how to improve the product to make more in honest ways. I would (have) gladly given Unity more money if they offered tools that truly helped me get to market faster as then my win would be their win. Instead their product has become stagnant, slower not faster since 2019 and more expensive. I am getting less for more and it is unacceptable. Unity is a horrible business partner. But I can see why as they are a sales and marketing company now. Steve Jobs says it best in this 2 minute video. He got it. Why are so many other not getting this?
That doesn’t mean making decisions that can ultimately hurt the business or their partners though. You can be greedy while not alienating the developers who drive the company’s profits. Decisions like these could make them lose millions or even go out of business.
You could swap unity with any company really and it would be the same. once a business goes for an IPO, whatever mission/vision it had turns into making shareholders happy and fast. Profits go directly to shareholders by stock buybacks instead of R&D/salaries, so they have to squeeze consumers more and more with the same products to keep it up. it’s tragically comic that you mention Steve Jobs kinda talking about it when Apple turned into the GOAT of this stuff.
is that legally an executive team works for the shareholders. They must ensure shareholder return no matter what as they are in the hook for it.
Not an excuse for just blatantly fucking over the customers. By implementing this hostile pricing model, company is alienating their customers. Big game studios may or may not cough up the money (or just delay that payments and take Unity to court if threatened). Small companies will just not pay up and either kill their projects or redesign from the ground up using a diff engine. Indie devs will likely just use another engine all together.
It’s a clear money grab that will backfire on them (losing trust of an already small community, and thus money will slowly stop rolling in). Fucked by the loss of sales. Fucking over the shareholders and creating new bag holders. Only winners here are the insiders that dumped their shares before announcement.
I agree. I think the issue is though that Unity (like many successful companies) have become their own worse enemies. Steve Jobs in this 2 mins video really explains it well. It will resonate what is going on at Unity and why they pulled such a stupid move. Wrong people are in charge and they have no means to make money honestly. Intellectually and creatively bankrupt. youtu.be/tGKsbt5wii0?si=v8_A2jW5uLewhbVS
I hate humanity sometimes, why would they send death threats? Just don’t use their engine; this is the way you actually make a change – switch to something else, threatening people does not help you prove your point. I hate their new pricing changes too, but death threats are never warranted
I absolutely agree. I’d want to say those threats are people outside of the industry. People in the industry have received death threats themselves so they understand that it’s real shitty, right? I hope so.
While I’m not defending those who sent these death threats or justifying these actions, I’m sure a lot work and progress will be lost for many companies because of these outrageous changes. It should be no surprise that many if not all of their clients are gonna be angry. Switching to another engine isn’t like switching from reddit to the fediverse.
They’re changing pennies per install, and only after the publisher is receiving over $200,000 per year, and they don’t count the first 100,000 installs. The price goes down dramatically for customers at the higher subscription tiers. I don’t understand why people are so pissed about them wanting such a tiny cut for providing the software that does so much heavy lifting for game developers.
Their new pricing is not horrible, but it’s pretty wonky at best
After the first wave of outrage they had to clarify that it wouldn’t take reinstalls into account, which should have been clear from the beginning
Also the fact that they take money on a game install wether or not that install generated any money is just dumb, most people would rather pay more as long as they have the guarantee that they only pay AFTER having made some profits
Even with the qualifiers, it makes it super hard to make any financial projections as your profits are totally uncorrelated to the fees you’ll have to pay
First of all if you’re a poor (and possibly solo) developer who could only spring for the lowest tier you’re being charged the highest rate per install. That rate is 20 cents… per install… not per purchase… per install. If I buy the game once and install it on my desktop machine, my laptop, and my steam deck, the developer has to pay 60 cents. one of those computers breaks down and I need to reinstall the game, that’s an additional 20 cents every time. I have a young nephew who thinks nothing of installing a game to play for a day or two then uninstalling it to make room for another only to reinstall that first game again later. He does this with a lot of games… almost all of which are Unity games (I know, because he wants me to play these games with him quite often, so I see that logo pop up). Come January 1st, every time he installs that game, BOOM, developer owes 20 cents. My nephew isn’t special and, if he’s uninstalling and reinstalling games like that you can bet there’s 1000s of other kids doing the same! Hell, you don’t even have to be a kid. I might play a game for a few months, uninstall it, then reinstall it years later. That’s another thing… this 20 cents is perpetual! As a developer, what happens when you’re done with your game? You do have the time or energy to maintain the game anymore? This pricing model doesn’t care. You abandoned your game 5 years ago? Don’t care, 100 people installed your game, you owe us $20!
I didn’t realize they never “per install” quite so literally. That does make a big difference and it’s a really weird way for them to charge.
Edit: Ok so according to another commenter your interpretation is common but wrong, and Unity clarified they mean the first install per customer only. So my position that this isn’t a big deal stands.
Do installs of the same game by the same user across multiple devices count as different installs? We treat different devices as different installs. We don’t want to track identity across different devices.
So, again, if I install the game on 3 different devices, Unity considers that 3 installs. If I build a new computer later, then reinstall the game there, it’ll count as a new install. The scary thing is… what if someone hates you as a developer? They now only need to buy your game once, then setup a script to roll VMs and install your game on VMs (each VM counts as a seperate device), and you, as the developer, will be hit with the new install cost each time.
Additionally…
Does the Unity Runtime Fee apply to pirated copies of games? We are happy to work with any developer who has been the victim of piracy so that they are not unfairly hurt by unwanted installs.
The issue here is… the developer would already have been charged the fee for a “pirated” install, because, how is a developer supposed to even know their game was pirated in the first place. Here, the developer may already be financially hit for a pirated game and now has to spend time and resources with Unity to convince them that some percentage of installs are pirated installs. Earlier in their FAQ, Unity claims they do not have a “phone home” when a Unity game is run, so, how are they determining installs in the first place? “Aggregate data”… or, another words, “trust us”.
Im some cases I could see how this could destroy someone’s livelihood and people have killed over that sort of thing before. But my guess is that the people sending the death threats probably aren’t even developers.
What’s more curious to me is what kind of people are those that resort to such lows?
I mean they might have mental issues,yes,but it’s scary to see that people seemingly intelligent and able to create games (asset flipping not included) can have such low morals and problem solving capabilities.
Talk about blowing shit out of proportion. People need to realize that making death threats is a good way to make the bad guys look like the good guys.
Which is probably why the CEO made it up using the single death threat from an employee as an excuse to close the company for the day and probably also get pity from people for it (see here for more details).
I bet it probably won’t stay that way though, he’ll probably realize people are onto his lies and make some death threats from sock-puppet accounts and claim “No 4 reAl pEopLe arE sENdiNg m3 deAth tHreAts” I wouldn’t put it past him if people don’t keep falling for the current one, and if people keep the heat on him for his current bad decisions.
It’s a reddit link, ik… here’s a copy of the post:
The truth behind the Unity “Death Threats”
Unity has temporarily closed its offices in San Francisco and Austin, Texas and canceled a town hall meeting after receiving death threats, according to Bloomberg.
Multiple news outlets are reporting on this story, yet Polygon seems to be the only one that actually bothered to investigate the claims.
Checking with both Police and FBI, they have only acknowledged 1 single threat, from a Unity employee, to their boss over social media. Despite this their CEO decided to use it as an excuse to close edit:all 2 of their offices and cancel planned town hall meetings. Here is the article update from Polygon:
Update: San Francisco police told Polygon that officers responded to Unity’s San Francisco office “regarding a threats incident.” A “reporting party” told police that “an employee made a threat towards his employer using social media.” The employee that made the threat works in an office outside of California, according to the police statement.
Yeah if I were the CEO I would be avoiding a town hall like the plague.
He essentially just called a bomb threat on his highschool before a final he was going to fail. Then came home to his family crying about how scary it all was.
Yep, a lot of companies will make shit up to make people feel bad for them, and to try to make themselves seem like the victims in all of this while hiding the real victims when they are the abusers.
It’s honestly fucking disgusting behaviour, it makes me sick.
Yep it doesn’t surprise me, I’ve seen many people claim “death threats” to get out of responsibility for doing or saying something that was not respectable, or that was flat out evil.
They do this because it works very well, death threats are so serious and so scary that if somebody said they got them you would immediately give that person a pass (unless they’re a Nazi then they deserve it, you don’t give Nazis a pass for anything) no proof required, though it also would be incredibly easy to forge proof of such an event for anyone skeptical and it would be enough for 99% of people, the remaining 1% of dissent would then be written off as crazy people.
I’m willing to bet that this will continue to happen and people will continue to go along with it because there are enough cases of people making real death threats to innocence cover up the false ones and make them seem more real than they actually are.
He had easily treatable cancer if diagnosed early enough (which it was). He refused treatment, because he insisted on curing himself only using his exclusively fruit-based diet.
When that didn’t help (what a surprise), he finally caved and did try to get treatment, but by then it was too late.
This is a reminder that paying for a subscription means t&cs can be changed. You aren’t buying the engine etc just a license to access/use it for a period of time. Stop buying subscriptions!
Or just don’t send death threats… what a bunch of petulant lunatics people are.
Disagree and express your disagreement, don’t use the opportunity express your violent inner child. You just distract from the actual issue you “care” about.
More realistic outcome - some game loving tweenage hacker does something fantastically destructive in whatever part of their infrastructure they can get into.
Since 2012, Yelp has caught nearly 5,000 businesses engaging in shady tactics, like paying customers for favorable ratings or hiring people to write phony reviews.
Yelp is releasing a new index that tracks every U.S establishment it’s ever caught engaging in “suspicious” activity to influence its reviews.
Yelp places temporary alerts on businesses’ pages when it discovers fake reviews, and regularly releases transparency reports detailing its moderation efforts.
“We’d love to get to a place where this new index develops into a regular resource for others, whether it’s FTC, consumers, regulators or other sites,” Malik tells Engadget.
But she’s also quick to point out that the index is also meant to help Yelp users make “educated decisions” about where to spend their money.
While you may not think much about visiting a coffee shop with a history of paying people to leave positive Yelp reviews, your feelings may be very different if you’re looking for a contractor to remodel your home, or for a daycare or moving company (all of which appear in the index).
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