Unity May Never Win Back the Developers It Lost in Its Fee Debacle

gr522x , 9 months ago

I think it’s time to revisit the question of why these corporations exist as “people” under the law, when they clearly operate without humanity. The perversion of justice that granted them this right was taken directly from the 14th Amendment in 1886. That amendment was written to grant citizenship to freed slaves. What a coincidence that slavery ended, but was immediately replaced with a new structure called corporations.

kava , 9 months ago

It’s a practical policy. You want corporations to be able to enter into contracts, pay taxes, have legal responsibilities, etc.

Corporations already existed before the 14th amendment. So many valid critiques of capitalism but I don’t understand the fixation with this one.

If they weren’t “persons” then contracts would simply change their wordings but would still be functionally the same. It’s like changing the color of a sports team jersey.

You should be more concerned with the workers owning the means of production. That can happen with or without corporate personhood. And that will be what actually brings us an equitable society.

gr522x , 9 months ago

It’s certainly “practical” for shareholders with controlling interests in these publicly traded companies, but very impractical for everyone else.

The word corporation may have existed before the 14th Amendment, but the legal definition was entirely different. The word “Country” was also used to describe the state a person was from in the 19th century, if asked about one’s country, one would would reply with the name of their state of residence. The meaning over a word can change entirely in a couple generations.

What criticism of capitalism is more relevant than the abomination of corporate personhood? Toss a few more right-wing Supreme Court rulings into the mix like Citizen’s United giving corporations the ability to spend unlimited and unregulated money lobbying (buying) the legislative system and you have a nation in decline with a failing economic system.

Legally only citizens are allowed to lobby congress, if corporations were no longer considered people, then real people would have more access to power than their corporate overlords.

kava , 9 months ago

Corporations have existed since before the USA was even a thing. It’s a group of men with part ownership in some type of organization designed to make profit. Hell, corporations were arguably much more powerful back then. Just look at the British East India Company. It had over 260,000 troops and owned massive swathes of territory.

If corporations weren’t persons and couldn’t lobby for that single reason, then they would funnel money into actual persons and then those people would lobby.

The solution if you don’t want people to lobby (which I agree, is a goal you should aim for) then get rid of lobbying altogether. Changing the legal mechanics by which it happens accomplishes nothing. Which is what I mean by changing color of a sports jersey. It’s focusing on trivial details and ignoring the fundamental issue. Missing forest for the trees.

gr522x , 8 months ago

Thanks for the civil tone of your reply, I have to agree that even if corporate personhood was abolished the oligarchs would just find another way to control the political system keeping rigged to favor their interests. Lobbying in the US started during the Civil War from what I understand, this lad to the creation of a Military Industrial Complex that continues to lobby US lawmakers into conflicts motivated by greed and not diplomatic interests. If you don’t believe me, please listen to the warning from President Eisenhower in his farewell address.

Do you think it’s in the people’s best interest to keep the current corporate structure in tact and legislate lobbying reforms instead?

kava , 8 months ago

I think unfortunately democracy lends itself to oligarchy. It’s a constant war of back and forth between democracy trying to fight back and then the oligarchs taking back control. Eternal struggle, essentially.

Look at for examples in the 1800s with the expansion of the railroads. We realized monopolies were dangerous so we create anti-trust laws. For a while, the government enforces this to break monopolies. This is good for democracy- it reduces the power of large corporations controlling policies.

Eventually, however, they sneak back in. Look at the original AT&T. I forget the name but it was Edison’s company. They became massive, were broken up, but then slowly merged together over a long period of time.

However by the time they combine together again, there is little public will to break them up. We’re at the point today where we have powerful anti-trust legislation but our politicians either have no will to change it or are too scared to change it.

We could break up Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc. They buy up their potential competitors before they are any risk and we live in a world where vast majority of internet traffic gets routed through the big 5. Google (YouTube, search), Meta (Facebook, Instagram, whatsapp), Twitter, reddit, tiktok.

Instead of breaking these companies up to maintain a free market with competition - we don’t do anything. Why? It’s a pendulum and corporate interests are in the driver’s seat right now.

There are many other industries where a few big companies control everything. Internet like Comcast & AT&T… Media - I remember reading in 2019 half of all movies that came out in theaters was owned by Disney. Airlines are another example. 80% of trips happen under 4 companies. American airlines, delta, southwest, and United.

There are similar oligopolies in many industries that are less visible. Pharmaceuticals, defense contractors, cloud infrastructure, etc.

As long as these companies have such power… they will find a way to manipulate our democratic system. You can change the rules and they will get around them. For example we have anti-trust and depending on your interpretation many of the companies above can be broken up.

Yet we don’t do it. So the law doesn’t actually matter. What matters is where the real power is currently located. The laws are guidelines…

So the solution? I have no idea, really. I think there is no ultimate solution as long as there is capitalism. It will always be a war between people trying to assert their own private power and the institutions trying to keep the system legitimate.

However, I think we can make the situation better by breaking up the power of these companies by actually enforcing anti-trust laws and making it harder for them by for example getting rid of legal lobbying and making them do it illegally. That will incur extra costs for them, ultimately making them less effective.

When you launder money, you lose a good chunk of it. Somstimes a significant chunk.

Kushia , 9 months ago

I thought competition is supposed to be good?

Not like that I guess.

Mockrenocks , 9 months ago

If you destroy good will you’re likely not going to get it back in any situation.

Buffalox , 9 months ago

Can be destroyed in an instant, but takes years to build.

MeanEYE , 9 months ago

Am not sure why anyone would stay with them at this point. Even if they have a huge project which is massively popular, they have every reason to move away from them since they wanted to apply those changes retroactively. Imagine if they came up with half a million in fees years after your project has stopped selling and you have invested money into new project or elsewhere. Sure, it might be illegal to do so, but good luck fighting them in court.

New projects I wouldn’t even think twice. They backpedaled on this occasion but their goal is clear and there was no guarantee they won’t try this kind of thing again which leads me to thinking it’s only a matter of time when they will try more sneakily to squeeze changes in.

DogsShouldRuleUs , 9 months ago

I had no idea John ricitiello was the CEO of unity. Holy shit that’s bad. With his reputation I’m surprised anyone even used unity. Should have seen this coming a mile away. He wants to slurp money out of every conceivable orifice.

That guy fucking sucks.

torpak , 9 months ago

When you make your business dependent on a single supplier, that’s a massive risk. I don’t quite understand why many Managers don’t grasp that concept. There are two solutions: build your own infrastructure or use something that’s either publicly available (like open source software) or easily replaceable (like a library with a common interface that many others also implement in a way that would also solve your usecase).

If you don’t do that, one day in the future your supplier will increase the cost until it’s just below the cost of switching. If the cost of switching is more than you can afford at that point, you are screwed.

Cloud computing anyone?

s_v , 9 months ago

And they never should, the fact that they can push this outrageous policy in the first place just means that they can do it again in the near future

AndyLikesCandy , 9 months ago

The takeaway is to never hire people from EA into decision making roles.

MaxPower , 9 months ago

Goes to show that destroying trust is quite easy, but earning trust is very hard.

Smacks , 9 months ago

Saw a bunch of idiots calling the smaller devs “not serious about making games” for switching engines.

BitingChaos , 9 months ago

They were willing to fuck over some people and drive them completely out of business.

Which people? Developers. The very people that helped make Unity what it is. Unity wanted to completely crush their own developers. Some estimates put Unity’s fees higher than 100% revenue in some scenarios.

Them back-tracking and saying “wow! we didn’t expect this to be so hated!” shows that they either don’t understand numbers (they do) or that they think their users are idiots.

So why would developers want to come back to them?

Postcard64 , 9 months ago

John Riccitello literally called developers “fucking idiots” in an interview, so yeah, it’s the second option.

possiblylinux127 , 9 months ago

I’d hope not. I hope the devs realize that its a gamble to put all your eggs in one basket

irotsoma , 9 months ago

If they had just listened to the feedback, realized their mistake, even if it took a while, and then backpedaled to the current compromise, they probably wouldn’t have hurt their business much. It was the disdain they showed for small developers, basically saying they weren’t going to address issues like reinstallation and other things that would make a big difference to smaller projects. And then quietly altering their TOS, to make the small developers that made the platform able to exist, have to start paying even if the contract at the time protected them from the fees if they didn’t upgrade.

This kind of disregard for the people who made your company what it is today, just to make some short term profit is exactly why Reddit, Twitter, and so many other tech companies are falling apart right now. It’s just happening to such extremes that it’s not just let’s price gouge our customers and patrons, but let’s actively commit fraud to squeeze out every possible dime from all but our biggest customers and throw them away. Fortunately, places like Lemmy and Mastodon are here to catch them. Hope they can make it.

eronth , 9 months ago

Yeah I can’t imagine why I would start a project with Unity at this point. That’s just asking to get screwed over later with no warning.

henfredemars , 9 months ago

It appears that Unity shot itself in both feet and also its face. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen such a spectacular betrayal of trust by a business where confidence in your product is paramount. Even with extreme backpedling, it’s in the can.

NoMoreCocaine , 9 months ago

Wizard of the Coast license fiasco is about the same. Except of course that “confidence in your product” is a bit of a misnomer. It’s not a confidence in the D&D, but the license. A lot of people were trusting the OGL, and the changes would have fucked over half of the industry with their “retroactive” changes.

rizoid , 9 months ago

I was maybe 10 hours of work into a small side project and I just said fuck it and started over in Godot. No reason to use Unity unless you are a studio that’s deep into development or supporting a game that’s already out.

DLSchichtl , 9 months ago

But think of the short term profits!

Fraylor , 9 months ago

Right? Do they think executive compensation grows on trees?

tony , 9 months ago

“Since we decided a few weeks ago to adopt the leaf as legal tender, we have, of course, all become immensely rich.”

Ford stared in disbelief at the crowd who were murmuring appreciatively at this and greedily fingering the wads of leaves with which their track suits were stuffed.

“But we have also,” continued the management consultant, “run into a small inflation problem on account of the high level of leaf availability, which means that, I gather, the current going rate has something like three deciduous forests buying one ship’s peanut.”

Murmurs of alarm came from the crowd. The management consultant waved them down.

“So in order to obviate this problem,” he continued, “and effectively revalue the leaf, we are about to embark on a massive defoliation campaign, and. . .er, burn down all the forests. I think you’ll all agree that’s a sensible move under the circumstances."

The crowd seemed a little uncertain about this for a second or two until someone pointed out how much this would increase the value of the leaves in their pockets whereupon they let out whoops of delight and gave the management consultant a standing ovation. The accountants among them looked forward to a profitable autumn aloft and it got an appreciative round from the crowd.”

slaacaa , 9 months ago

❤️shareholder value❤️