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Unity: We Have Heard You

• purplecats 3y ago
  > We apologize for the confusion Ah, I guess it was just a big misunderstanding!
  • kstrauser 3y ago
    That's always my favorite response. If only you understood what we were saying, you'd support our great (for us) idea! Uh, no. I understood you perfectly. I still oppose it.
  • sokoloff 3y ago
    There was certainly a confusion of ideas in the process of reaching the original decision; maybe that's what they're talking about...
• anotherhue 3y ago
  If only there was some way to talk to their customers ahead of time. Corporate infantilism at its finest.
  • readthenotes1 3y ago
    "This is not who we are"
    • clnq 3y ago
      “A severe and continuous lapse in judgement”
      • CreepGin 3y ago
        "Not reflective of our core values"
• liquidpele 3y ago
  How about you fire the CEO that allowed such a boneheaded decision? With them in charge, how could one ever trust your company to not make such moves again?
  • dylan604 3y ago
    Even Apple did similar with their proposed CSAM scanning, and after the uproar, walked that decision back. So at least Unity is at least giving a head nod towards decency. It could definitely be worse. Imagine if Musk was in charge.
    • clnq 3y ago
      “The good news is that I’ve seen worse, the bad news is that not a lot”. I’m sure some executive did even worse. But a scorched Earth cash grab is very bad business. No need to spin it positively.
    • rmbyrro 3y ago
      If Musk was in charge of Unity, he'd cut 90% of the staff and just charge $8/mo for a blue sign on your game. PS: for those without a sense of humor, this is a joke.
      • barkingcat 3y ago
        No it’s not a joke but what will really happen.
      • Auracle 3y ago
        To be fair, cutting staff seems like it would be reasonable. How do they have ~2x the number of employees that Epic has? I know the ad side probably takes some numbers but Epic actually makes games. From an outsider it seems horribly mismanaged.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • VHRanger 3y ago
• GreenJon 3y ago
  Changing the policy is not a complete u-turn on the policy. The trust is gone.
  • Supply5411 3y ago
    A short term memory is an acceptable substitute for trust
  • Macha 3y ago
    Honestly, a u-turn is not enough because of the broken trust. They'd need to cut off their (perceived or real) ability to "change the deal" like this again. Like make it clear you get a perpetual license to distribute the unity runtime for products produced while using a validly licensed unity editor. Make it so the customer has to take some affirmative action (not just clickthrough a generic new version TOS screen) to upgrade to any new TOS version which removes that license.
• a1o 3y ago
  https://nitter.net/unity/status/1703547752205218265?s=46&t=7KCNnmJt82xcCKEkZnoUTQ https://nitter.net/unity/status/1703547752205218265?s=46&t=7...
• kstrauser 3y ago
  "Don't get us wrong: We're not changing a thing. But we heard you!"
  • senectus1 3y ago
    I suspect this is going to be the case.
• joe_the_user 3y ago
  When Hasbro, publisher of D&D, engaged in shady license shenanigans, they were able to - sort of, partially - regain trust of the community by more aggressively open sourcing the D&D license (releasing them as creative commons, I think). But it seems like since Unity probably can't open source their product and stay in business, Unity has put their customers in a position where they can't trust the company but need to trust the company to use the product. I'm totally outside the gaming industry but jeesh, how could anyone use that product if they had any choice about it?
  • ClimaxGravely 3y ago
    After I finish my current unity project I think I'm done with unity. It's a small non-monetized project so I'm not too worried. Haxe + heaps.io are open source/free/MIT and can publish to webGL which was generally my unity use case so I'm looking forward to moving over to that environment.
    • southwesterly 3y ago
      Ooh that looks great. Thanks.
  • BryanLegend 3y ago
    They could open source it. It's not the majority of their revenue. 100 years from now it will probably be open source.
    • tourmalinetaco 3y ago
      It’s truly terrifying what copyright has become.
• Havoc 3y ago
  > We apologize for the confusion Confusion? Nope pretty sure everyone was 100% clear that this was a money grab & giant f you to the devs.
  • johnnyanmac 3y ago
    The CEO always takes the blame for decisions, and for the consumer market John has a bad reputation as being EA's CEO previously. So it's a pretty easy lightning rod. I do think this buries the lede in that John has been around for a decade, but this is happening a little over a year after Unity merged/acquired Ironsource and 3 board members from IronSource became Unity's board.
• indymike 3y ago
  There are a few things Unity needs to address (I'm about to go write a couple of games because I've spent a career writing boring business software) before I will consider using Unity: * One of Unity's spokespersons actually said that Unity could add fees at any time, and customers could not do anything about it. Aside probably being illegal in most jurisdictions, this mentality shows a complete lack of integrity and an abundance of power-drunkenness. What is being done to ensure that you can actually do a contract with Unity and trust them to live up to their obligations? (spirit of the agreement, not letter of the agreement) * What is going to be done to make sure that Unity's executive team does not make a future mistake like this? Finally, we'll all have to wait. The tweet said "we heard you and we're going to do something different". Not exactly a decisive move.
  • philipov 3y ago
    They haven't heard anyone. They are just playing the "Overshoot then Back Off" negotiation playbook.
    • panyam 3y ago
      The idea that execs did not see this coming is well - ok may be I am too old think this was not planned.
    • Auracle 3y ago
      I don’t think that’s true in this case. Usually that’s a “the structure is fine but the price increase is way too much” move. This completely wrecked faith in Unity. They also took too long for this response. If it was their plan, it was an absolutely terrible one.
      • loupol 3y ago
        I think you and GP are right at the same time. The fee was probably knowingly overshot and then right after they offered to practically waive it to people who would be using their ad delivery services. Getting people to use their ads was imo the main plan for them. But they completely botched it by using a stupid fee structure and disregarding all the non-ad supported game developers who obviously won't get the waiver.
• Twirrim 3y ago
  They haven't said they're reverting it. Just changing it. Could be a change for the worst.
• marcodiego 3y ago
  >> We have heard you. We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused. We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of days. Thank you for your honest and critical feedback. 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.
  • philipov 3y ago
    I don't see anything here about firing the executives who forced through this plan. Rolling back the changes isn't enough when the biggest damage is the breach of trust in having a reliable business partner.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • copx 3y ago
    Don't worry, even if Unity fully abandons these plans, trust has been irreversibiley destroyed, and everyone is now aware that their CEO is an EA scumbag. I doubt many people will start new projects based on Unity after this..
    • Macha 3y ago
      The only defense against the door-in-face negotiating technique is that the perpetrators have to end up worse than they started to dissuade them for trying again. For every hasbro forced to back down and then some, that's more power and dissuasion power to consumers, but for every reddit who gets their way with some superficial concessions that's a point of reassurance for executives who might consider trying it,
  • drpossum 3y ago
    The best outcome if you're a Godot supporter and a developer supporter is Unity backs off the installation fees AND then everyone goes to Godot anyways.
• ramesh31 3y ago
  Part of me believes this was just a bad faith bargaining tactic. The execs knew this would never fly as-is and would generate a huge outrage, so that they can then say "We heard you" and look charitable in walking back to the actual fees they planned to introduce. It's either that, or sheer stupidity and incompetence.
  • raxxorraxor 3y ago
    People often accept a worse "compromise" in that situation. But I don't think this style will work if you need to acquire new customers that will use their engine.
• clnq 3y ago
  I wonder if this is a real walk-back, or just one of those where they do the same thing anyways in a few months once the scandal dies down. It would not be below Unity, I think that has been communicated clearly.
• timbit42 3y ago
  I love watching capitalists crash and burn their companies.
  • over_bridge 3y ago
    I feel like we need a new default corporate ownership model. A company can be in operation for decades and grow headcount massively but the shareholders at the top retain the same percentage of control as when it was tiny and new. Many people contribute to a company's success and its not reflected in the ownership. If ownership could accrue in employees to a non trivial degree, they would have some power to push back when some bonehead exec tries to blow the whole place up. It's their livelihood as well as just the shareholders. Right now when one of these giants at the top falls, they take out a lot of other people with them.
    • riwsky 3y ago
      It can—just start a company and run it that way. There’s nothing magical about this, and acting like there is disempowers you in the long run.
    • johnnyanmac 3y ago
      That's not really what happened to Unity. Unity was started by 3 dudes in Copenhagen. Since then, the company moved its HQ to California, went public, and the original founders have all departed. 2 departed long ago before any of this. The last one was the CTO until being quietly replaced in March of this year. If anything, Unity became a beast outside of the control of the very ones who fostered it. Sure, each founder could probably retire off the money they made, but this doesn't seem like something they would have allowed if they were still around. Tangent aside: >If ownership could accrue in employees to a non trivial degree, they would have some power to push back when some bonehead exec tries to blow the whole place up. How would that happen? The thing is that employees in many places are paid in stock as is. In theory they can all collectively do the very thing you suggest by all pulling out stock. But it's hard for that many people to come together and rally under one cause.
  • copx 3y ago
• nonrandomstring 3y ago
  "Hear" is a slippery word. Hearing is not listening. First you hear, but you do not listen. Then you want to listen. Then you can listen. Finally, with effort, you listen. In addition to intent there must be theory of mind, and inter-subjectivity, some one to listen to. Then, say back what you really think you heard - acknowledge the reality not your own lens; "We hear that you feel we were greedy, took our users for granted and treated you with disrespect." Is different from; "We are frightened and reacting to your signals of disengagement" (expect more manipulative acting-out as we try to "fix you")
  • BoorishBears 3y ago
    "Listen" is a slippery word. Listening is not hearing. You can listen to a song and not hear the words it contains. Not hear the intent behind each line. You hear by...
    • tourmalinetaco 3y ago
      You heard what OP said, but did not listen to their message.
    • nonrandomstring 3y ago
      I'll bite :) There's a couple of research texts that I'd suggest make "listening" an attentive activity higher up the cognitive than hearing. Auditory neuroscience: Schnupp, Nelken and King (2011) and Thinking in Sound: Bigand and McAdams both talk about "hearing" mainly at the physioacoustic (signal perceptual) level, whereas "listening experiments" tend to focus on the structural and semantic processing faculties. Of course that's an over-rigid appeal to scientific words, and I appreciate your saying it can kinda work with the words exchanged. Bit like the tussle we once had here over "ethics" versus "morals" :)
      • BoorishBears 3y ago
        There's a bit of critical thinking that I'd suggest makes the distinction moot here: Unity could have said 'listen', and given the insane mismatch between their past actions and the current rather predictable response, there'd be precious little comfort the sentence "We Have <Either> You" could provide compared to whatever their next actions are. With all your research I'm sure you've come across this concept in the often quoted form: "actions speak louder than words" (And for posterity, they even said they're listening: they just don't open with it...)
• danielvaughn 3y ago
  According to Freya Holmer (who I trust since she has some insight into what's going on within Unity), their own employees were actively trying to warn them about the public response to the proposed change, long before and leading up to the release. Trust takes a lifetime to earn and a moment to destroy. I think this could actually kill Unity. It's easy to opine from the armchair, but what I think they should have done is gone down Unreal Engine's path - buy up valuable properties like Quixel and give yourselves a unique selling point. Then they could have at least said they're adding new functionality to justify the price hike.
  • raxxorraxor 3y ago
    > I think this could actually kill Unity. I see no way how it wouldn't. Which developer wouldn't be looking for alternatives now? Perhaps they have luck and their former good reputation especially with smaller studios will hold for a while.
  • clnq 3y ago
    > their own employees were actively trying to warn them This is almost always the case. But executives tend to listen to the yes-men more.
• Danieru 3y ago
  This is a great example of the power of spending all your money. Notice how many developers are saying they'd accept a revenue share on top of the existing per seat fee. If Unity had not overspent their revenue no one would be showing them pity. Regular people see a profit or loss as an inevitable and uncontrollable result of fate. Anyone who has run a business knows costs are things you decide on. Contracts do not sign themselves. Employees do not show up at the door by themselves demanding payment. Unity spent more money than it earns. Leadership decided to do that. Now devs and employees are treating that decision as a fact of nature and pleading to charge more.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• matheusmoreira 3y ago
  There was no confusion. Stop gaslighting people.
• kmeisthax 3y ago
  This is a water sandwich. As far as I'm concerned, Unity is pivoting to a door-in-the-face[0] strategy. Since it works on anchoring, the only counter to door-in-the-face is to treat the substitute offer more harshly than you would have otherwise. In other words, punish companies for being untrustworthy business partners. I really hope game developers start demanding the following: - Unity abandons all attempts to adopt a revenue share of any kind and funds itself solely on subscriptions to Unity[1]. - Unity poison-pills themselves such that if they attempt any additional significant change in business model, then all developers who have developed games on Unity are entitled to GPL source access to those versions of the Unity runtime. They can hold source code in escrow to be released should this poison pill trigger. - Unity specifically fire John Riccitiello. Choosing a game engine is a matter of trust in a particular development team. Unity has broken that trust, and as far as I can tell, that is specifically due to John's "gotcha" business tactics. Remember that quote from a decade ago about charging players a buck to reload? That's revealing of the mentality behind this business model change. [0] Door-in-the-face refers to making a ridiculous offer intended to be rejected in order to make another offer seem less onerous in comparison. [1] Yes I am aware this implies cancelling features. Given what people have said of Unity's development pipeline over the last half-decade, it sounds like most of those features weren't actually things Unity's customers wanted.
  • ncr100 3y ago
    Why John? He works for the board, since like '13. I presume you don't know what the board discussed to come to this plan It's a public company but those discussions are private.
• tetrisgm 3y ago
  Until the actions are corrected, changes prevented, and someone takes accountability, this is just asking to stop criticizing them
• PaulKeeble 3y ago
  I really have grown a strong dislike for these non-apologies where they claim some of problem is with you/us instead of purely their own actions. There is no confusion, there is no misunderstanding and the only reason you are changing anything is because you could see your business loosing customers so fast you got scared it was all over not because you have some culture of listening to feedback. I really hate these apologies that blame their customers, they are ridiculously narcissistic.