Unity temporarily closes offices amid death threats following contentious pricing changes
https://www.engadget.com/unity-temporarily-closes-offices-amid-threats-following-contentious-pricing-changes-163533875.htmlOpen linkView original on lemm.ee908
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I'm not one of the maniacs making threats of any kind, but honestly it really seems like death threats are the only thing that gets any attention anymore, so I can understand why it's done...
Is "eat the rich" not a death threat in its own right?
It is, and here's the thing: All of society, laws, and legal recourses ultimately just boil down to "might makes right, but with extra steps." We all love to act like this isn't the case in a civilized society, but it is. That might usually rests with the police, the military, some governmental organization, or some megacorporation. Violence both literal and metaphorical is inflicted on the common person continually by those at the top. Who are the police after all? Just guys with guns. Who are judges and politicians? Just guys with access to the police. Who are megacorporations? Just guys with access to judges and politicians, and so on down the line. So when someone says they have the law on their side, and you don't, what they're really implying is that they can call the guys with guns, who if you don't do what they say (no matter how ridiculous) can literally kill you. And we treat this as normal and proper and reasonable, because we're stupid.
These motherfuckers want to act like their only their violence or threat of violence is justified, and that's it's a one way street.
Well, it ain't. Nobody's invulnerable.
Maybe it's "just" video games. (Or "just" a cell phone app, or "just" a predatory subscription, or "just" an apartment with exorbitant rent, or whatever.) But big corporations are fucking with people's livelihoods, here. There's a reason we colloquially call such a thing "a living." These are assholes taking food off of someone's table, just for greed, just because they can, because they think they've above reproach. Because the whole teetering facade is lopsided. It doesn't matter who the fuck they are at that point.
Yeah, this is basically why I'm not buying these arguments against a struggle of any kind, just because methods of it are illegal.
Illegality =/= your cause or methods are wrong
Call me whatever you want but Im happy the people who make these bad decisions from their insulated lots in life have to face at least some kind of consequences now, because the law is explicitly set up so that they typically never have to. Sucks that it comes to this but its behavior analysis 101, if you dont introduce consequences for undesirable behaviors, you'd be an idiot to expect change.
I don't love that it's probably caught up a lot of people who have nothing or little to do with it though, but the guys at the top need consequences or nothing will change, and beggars cant be choosers.
Yeah, it's not like voicing disagreement and concerns amicably is listened to. It's not like these executives negotiate with the users before making decisions that can ruin their livelihoods. As the avenues for civilized protest close, as people are left powerless towards the decisions of the wealthy, what else can they be expected to do?
It might seem much when it comes to games, but it's also a matter of worker's rights. Sometimes it seems like people today are a bit too passive and overly concerned with civility as their rights are undermined. Comes to mind the other news about the Australian CEO saying that he thinks more people should be unemployed and feel pain to be reminded who they work for. What is the appropriate response to that?
Well here I thought it was a metaphor, but if you're down for literally eating the rich I guess us steves gotta stick together
Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!
Maybe it is but I always took it as "let's take their money and redistribute the wealth."
Frankly that doesn't sound honest. Especially when picture of guillotines are sent by the same crowd. Even more considering that wealthy people are not going to volunteer their wealth through reasonable debate.
It comes from a poem. It's very literal
What poem if you don’t mind me asking?
Apparently this might have been created recently, even though the phrase goes back at least a few hundred years. Here's a transcription of the one I was talking about though:
“We are starving. There is no more bread, and we have nothing to eat.”
The rich man said,
“Not my problem you don’t work for your bread,”
as if he did not snatch away the grain by his own greedy hands and create filling bread for his own overflowing mouth.
The poor cried,
“We are dying. There is no more medicine, and we’re all ill.”
The rich man said,
“Not my problem you don’t take care of yourselves,”
as if he did not buy all the medicine and raise prices so high
the gods themselves would not
be able to reach.
The poor people
stopped crying,
and the rich man was satisfied…
Until they came knocking at his door one night;
their faces were sunken,
their flesh decaying,
their eyes sightless.
They were monsters
of the rich man’s
own making.
As they devoured his flesh,
the rich man cried,
“Please, spare me!”
The ravenous zombies said,
“Not our fault
you fattened yourself
for slaughter.”
That's the idea. Here's hoping they get it.
Put the bite on the son of a bitch
There is no meaningful difference between a threat and a warning. I've never understood why we see that retort so often when someone asks "is that a threat?!". It's the same damn thing.
Death threats are not OK, but this can destroy years of work for people, and it can threaten their livelihood. I'm guessing this has pushed some people into a sense of desperation. And these threats are acts of desperation, not threats that have a huge chance of being carried out.
John Riccitiello needs to be fired, if he isn't Unity deserves bankruptcy for this move.
I'd be willing to bet it wasn't developers sending death threats but "gamers."
Why would they do that? They are not directly impacted by this. Developers losing years of work have much more reason to be super angry.
Ever been in a game forum where the players pretty much worship the developers as if they were gods? It's way too common. Those people can get crazy protective when they make it part of their identity.
Nope, but I can imagine that to some degree.
Despite that, I doubt gamers are very involved in payment methods of game engines, or even know which game engine their games are running on.
So unless some VERY popular game developers have been out saying expansions for their favorite games will not be released because of this, I don't see the mechanics for what you claim working at this point.
Actually, they are talking about canceling silk song, and expansion for hollow Knight that has been in development for ages now, simply because they are looking at the possibility that the game will have to be delisted in order to avoid bankrupting the developer
Depending how it’s implemented, gamers are absolutely impacted by it.
Some of the chatter is that even already-released games would be subject to this change, meaning a lot of devs might pull their backlog to avoid going broke on a game they put out years ago and is now free (or heavily reduced). Or games that have always been free, now the dev has to choose if they want to charge for a historically free game or pull it completely.
This is dev hostile, but it’s also consumer hostile.
Maybe you know, but what happens if a dev pulls a game and someone still has the installer and installs the game? Are they going to charge for that still? It makes not sense to me.
Unity clearly didn't think this part through- probably because they never intended it to do anything but rake in money as the company dies. They never had a real way of precisely tracking downloads, but they want all the info so they can decide how much to charge. So would they charge on a local installer? Almost certainly if they could find out it was used.
I 100% agree on this, I've even made a post about it, where I mention for instance that this will cause a need for more DRM where we need less.
I'm not saying it isn't gamers, but unlike you, I find it unlikely. You may be right IDK.
I never said I found either option likely, I was only addressing the “this doesn’t impact gamers” bit.
I wrote DIRECTLY, of course they are impacted, but 99% don't know that, of the remaining 1% 99% don't care.
While for developers 100% both know and care.
There already Indie devs that are talking about delisting their games in order to avoid paying Unity fees they can't afford.
This contract changes criminal, especially since it punishes the developer for no fault of its own. Sometimes I have to reinstall a game multiple times in order to figure out why it suddenly doesn't work. I'm not the only one, that's going to rack up fast.
And if you think review bombing is bad now? I imagine people buying the game not to leave a negative review, but you run a script that continuously reinstalls and uninstall the game.
They could bankrupt any developer they wanted to. Hell, it might not even be the gamers, if a company with a game on Unity doesn't want to make it epic exclusive, Tim Sweeney has the choice to just continuously reinstall that game in order to sink any company that doesn't play ball
Which game devs are they? I want to know which games I should buy now before it's too late?
The same way people who aren't directly affected by people being queer threaten to bomb places that host drag events.
Some people are just assholes.
See my other comments, it was neither. It was a single employee at their company. Not sure how long that'll stay true though, especially when it comes out that he made it seem like there were death threats being sent to him when it was a single employee making threats. Probably just so he could close the office.
Oh I'm willing to bet that Disney and Nintendo are getting their most expensive lawyers. Keep in mind, there are a lot of Marvel and Star Wars games out there, the mouse doesn't like to share his cheese.
There aren't a lot of Unity Disney games out their, I would struggle to name any. And there definitely aren't any Nintendo ones.
Actually some of the newer Pokemon games are in Unity, and Disney has a lot of Marvel phone games in Unity
Unity is actually quite a popular engine for a lot of games both 3D and 2D and on multiple different platforms. It's very popular among indie developers, though there are actually quite a few games from Big publishers that are released under unity as well.
it’s just edgy teens saying that they’re gonna go murder them, it’s not really going to happen but they have to take safety precautions
You have to take those seriously unfortunately.
Not even, it was a single employee (probably for reasons not even related to this change) and CEO used that as an excuse to close for the day and probably to make people feel pity for him and therefore more likely to give him a pass for these awful decisions.
still stupid and those people should end up in jail for some time.
Which is why he probably used it as an excuse to close the office, when the only known death threat to occur was from one of his employees.
I don't know who that employee is and I don't really care point is he's using that basically to get pity from other people and distract from the bad things that his company is doing right now.
Shitty Executive: “Oh shit, our terrible idea turned out to be wildly unpopular and we’re getting massive negative feedback! Quick, play the death threats card to make us look like the victim!”
Perhaps they could pay a small fee to not receive them.
Or purchase the Happy Customer Times Season Pass, where for 12 months they only receive feedback telling them how awesome they're doing. Only $39.99 per employee!
*fees are liable to change at any time without notice, new prices may be applied retroactively
20 cents for every death threat not sent? Sure! Whos counting? Dont worry, our propiertary system counts every unsent message, you only need to pay up ^(works every previously unsent message, but only if you got more than 200 000 the past year, we got you)
Bit seriously, why do some people always so eager to send death threats? It almost never achieves anything, gets you on the moral low ground and doesn't even get to the right persons the first place.
I’m sure there’s a PR playbook somewhere with a flowchart that says, did you screw up really badly and you look like the villain? - yes - There’s public outrage? - yes - say there’s death threats
No need for death threats. Unity already committed suicide.
Ouch.
I hope so, but frankly we'll just have to see. The people with the money and power usually win.
I imagine this policy will quietly be pulled with a statement about how due to "not expecting how unpopular the decision was"
As soon as they get a subpoena from... every AAA developer.
This would include Warner bros, as they own a video game Studio, in fact I believe Mortal Kombat 1 uses unity, and it's supposed to be what gets their Christmas bonus this year. They would be fools to not already have their people on the case.
What a grade A burn.
Unsurprisingly, it's likely that this "death threats" situation was made up by the ceo: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/16j21jg/the_truth_behind_the_unity_death_threats/
It's a reddit link, ik... here's a copy of the post:
Everyone blaming "people" in the comments and they just fell to the CEO charade to get sympathy points.
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.
That just redirects to thread
16j21jg. They're generating opaque unique IDs so they can track permalinks now?Damn, that's scummy as fuck. I'll try to get the proper permalink.
This shouldn't be a distraction from the core issue, but obviously people should cut this shit out.
You can't sneeze online without some sociopathic child threatening to slit your throat.
Edit: Annnd it was an employee of Unity that made the threats...
THAT IS NOT TRUE AT ALL!
I SHOULD SLIT YOUR THROAT FOR SAYING SUCH OBVIOUS WRONG STATEMENTS!
/s
One day you're going to sneeze, and then you'll get yours.
I was gonna point out, that they would have to sneeze online
I sometimes forget, we're not in 2000, where else would they sneeze? Irl?
Ewww... what kind of luddite would ever sneeze analogue.
I take it you don't use the engine
Whatcha wanna bet there aren't any death threats? Seems to be a go to for "we're assholes, but look at these imaginary assholes instead!"
Don't underestimate that shit. I've personally got death threats before. People are dumb as fuck. I've seen people actually follow through. Life is fucked up. Everyone's batshit these days.
I don't say that in Support of unity though.
Yeah, not only will people send death threats, but they'll send them to random people they see on LinkedIn who happen to have the company in their bio.
Instead of, like, to the CEO's house.
Because too many people are both angry reactionaries, and also cowards.
You've seen people follow through on death threats?
I was thinking this. A way to demonize the counter movement
Hmm seems like we called it:
https://lemmy.ca/post/5340114
I will absolutely take that bet. Given both how unpopular the decision is combined with it being even tangentially related to the gaming community I would be astonished if they didn't receive death threats.
Knowing how despicable the worst of the gaming community can be, I have no doubts that death threats were real.
I also have no doubts that the despicable CEO, like others of his ilk who receive entirely justified negativity for their stupidity, will milk it as an excuse to dilute the negative feedback and shift to victimization.
I don't doubt for a second they are real. There are some really scary sycophantic gamers out there.
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.
So, the leadership of Unity is a complete piece of shit, but death threats (or really, any other threat of violence) are just straight up idiotic. It’s a game engine company. There are much more fun and interesting (and, you know, legal) ways to kill the company in a commercial sense.
I feel bad for the regular workers there who can't choose the direction of the company and need that job to live.
But frankly if they were all directed just to the CEO, I couldn't be less bothered. Wealthy assholes don't have empathy, don't listen to reasons, aren't bound by rules. Even lawsuits today are decided more by who has the most money than who is in the right. Maybe it's not so bad if folks put some fear in him, specifically.
Sure, there are more worthy causes to direct that sort of outrage to. Then again there's the livelihood of a large number of smaller creators to consider. This isn't just about a fictional thing not being the way someone wanted.
Well, they are idiotic, yes. In the sense that if you mean to kill someone, telling them beforehand is wildly counter-productive.
Wild. Murica lol.
The one guy working on a PS2 emulator also quit because death threats.
Why not make sustainable laws to prevent shitty companies from doing things like this instead of “social justice”
Because the most successful senior citizen daycare facility is the US Senate. A lot of these people still think of computers as being Commodore 64s.
Companies are allowed to make bad decisions bro.
The overreaction to online death threats is so stupid. An anonymous 0 follower Twitter account allows organizations and people to instantly turn the PR situation around and become the victims and act like they are personally being hunted down by Mossad.
Death threats are the background noise of the internet, always have been. It's just part of the PR manual now.
I remember someone telling me they were going to hunt me down and kill me on StarCraft back in like 2001. Shit hasn't changed
I've almost found you, I've narrowed your location down to earth. Maybe in another 20 years, I'll get a hemisphere.
To be fair, you zerg rushed me in the first five minutes despite our prior agreement.
gl hf nr20
To be faaiirrrrrrr
To be fair, you are a ghost haunting a computer and have been since the year 2001
Hey! Don't threaten people! Don't hurt anyone! Just move to Godot. That's it. Abandon ship, peacefully. These people care more about money than employee lives anyway.
I find this and other comments like this hilarious because you're 100% correct and yet at the same time lemmy is a cesspool of people on every post about an owner, or landlord, or millionaire/billionaire about killing them, or beating them, or bringing out the guillotine, or eating them, etc etc.
Again, you're right. It's amazing how tone deaf people are here though to not be aware their behavior reeks of the same extremism.
It's why I'm very much on the fence about continuing here outside of the memes. The people here are disgustingly naive and not healthy quite frankly.
Rich choking and killing the planet knowingly with no regard for human or any other life = unity devs
500 IQ
join a community with your values, lemmy is federated, if you don't like your community join another :)
Where do I find one of those? Most communities with any traffic feel like they're full of the same people with the same axes to grind, just talking about slightly different subjects.
Idk why the downvotes. It's seriously off putting to be surrounded by people that clearly have no idea how the world works. It was funny before Trump. Now I take these meme waves with a grain of salt. Idiots in large numbers are dangerous. At least reddit was easy enough to use that the cesspool was diluted with less intense morons.
Please teach us how the world works.
I'm a landlord. Never evicted anyone. It's a super high risk position to be in. My mortgage isn't free. The upkeep to my property isn't free. Time spent vetting renters so my neighbors don't have to live next to crackheads isn't free. You pay rent so you don't have to think about maintenence costs, mortgage, risking allowing others to live in property you spent money you worked for on. All of that and any other subtly is lost on here. Going to work and enjoying it is possible. The world isn't black and white. Communism doesn't work on a large scale. Etc.
Pretty amazing how a small group on Lemmy can make Reddit look almost sane.
Because companies demanding more money from their customers for the same product is such a rare thing, right? Who could possibly have anticipated it!
Have you actually looked at what they're charging? Nobody is gonna be bankrupted. The pricing structure they announced guarantees the cut Unity takes is a tiny sliver of any developer's revenue unless they're literally only charging like $1 for their product in developing countries.
There are no victims in this story, and even if there were, what I said would not be victim blaming. Seriously, point to where I said developers were asking for it. You can't because I didn't, but you're so high on your own farts you can't read a single sentence without wildly misinterpreting it.
I'm just someone who can read.
If you think I'm so far off, I'm sure you'll have no trouble telling me exactly how much they're planning to charge, right? Right?
Those after school specials were all bullshit.
Nice try Mr. Marijuana Pusher. Thanks to Nancy Reagan I'll "just say no"
That 4chan sure is a wild dude.
Who is this four chin hacker you speak of?
The elite hacker known as 4chan
Known for posting My Mys of Peep the Toad.
Well known symbol of the alt right, peep the toad.
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
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.
Looks like it’s bullshit. https://feddit.it/comment/2515772
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.
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.
Sorry, no. This is not accurate either. According to Unity's own FAQ regarding the subject... Which you can look at right here...
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...
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".
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
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.
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.
I am usually against such and still am, you should never send anyone deaf that's, that is a felonious offense.
That said I don't feel sorry for the victim. You can't blackmail every game developer in the world simultaneously and expect nothing to happen.
I'm torn, they're people I don't want workers harmed but I think more harm needs to come to C suites that just get greedy
When you call for violent threats you give ammo to the very groups that you wish to inflict harm upon for the masses to side with them
Accountability for CEO actions needs to be done financially. It needs to first and foremost affect shareholders - because that's the only point for a public company to exist - and then after that it needs to personally penalize CEOs.
If you just target the figurehead of a company the owners won't really be affected. You need to get them where it REALLY hurts - in the wallet. Only then will the dynamic change.
I have a fuckload of sympathy for this company after people call in death threats.
You people are acting insane. The proper response here is for devs to stop using unity not to fucking threaten to kill people dude.
You're right. I'm being paid by unity and not just appalled at the insane gamer moment going on here
That's the only explanation.
And no I won't leave alone someone who is a piece of shit.
This, like cancel culture, is a direct result of a justice system that pretty much never delivers justice to the victims of the rich and the powerful. Fixing that is the only thing that can stop this escalating cultural phenomenon.
Prosecute the shit out of the people making death threats because I don't want to live in a society that's cool with that either.
They already do that in most jurisdictions. Solve the root problem, and the surface problem will be fixed. Only fix the surface, and…well, it’s like weeding dandelions.
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?
https://youtu.be/tGKsbt5wii0?si=km7LTxsY6gwD-mvo
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.
C-level execs at Unity smoking crack.
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. https://youtu.be/tGKsbt5wii0?si=v8_A2jW5uLewhbVS
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.
This is partially what "eat the rich" rhetoric meant when acted on.
There is seriously a mental health pandemic going on and it's scary. Everyone here who has messages or upvotes messages about bringing out the guillotine or killing billionaires really needs to seek help.
And there is a fucking lot of you here on lemmy.
Not everyone on the internet is American bozo
"Threatening to kill people and not wanting people to threaten to kill people are equal worldviews, actually."
No I'm being downvoted because gamers have really rustled jimmies, and this place has a lot of commie-leaning people.
Wanna know how I know? The actual rest of society thinks this is a terrible thing to do.
Thanks for the link. Some of those results were interesting. Question. Your link says that 84% disagree with the statement that "political violence against those I disagree with is acceptable". How have you concluded this is "rising"? What is your base of comparrison?
I don't give a shit and didn't read this, because I think you're a bad person. Your parents failed you.
I'm sorry I don't condone the killing of people simply because they make more than I do.
Seriously grow the fuck up.
Seems to me like you're far more butthurt judging by this comment thread lol.
You've put a lot of words in my mouth that I've never said.
I almost guarantee you and I have more in common than you may realize unfortunately you're so blinded by hate you're unable to think clearly.
Mark my words we are working towards WW3 and it scares the living hell out of me because people like you are so built up in your echo chambers and you're frothing at the mouth. There's no difference between your attitude and those of an average Trump supporter. It's blind rage. Looking for simple solutions to a complex world.
I seriously worry for my children. The anger is so unfocused or focused on the wrong area.
We can change the system but we have to want to. The problem is people increasingly on the left and right just want to burn it down.
How equivalent is
to
What I found out is the outcomes of events like the French Revolution and the rule of the Khmer Rouge i.e. vastly different dependent on the circumstances of the place and time.
Found the rich guy
Somehow I get the feeling that this may not just be some unhinged internet troll throwing out online drivel from his mom's basement. Unity's pricing changes are posing an existential threat to smaller studios that meet the minimum income threshold and are placing the livelihoods of countless thousands of smaller game studio workers at stake. This is one of those changes that is going to impact whether you can continue to put food on the table.
John Riccitello has pissed off a lot of people with his disgusting levels of corporate greed, to the point where even the fourth circle of Hell may not be enough to punish his avarice once he pops his clogs. This move may even be worse than the crap Martin Shkreli pulled as a big pharma executive.
It's bad, but it's not "denying medical treatment to millions of sick people because they can't pay" bad.
Martin gave the medication for free/reduced prices to people who couldn't afford it. It was literally a smear campaign.
Really? Everyone who couldn't afford it had access through him? This is certainly a revelation, and not something made up from the internet.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2015/12/martin-shkreli-pharmaceuticals-ceo-interview
I'm surprised, it does seem that this is true. I read a lot of articles where he announced that people could apply for medication, or medicaid would pay $0.01 per pill. I couldn't find anything about where to apply or one people who have applied and been able to get this medication, but there is already a generic alternative, so this program might be dead in the water.
As for smear campaign, I'm not so sure. Everytime I read quotes from him, it seems he just really likes to play the "bad boy". Maybe he just wants people to think pharmaceutical companies are scumbags, so when he ran one he purposefully made himself look bad. Shkreli definitely didn't seem to care that people got a bad impression of him.
You are correct but in the opposite way, it seems it was a single employee at their company instead which the boss took and decided to say we're getting death threats we're going to close for the day, basically so he could go home early and people would feel bad for him and maybe not give him the flak that he deserves for such an awful decision that's going to ruin the lives of smaller legitimate game developers who use unity.
Bruh it's video games.
Bruh it's people's livelihoods.
Video game development is some of the worst paid tech sector jobs. Most developers will be able to move on to other work with relatively little interruption. It's not ideal by any stretch but it's not nearly on the same level as price gouging life saving pharmaceuticals
I don't think devs that work for corporations really care about this change, if their group used Unity for some reason, they will just move on to their next job (and they're the ones who are worst paid). Every indie dev or otherwise small dev company that has used Unity ever in it's last ten years are now open to serious bad actors. A single person running a script can cost a dev hundreds of thousands of dollars on their own, whether a troll, just same guy pissed off for some reason or another, or even a competing dev. Hell, the one idiot living in his mother's basement who sent death threats to Unity could also do it.
There is no "relatively little interruption", as not only have people lost a lot of work on something they already paid for, they also have to remove all previous work they've made or published with the engine. It's all susceptible to attack.
I agree it's not on the same level as pharma scum, but saying "it's just a video games" is much too far off the other end of the spectrum. At least Shkreli never managed to bankrupt people who had purchased anything (from him) in the past, or made them 'regurgitate' any benefits they had seen. Though I'm sure he'd have loved to.
People here are having a fuckin real one man.
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!
This is a reminder that there are crazy people on the internet.
But this is NOT a reason to have sympathy for Unity.
Obviously death threats are not ok, but for fucks sake, that change is insane. People may install games many times for many reasons, like switching drives, computer, OS or debugging, or corruption, or because they go back to it after not playing for a while.
How is it a good model to charge for repeated installs?
I bet, this will threaten some people on their livelihood, and if you are 90% finished on a project, it's an insane change that will force you to switch to another engine, and could kill several projects.
Also as a user, this increases the need and amount of DRM mechanics, which we need less not more of.
I hope Unity will see a massive dive in customers on these policies. This is the kind of decision a company deserves bankruptcy for. And the CEO John Riccitiello deserves to be fired without benefits, and never hired as CEO again.
Edit PS:
The fee is up to $0.20, that's steep and would mean the end of sub $10 games. This would hurt single and indie developers very much.
Luckily there are other engines, but Unity used to be among the good ones, now they've become an untrustworthy player, and that decreases competition for the entire field.
This is why we cannot let monopolies control the internet. Between twitter, reddit, and unity...
Unreal is much more entrenched than Unity is. At the AAA level, more places hire Unreal devs than Unity devs.
Unity is popular with indies because it's dead simple (Unreal is a complex monster of an engine). But even Unreal doesn't have a monopoly, between things like Source, Lumberyard (which is now FOSS and run by the Linux Foundation), etc. Not to mention you can always roll your own engine, which many places already have.
All because Amongus sold so many times…
Mm, I'm curious as to what the threats actually were. I've seen people claim they got death threats because someone tweeted "kys" at them in response to their homophobic bullshit.
Well looking on the bright side. If death threats are starting to become common for the decisions that companies make then maybe WFH should also be common to protect employees. Can't target employees at an empty office. The employees will have to be careful with social media however.
Personally I’m leaning more towards wanting to handle the death threats themselves.
Because ya know they would continue and now you have to arm your home because corporate greed
Hate this idea a lot
Corporate greed didn't force these lunatics to have a gamer moment. There are ways to express displeasure that aren't fucking death threats man.
Never once did I say corporate greed was a root cause , just the logical cause to the specific predicament I was speaking of.
No shit the terrorist is the source of the issue.
Well it seems like there we're no death threats and the CEO largely made this up basically as an excuse to close the office.
For the record it was a single employee, there were no people sending them death threats.
I like how you included a Lemmy link to a Reddit thread. We're gonna go full circle soon!
It would certainly be funny if someone linked this thread there.
This is becoming standard operating procedure from companies that want a quick PR boost.
One threat, from and employee. Sigh.
More realistic outcome - some game loving tweenage hacker does something fantastically destructive in whatever part of their infrastructure they can get into.
Unity is the sort of company Steve Jobs called out in this 2 min video clip. https://youtu.be/tGKsbt5wii0?si=v8_A2jW5uLewhbVS
I still don't get how a guy with such brilliant insight could be an absolute moron in other areas (such as his personal medical treatment)…
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.
Come on people glitter bombs and ddos is so much funnier
Glitterbombing, Harmless fun for the whole family!
'member blackfaxing?
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.
I mean, people live stream themselves committing crimes and shit quite often. Never underestimate the stupidity of our society.
People are indeed stupid. There's a reason the Mafia's #1 rule was "keep your fuckin' mouth shut." If you're going to commit a crime, don't talk about it just do it.
Discuss, yes, but only verbally. And even then obliquely. "Take him to that spot, you know the one, over by where Leon used to work." Stuff should never be written down because you're just asking for it to turn up as evidence somewhere.
Oh no, the poor rich corporate executives who were just trying to fuck over their usebase made up some death threats!
Time to lick some boots - many of the people in this thread.
Im just happy a rich man is facing consequences for his actions, even if he made them up.
How to destroy your company 101
ITP: Internet dumb fucks do internet dumb shit and send to death threats.
Comments feign an argument for hypocrisy ala “eat the reach is just as bad”
Save yourself some brain cells and move on
Godot users don't give death threats, just saying.
Gamers: pointlessly sacrificing the moral high ground since 2014.
Man, I wish people put this kind of effort into more important shit. Shitty wages, inhospitable environment incoming, and useless CEO fucks causing it all, BUT DAMN YOU UNITY!
Fucking g*mers.
1v1 me?!
Is this because the gaming community has an unfortunate number of hateful trolls or what exactly?
It's because of loose definitions of "death threats" and the fact that when you piss off millions of people a couple of them are bound to tweet "i hope u die" at a ceo
If they had to close their offices, I think that's a good indication of it being serious.
I feel like they could have realized that having their employees sitting around discussing how much their Csuite fucked them probably wasn’t doing them any favors. On the other hand that would also represent a degree of awareness they haven’t really demonstrated a capacity for.
There are some rumors floating around that employees did try to stop this before it went public, but they failed. I agree that they can’t do much now anyways.
A sane response from the gamer community as usual.
Nice to see some repercussions for corporate greed
Death threats? Really now...
This is pathetic. Why send death threats because a company made a change to their product. Why are these people so entitled? Or maybe they just know there are no consequences to their actions so they behave in a shitty manner. If you don't like the changes then use a different product.
First time on the internet? That’s all they do and swat people which results in real deaths. This isn’t anything new, same ol vile behavior that police do handle and do punish for because phone lines are not secure.
Dude...Just stop using the software and let the business fail. That's all you've got to do. Unreal engine, Godot, Gamemaker Studio, Source 2, QBASIC, use something else.
Not easy when your entire game is built on it. You'd most likely have to toss out your code and start from scratch.
Depending on how much money you expect to lose, that may be the more prudent option for some.
At the very least you'd have something to work with - it's not truly "from scratch".
I work in the AAA industry and I've ported code from one engine to another - it's not fast by any means, but at the very least you can assume the code that's there is largely correct. The killers are materials/shaders, porting over design work, and fixing timing issues. If you have netcode that can be tricky as well.
But at the very least you can have the core of your game running again reasonably. It's how things like Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe went from Source to Unity, and how Pokemon BDSP went from the proprietary Pokemon engine to Unity.
Indies and AAs can hire some extra hands to work temporarily with their existing engineers to port and they'd probably lose less money than Unity is charging.
That's why this is an existential threat for so many studios.
They can't survive with the Unity pricing, and they probably don't have the funds to transfer to a new system. So they will have to shut down.
Its the cheapest option, but its still company destroying expensive.
Bro why don't homeless people just get homes? Problem solved.
Any time a gaming company does something stupid, leave it to gamers to out-stupid the company and prove that they deserved to get shit on in the first place
It's not a game it's a game engine, atleast get it right
Holy shit! I knew people got pissed, but this...🤣
Despite it's illegality. it's a type of protest. Better that being pissed off in twitter and the still cucking to unity in the end, but worse that just stopping using unity and porting existing games off the engine. Still, not everybody can still just do that, this is why something like this is understandable. Imagine being a indie dev team years in development with mounting costs and backers expecting a product and you expecting return for your work and then unity turns ups the leeching and fucking up your calculations and forcing you either to delay the launch, pay the financial cost of that delay, port to a different engine and learn a new skillset for that engine or bite the bullet and pay. Also Imagine the unity devs who will be out of a job because of this.
If you want to to change something then yes. A empty performance that the target can ignorance is worse than doing nothing, because then you falsely think "you at least did something". ESPECIALLY so if all other methods are exhausted or unavailable to you and situation is a a great importance to you.
Illegality of methods does not make the cause unjust, since many unjust things in this world are completely legal and will get you imprisoned or killed if you oppose them. The most extreme example of illegality vs injustice was that in 1940s Europe it was highly illegal to protect jews from being hunted down and killed.
I'm not saying I would be justified yo make death threats about this, since as you say this doesn't really concern me personally and I have not made any. I'm just saying that people who get hurt by this have the full moral right to do this if they go down that path.
Also I'm really not buying this "Even greedy leechlike corporate suits still have the right to feel safe when doing decisions that will fuck over countless of of live and make society all the worse for it" line of argument that you are pushing between the lines. Violence is not just when somebody bleeds, you know and this is just response one one kind of violence with other type of violence. And this is not just a provider charging for a product. Many people get hurt by this and years of their lives might go to waste. And for what? Corporate greed, it's not like unity is fucking struggling themselves and they need the cashflow. What they needed was bigger margins.
You really just base you sense of justice on legality. You really would just watch as landlords increase rents for 200% just for greed and watch people go homeless and then feel smugly superior when you condemn and report said homeless for throwing shit in the windows of the landlords. A Tennant might even have the chance to move elsewhere. Unity devs might not have such a easy path out.
You really are a awful person without a heart. Call me a psycopath all you like.
I'm not sure that I have a lot of sympathy for devs who entered into a contract with a for profit company, who are now changing the playing field.
Open source software or bust.
Big corporations need service contracts. If something in the engine is broken where it impacts the game in development, engineers are flown in to fix it at the customer's site (if that’s necessary). That’s not something available with most open source tools.