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Video-Game Company Unity Closes Offices Following Death Threat
- mcraiha 3y agoAt least company bosses now have money to hire bodyguards for themselves. https://www.eurogamer.net/unity-bosses-sold-stock-days-before-development-fees-announcement-raising-eyebrows https://www.eurogamer.net/unity-bosses-sold-stock-days-befor...
- awfml 3y agoAren't public company executives always required to sell on a predefined schedule?
- jdiff 3y agoGenuine question, what stops executives from scheduling stock-tanking announcements to align with their stock-selling schedule?
- tomjakubowski 3y agoI don't know, but one guess: maybe sticking to a stock-selling schedule isn't enough to steer clear of insider trading.
- bmitc 3y agoThat's still considered inside trading, but as far as I can tell, nothing prevents it. Inside trading seems rampant and completely unenforced unless you're a regular Joe or Martha Stewart.
- FateOfNations 3y agoAnd really with Martha Stewart, it wasn't the insider trading, it was lying about insider trading.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- blululu 3y agoPerhaps you run in more criminally inflected circles, but I have never seen anyone committing insider trading, and if I did, I would be more than happy to report it to the SEC. Insider trading is a crime that is definitely enforced and comes with serious consequences. The SEC regularly publishes a list of people who have been convicted and it made a record number of convictions last year (nothing surprising since the population keeps growing). Martha Stewart was not exceptional. She was convicted because she committed crimes.
- bmitc 3y ago> Perhaps you run in more criminally inflected circles, but I have never seen anyone committing insider trading, and if I did, I would be more than happy to report it to the SEC. I don't appreciate the linking you've done there. I do not condone or participate in insider trading nor do I personally know anyone who does. I actually want it regulated and prosecuted much more strictly. > The SEC regularly publishes a list of people who have been convicted and it made a record number of convictions last year How many of those are CEOs, executives, or board members at large corporations or politicans? The point being that powerful and wealthy people can often get away with it. See Musk's market manipulation. The entire point of my comment and the one I replied to was to point put the several loopholes that very probably allow rampant insider trading. I would even go so far as to question whether CEOs, executives, and board members should even be allowed to own stock in their company and related industries given the level of conflict of interest. Certified accountants can't even hold the broadest of broad market ETFs in an IRA if the ETF is even tacitly related to a client. In other words, any trading done by top-level management at major corporations is likely technically insider trading.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- AlotOfReading 3y agoThere's an explicit rule about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_Rule_10b5-1 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SEC_Rule_10b5-1
- brucethemoose2 3y ago> stock-tanking announcements Plausible deniability. Can the FTC show company leadership knew the announcement would be a "stock tanking" one? After all, why would they intentionally do that? Price increases are positive announcements for many companies.
- deusum 3y agoNah, that sort of regulation hurts innovation. /ˢ
- heliophobicdude 3y agoWill that stop abuse when you determine to release stock-damaging news after you had planned a scheduled sell?
- raincole 3y agoIt's more about to allow other investors to dump the stocks before you.
- mannewalis 3y agoHonestly, 2000 shares is nothing for JR. I expect he probably probably participates in the employee stock purchase program and offloads those shares each quarter.
- brucethemoose2 3y ago> Last year, he apologised after labelling developers that don't prioritise monetisation in the creative process as "some of the biggest fucking idiots". > "My word choice was crude. I am sorry. I am listening and I will do better," he later said. I see he's taking his own advice, and doing better!
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- stuckinhell 3y agohttps://www.pionline.com/money-management/blackrock-now-paying-guards-home-security-ceo-larry-fink https://www.pionline.com/money-management/blackrock-now-payi... Seems like many many american ceo's are hiring bodyguards for themselves... At least nobility had the concept of noblesse oblige. Millionaire CEO Tim Gurner wants unemployment to jump to 50% because workers have become ‘arrogant’ https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tim-gurner-property-developer-australia-b2411161.html https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/tim-gurner...
- hotnfresh 3y ago50%?! That’s well over the “there’s going to be a violent revolution and/or populist strongman coup now, period, end of story” mark. He’s either a blowhard or an idiot. Or maybe both, I guess.
- ReptileMan 3y agoNot if you have robot police force.
- somedude895 3y agoHe's also the guy responsible for the whole "Millennials should just stop eating avocados if they think they're poor" meme
- voisin 3y agoAll the times I heard this I assumed it was a caricature of boomer advice. I had no idea it originated with someone honestly stating it. Crazy.
- stuckinhell 3y agoI think a huge percentage of the executive class are extremely narcissistic and completely out of touch with the common person. Populism (Trumpism) will NEVER go away as long as we have an executive class without a ounce of empathy.
- r053bud 3y agoI'll definitely get downvoted, but I feel like constantly fearing for your life is a fair price to pay for being rich
- Lolaccount 3y ago[flagged]
- robswc 3y agoI won't down vote you but I would love to know how you came to that conclusion. And what is "rich" ?
- r053bud 3y agoIt’s an arbitrary amount, but let’s call it double digit millions. You’re set for life at that point.
- robswc 3y agoIn net worth or cash? In any case, I think its ridiculous. That would apply to a non-insignificant % of the population of HN. There are tons of authors, programmers and founders with that much money. You really think that if someone writes a book that goes on to sell enough that they make more than $9,999,999 they should fear for their safety if they dare reap the real value of their work?
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- Aeolun 3y agoIsn’t it poor people that constantly have to fear for their lives? Certainly the life expectancy of millionaire CEO’s seems to be a lot higher.
- r053bud 3y agoExactly why I think it’s fair. Poor people shouldn’t be the only group of people who have to constantly live in fear. The people who are creating the conditions of poverty should have to share that mental burden. They can keep their money though!
- kentonv 3y ago> Behind the scenes, CEO John Riccitiello shifted 2000 shares last week on 6th September, as noted by Yahoo Finance, which noted this move was part of a trend over the past year where the exec has sold more than 50,000 shares in total and bought none. This is normal. Many CEOs are paid primarily in stock. No matter how much you believe in your company, diversification is financially wise, so of course they are always selling stock. Typically they sell every month on a schedule pre-determined months or years in advance. No CEO is ever going to buy their own stock because it would make no financial sense. Reporters looking for clicks love this situation because it means that whenever a company does something that makes people angry, you can always look up the CEO's stock sales and discover that, oh wow, they just sold a bunch of stock in the last month! And they never buy any! The reporter conveniently omits the fact that the CEO has been selling that exact same quantity of stock every single month going back years. Sometimes the reporter gets extra-lucky and the CEO's stock is primarily in class B shares, which must first be converted to class A before sale. So every month, the CEO converts some number of shares to class A, and then immediately sells them. This shows up in financial records as the CEO sold 100% of their class A shares. So the reporter reports: "The CEO just sold ALL their stock last week!" CEOs and other top execs are _not allowed_ to just sell stock on a whim, they have to set up a schedule far in advance. The SEC is quite serious about this. (Now, if you do find that a CEO has sold an _unusually large_ amount of stock compared to their historical schedule, then maybe you have something, but somehow that's never what the reporters are saying...) (BTW 2000 shares of Unity is like ~$80,000. 50,000 shares is ~$2M. The guy apparently receives over $10M of stock per year so these numbers are surprisingly small, he seems to be holding onto most of it: https://www1.salary.com/John-Riccitiello-Salary-Bonus-Stock-Options-for-Unity-Software-Inc.html https://www1.salary.com/John-Riccitiello-Salary-Bonus-Stock-... )
- LapsangGuzzler 3y agoI get why people are upset about the pricing changes because they are harmful. That said, I'd love to see more discourse around the macroeconomics of platformification of gaming (i.e. gamepass) because this Unity move feels analagous to what's happening in streaming and I think we're gonna see more of it. With things like Gamepass, players have access to much more content for a lot less money. There's no way that this isn't having a massive impact on sales and revenue downstream for studios and other gaming vendors. If the revenue changes in indie gaming are anything like the shift from traditional album sales to iTunes and then Spotify, then things are going to get ugly. Tech has identified that the most valuable position to hold is owning the market and we've seen it over and over again, and it never works out in favor of the suppliers or consumers in the long run.
- burnished 3y agoThese don't seem the same at all frankly, the unity thing seems like a blatant attempt at rent extraction. Gamepass is at least offering a genuine service in its role as middleman.
- LapsangGuzzler 3y ago> the unity thing seems like a blatant attempt at rent extraction Gamepass is literally renting games on a flat monthly fee (which they've recently increased, btw). Unity chose a really stupid approach to handle their new pricing, but they're doing what everyone is doing, hiking prices in an uncertain market. I suspect this is at least partially because of services like Gamepass, but I'd love to know more.
- burnished 3y agoGamepass is offering a service; smorgasbord of games on one end, guaranteed paycheck and platform on the other. Unity is trying to redefine their existing product as a service. This isn't exactly 'just' a price hike and I think its why people are so upset about it. And I agree with your suspicion. It seems that finding a way to offer a service instead of a product is a license to print money, so I imagine many companies have people pushing for this regardless of how well it would be received or how much sense it makes.
- tjpnz 3y agoWhen someone sinks their life into a creative pursuit that's already fraught with so much difficulty and uncertainty this kind of reaction is not surprising in the least.
- raincole 3y agoI hate Unity as next guy, but please don't do this. Vote with your engine choice, not death threat.
- switchbak 3y agoI don't think the person making the threat is reading HN comments. Not sure who you're addressing here.
- robswc 3y agoYea. I don't blame OP for the sentiment but I don't think anyone doing something like that could be reasoned with in the first place.
- adamredwoods 3y agoIf we don't speak out against it, show alternate forms of rebelling, then more people will see violence as acceptable responses to anger.
- altairprime 3y agoHN aggressively moderates hateful and harmful comments, so they’re often not seen before they get flagged or removed. I’ve personally reported enough comments this year that I’m confident saying that some number of people who use threats of violence to silence those they disagree with are both reading and participating on HN, and so by the lurker principle, many more are reading HN but not behaving in that manner here. Thankfully, those few that participate are not the majority — but their perceived absence is the result of both peer pressure (via flags) and moderators (via bans) silencing their speech, not due to ‘we’re better than that here’.
- Capricorn2481 3y agoI wouldn't be so sure of that. HN can't see an article on a open source frontend framework without someone equating it's maintainer to Hitler or getting on a soap box about how they're ruining the web. People in here have a view of the world that is rarely shared, even by people in tech. Take an actual company making a visibly greedy decision and I would not be surprised.
- slmjkdbtl 3y agoI have a hard time understanding why some companies make absurd monetization policies even tho obviously they know it'll be very unpopular. Do they still usually end up making more money despite the backlash?
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- OedipusRex 3y agoReddit did
- mrguyorama 3y agoBecause it almost never actually hurts their pocketbooks. Even if Unity the company completely died tomorrow from this, this CEO has still made bank off the whole thing.
- happytoexplain 3y agoGenerally, perception is not as strong a variable in profit as we feel like it is, or should be, in the short and even medium term. In the long term, it's very hard to judge the effects of perception. When a company makes a choice (actively or passively) that priorities perception, usually it is largely a function of the leadership's humanity, and not a shrewd decision based on some objective projection of long-term consequences.
- matteason 3y agohttps://archive.ph/EXnsZ https://archive.ph/EXnsZ
- robswc 3y agoWhy does it seem like "death threats" are more common these days? Or are they just taken more seriously? I ofc wouldn't be advocating to _not_ take them seriously but I don't understand if people are just getting crazier or people are taking them more seriously? Ironically, I feel like there used to be more back in the day but nobody treated them seriously. If they're credible, by all means safety is at stake and close up shop.
- mcpackieh 3y agoThe internet is a big place and it's easy to leave anonymous comments. If you want to find a death threat against you, it's easy to find one or create one if none can be found. Why would you want to? So you can point to it and say that you're a victim and even suggest that all of your critics are somehow culpable for that threat (any heated criticism of you is "stochastic terrorism" that will inspire some nutjob to come after you!)
- robswc 3y agoI have been thinking about this a lot... it sucks because its very hard to prove. I will say, they always seem to come right in time for when sympathy is needed most... but that is all speculation. I don't doubt the number of crazy people with the means and motivation to send a death threat is greater than 0. I just wonder how credible on the credible scale this is.
- muststopmyths 3y agoIn the past you had to call the landline and risk getting *69ed, or use a payphone or something. Now, you can just sit at home in your underwear and tweet out a death threat. I think they were probably taken as seriously before, it's just that the ease of making threats (empty or not) is different now.
- robswc 3y agoThat's fair. I just have memories of being on forums and interacting with those people you knew where unhinged. They had the protection of anonymity... but I think you have a great point that even then, you had to have at least a bit of technical know how to join a forum. Not so with twitter, so the barrier to entry is much lower.
- russellbeattie 3y agoIf you took the number of anonymous death threats made online every day divided by actual killings, the percentage is probably as close to zero as you can get. I don't understand why anyone takes them seriously. I'd wager that the number of pre-announced killings for anything other than maybe religious extremism is vanishingly small, to the point of being virtually non-existent.
- TheFreim 3y ago> I don't understand why anyone takes them seriously. People don't take them seriously, they're used in cases like this to try to look like an innocent victim of radicals. Given a large enough company it is /always/ going to be possible to find a "death threat".
- readyplayernull 3y agohttps://forum.unity.com/attachments/upload_2023-9-14_11-55-27-png.1304591/ https://forum.unity.com/attachments/upload_2023-9-14_11-55-2...
- miragecraft 3y agoThis is counter-productive, the top brass responsible for this decision will never be close to danger, while normal employees having zero say in this bears the brunt of any harrassments. Just vote with your wallet and switch engines, optionally (ideally) donate to open source projects like Godot.
- pengaru 3y agoThe video game industry is overflowing with toxic levels of immaturity and entitlement spanning consumer and producer sides. This is just another manifestation of that. Show me an instance of SWATTING that didn't involve "gamers", I'd love to be proven wrong here.
- pomatius 3y agoThe extremes people will go rather than just learning to use the superior FOSS alternative, Godot