4 ms·

A surefire way to lose my sympathy—even in a situation in which one party is indie developers working on passion projecs, and the other party is almost cartooni

A surefire way to lose my sympathy—even in a situation in which one party is indie developers working on passion projecs, and the other party is almost cartoonishly villainous CEO John Riccitiello—is to issue a death threat. If you think a death threat is just a way to express how much you care about something, you're wrong. Death threats aren't punctuation marks, dummies.

breezeTrowel 3y ago
The death threats probably came from Tim Cook since Unity decided to torpedo developers right before the Vision Pro launch and Unity is the engine Apple has been promoting for Vision Pro app development.
- netsharc 3y ago
  "Oh and one more thing... introducing the iClusterBomb."
  - lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
    Sent from my iPhone
- TillE 3y ago
  Yeah I was thinking about how annoyed Apple must be about Unity cratering their own reputation. Their terrible relationship with Epic precludes any Unreal Engine partnership as well. It's very interesting that Apple has been increasingly emphasizing high-end games, starting with the Apple Silicon Macs, and just recently with the iPhone 15 Pro. Apple buying Unity is not out of the question. They don't have a lot of other attractive options.
  - kridsdale3 3y ago
    If Apple has M&A aspirations about Unity, this reputation and stock price crash is a dream come true.
pc86 3y ago
Who are you talking to?
- TillE 3y ago
  Exactly. For any kind of large contentious issue, there will always be weirdos "on your side". Nobody can control the weirdos. It's deeply disingenuous to act like some anonymous fringe troll is representative of the larger group. We've been living in the global internet age for the past ~25 years, this shouldn't be a shock to anyone.
derefr 3y ago
That sounds like you're someone who's very easily manipulated by psy-ops done by the companies themselves, then.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > someone who's very easily manipulated by psy-ops done by the companies themselves You’re alleging Unity fabricated these death threats?
  - davikr 3y ago
    Not necessarily, but they could have an interest in spotlighting death threats written by individuals not in the industry (gamers) to showcase how everyone rallying against one of their actions is bad: which is precisely what happened to the OP of this chain.
    - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
      > they could have an interest in bringing death threats written by individuals not in the game development industry Sure? It’s still a death threat. Sending employees home has a real cost. The existence of death threats, moreover, is unlikely to change developers’ hearts and minds. The nuttier ones will write it off as a conspiracy theory. Most will see it as irrelevant to their interests. People who make death threats don’t need to underwrite their insanity. Their incoherence doesn’t make them less dangerous.
      - davikr 3y ago
        I don't think there is any conspiracy or "psyop" involved in writing fake threats or sending people home for PR points in this case, but I'd be pressed to change my opinion over nutjobs (in this case, probably gamers) being violent.
  - kadoban 3y ago
    I would suggest that every company over a certain size gets a certain number of death threats. If, hypothetically, a company just managed to piss off, I don't know...everyone, one strategy to garner some cheap sympathy and have an excuse to cancel public gatherings might be to highlight some of those they were getting all the time anyway.
kitanata 3y ago
[dead]
xwdv 3y ago
If you can’t sympathize with the people making death threats, you are not sufficiently invested in the problem, and should probably not be passing judgement.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > If you can’t sympathize with the people making death threats, you are not sufficiently invested in the problem I can sympathise with someone while acknowledging they should go to jail, and also sympathising with the people they’re attacking for taking prudent safety measures.
joemi 3y ago
My guess is that it's just some immature gamer, not an actual developer. All gamers aren't immature, but there's always some immature base group of them doing absolutely stupid stuff.
bgirard 3y ago
The people making the death threats don't present the party of indie developers as a whole.
maybelsyrup 3y ago
Unity’s the one making death threats: the proposed changes threaten the livelihoods of the customer base — the food in people’s mouths and the roofs over their heads. They have all the interest in the world in playing this aspect down and playing up the inevitable reaction to backing human beings into an existential corner: fight, flee, or freeze. In shock, someone says “you come after me, I can come after you, too.” Blaming them is beside the point: you don’t want death threats made to you? Don’t make them to others. It’s pretty simple. If this is “a surefire way to lose my sympathy,” you never had any sympathy in the first place.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
coldtea 3y ago
Worked well for most of human history for political change!
Scion9066 3y ago
https://www.polygon.com/23873727/unity-credible-death-threat-offices-closed-pricing-change https://www.polygon.com/23873727/unity-credible-death-threat... > Update: San Francisco police told Polygon that officers responded to Unity’s San Francisco office “regarding a threats incident.” A “reporting party” told police that “an employee made a threat towards his employer using social media.” The employee that made the threat works in an office outside of California, according to the police statement.

breezeTrowel 3y ago

The death threats probably came from Tim Cook since Unity decided to torpedo developers right before the Vision Pro launch and Unity is the engine Apple has been promoting for Vision Pro app development.

netsharc 3y ago
"Oh and one more thing... introducing the iClusterBomb."
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago
  Sent from my iPhone
TillE 3y ago
Yeah I was thinking about how annoyed Apple must be about Unity cratering their own reputation. Their terrible relationship with Epic precludes any Unreal Engine partnership as well. It's very interesting that Apple has been increasingly emphasizing high-end games, starting with the Apple Silicon Macs, and just recently with the iPhone 15 Pro. Apple buying Unity is not out of the question. They don't have a lot of other attractive options.
- kridsdale3 3y ago
  If Apple has M&A aspirations about Unity, this reputation and stock price crash is a dream come true.

pc86 3y ago

Who are you talking to?

TillE 3y ago
Exactly. For any kind of large contentious issue, there will always be weirdos "on your side". Nobody can control the weirdos. It's deeply disingenuous to act like some anonymous fringe troll is representative of the larger group. We've been living in the global internet age for the past ~25 years, this shouldn't be a shock to anyone.

derefr 3y ago

That sounds like you're someone who's very easily manipulated by psy-ops done by the companies themselves, then.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> someone who's very easily manipulated by psy-ops done by the companies themselves You’re alleging Unity fabricated these death threats?
- davikr 3y ago
  Not necessarily, but they could have an interest in spotlighting death threats written by individuals not in the industry (gamers) to showcase how everyone rallying against one of their actions is bad: which is precisely what happened to the OP of this chain.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > they could have an interest in bringing death threats written by individuals not in the game development industry Sure? It’s still a death threat. Sending employees home has a real cost. The existence of death threats, moreover, is unlikely to change developers’ hearts and minds. The nuttier ones will write it off as a conspiracy theory. Most will see it as irrelevant to their interests. People who make death threats don’t need to underwrite their insanity. Their incoherence doesn’t make them less dangerous.
    - davikr 3y ago
      I don't think there is any conspiracy or "psyop" involved in writing fake threats or sending people home for PR points in this case, but I'd be pressed to change my opinion over nutjobs (in this case, probably gamers) being violent.
- kadoban 3y ago
  I would suggest that every company over a certain size gets a certain number of death threats. If, hypothetically, a company just managed to piss off, I don't know...everyone, one strategy to garner some cheap sympathy and have an excuse to cancel public gatherings might be to highlight some of those they were getting all the time anyway.

kitanata 3y ago

[dead]

xwdv 3y ago

If you can’t sympathize with the people making death threats, you are not sufficiently invested in the problem, and should probably not be passing judgement.

JumpCrisscross 3y ago
> If you can’t sympathize with the people making death threats, you are not sufficiently invested in the problem I can sympathise with someone while acknowledging they should go to jail, and also sympathising with the people they’re attacking for taking prudent safety measures.

joemi 3y ago

My guess is that it's just some immature gamer, not an actual developer. All gamers aren't immature, but there's always some immature base group of them doing absolutely stupid stuff.

bgirard 3y ago

The people making the death threats don't present the party of indie developers as a whole.

maybelsyrup 3y ago

Unity’s the one making death threats: the proposed changes threaten the livelihoods of the customer base — the food in people’s mouths and the roofs over their heads. They have all the interest in the world in playing this aspect down and playing up the inevitable reaction to backing human beings into an existential corner: fight, flee, or freeze. In shock, someone says “you come after me, I can come after you, too.” Blaming them is beside the point: you don’t want death threats made to you? Don’t make them to others. It’s pretty simple. If this is “a surefire way to lose my sympathy,” you never had any sympathy in the first place.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

coldtea 3y ago

Worked well for most of human history for political change!

Scion9066 3y ago

https://www.polygon.com/23873727/unity-credible-death-threat-offices-closed-pricing-change https://www.polygon.com/23873727/unity-credible-death-threat... > Update: San Francisco police told Polygon that officers responded to Unity’s San Francisco office “regarding a threats incident.” A “reporting party” told police that “an employee made a threat towards his employer using social media.” The employee that made the threat works in an office outside of California, according to the police statement.