7 ms·
We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy caused
- csours 3y ago"I'm sorry you feel that way"
- lozenge 3y ago6 days seems slow to put out an announcement like this, especially because they already announced a few changes like the re install policy.
- unsupp0rted 3y agoIt took a while for the stock to tank and not rise
- gjsman-1000 3y agoCode for: We did our best to see if this would blow over, but PR told us it wasn't blowing over as hoped, so we'll regroup.
- baal80spam 3y ago...we'll regroup and try again in a month.
- RankingMember 3y ago"We're sorry you noticed" Love their use of the word "confusion" here, like "you guys just don't understand how this is actually good for you!"
- Terretta 3y agoAnd "angst". Because it's not real, just philosophical. And the policy caused you to get all confused and angsty, not Unity. Both word choices are very "it's not me, it's you" gaslighting.
- hatenberg 3y agoAh, the old Hasbro "We apologize for enshittifying D&D's license too hard, let's do this more slowly"
- LeifCarrotson 3y agohttps://nitter.net/unity/status/1703547752205218265 https://nitter.net/unity/status/1703547752205218265 > 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. > Sep 17, 2023 · 11:13 PM UTC See also the much longer "apology" yesterday: https://nitter.net/unity/status/1702077049425596900 https://nitter.net/unity/status/1702077049425596900
- eXpl0it3r 3y agoA bit older than yesterday: 11:49 PM · Sep 13, 2023
- parrellel 3y ago"Ah, crap that's a lot of ad losses" "What do you mean people are live-streaming engine swaps"
- steve1977 3y agoConfusion? No, there was no confusion. Don't pretend that this was the problem.
- hresvelgr 3y agoNo one was confused about this. If anything, there was an abundance of clarity on the matter.
- taormina 3y agoThe only confusion I have is how they think this is sufficient. Let’s start by seeing the proposed change!
- Simulacra 3y agoI am always curious in the situation where the tipping point was. For unity, was it anger from fans, death threats, developers dropping it, or ..something else.
- rjbwork 3y agoAlmost certainly the collective shutting off the ad monetization via Iron Source from the monetary side, and big names live-tweeting/live-streaming porting their games to other engines from the PR side. Taken together and projecting that forward a couple of years, the company is dead.
- petee 3y agoFor any company thats public, Money. Just money. They are not in it to make a good product, or foster good will, those are just unfortunate hurdles in the quest to bring money to the shareholders.
- fatnoah 3y agoIt's fascinating to watch the fallout from this. I've seen a few "insider trading" conspiracy pieces about the CEO selling 50k shares of stock this year with the knowledge that the announcement would tank the stock price. I feel like that ignores the other 3+ million shares he owns. In any case, I think it's more a story about hubris and miscalculation. Even the apology misses the most important fact, which is not necessarily the cost of the change itself, but the demonstration that Unity is willing to change terms AFTER you've shipped software using their engine. That's a massive breach of trust as well as a massive risk. What's preventing them from announcing next September that new installs will incur an even larger cost or that the thresholds will be lowered.
- wlesieutre 3y ago> Even the apology misses the most important fact, which is not necessarily the cost of the change itself, but the demonstration that Unity is willing to change terms AFTER you've shipped software using their engine. That's a massive breach of trust as well as a massive risk. And the obvious fix to that is to put out an announcement saying "Sorry about that, you can trust us, and if you release a game using Unity you can stick with that version of the ToS instead of us being able to foist new terms on you whenever we want forever." Except.... Unity did that already last time they made company destroying ToS changes, and then just went back on the promise and said they're forcing the new ToS on everyone. So why the hell is anyone supposed to trust whatever apology they put out this time? https://blog.unity.com/community/updated-terms-of-service-and-commitment-to-being-an-open-platform https://blog.unity.com/community/updated-terms-of-service-an... Updated Terms of Service and commitment to being an open platform (2019) Retroactive TOS changes When you obtain a version of Unity, and don’t upgrade your project, we think you should be able to stick to that version of the TOS. In practice, that is only possible if you have access to bug fixes. For this reason, we now allow users to continue to use the TOS for the same major (year-based) version number, including Long Term Stable (LTS) builds that you are using in your project.* Moving forward, we will host TOS changes on Github to give developers full transparency about what changes are happening, and when. The link is https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService.
- pierat 3y agoMore like "We're sorry you all are idiots that can't understand our Very Clear (TM) designs. I forgive you for your ignorance."
- philipov 3y agoThe only way for them to regain trust is for top executives to resign, starting with the CEO. The breach of trust is so severe, you can't take anything they say at face value, and you can't trust them to not try this again. This is the second time they've tried to change the terms retroactively, and this time they broke their promise to not try it again.
- cooljacob204 3y agoOr they could update the TOS to not allow for changes to apply retroactively to games.
- HumblyTossed 3y agoNo, the execs need to be let go. This is what would happen to any non-exec that messed up so egregiously, they need to feel the pain they're used to inflicting.
- brobdingnagians 3y agoReally the board needs to go as well; someone pointed out that the founder of Iron Source is now on the board of Unity. The CEO has been in place since 2014, but recent changes were probably motivated by recent board members joining. I'd say the board all need to be replaced for trust to be regained.
- MichaelDickens 3y agoThe board can only be fired by stockholders, right? Apparently, stockholders don't think this announcement is too big a deal, since the stock hasn't moved much (in a way that's distinguishable from noise).
- philipov 3y agoThey had that clause in their TOS. They removed it recently when no one was looking. Immediate resignations, I say.
- tombert 3y agoIf nothing else, I think we should thank Unity for reminding us to read the license of anything we sign. I too have become accustomed to the "next next next finish" method of installing things, which is a bad habit to fall into. A company can sneak in little clauses like "pay 20 cents per client install" and no one is the wiser. I don't make games but if I start then I'll probably use Godot or GDevelop. They both use the MIT license and I feel like that one is decidedly non-bullshittey.
- coffeebeqn 3y agoI wonder if LLMs could be useful. Find if there is anything unusual in the TOS
- tombert 3y agoI've actually done something not too dissimilar to that! I've pasted licenses into ChatGPT and asked it to summarize it to me in lay-person's terms. I don't think anything it says would hold up to true legal scrutiny but it's been great for a non-lawyer like me.
- green-eclipse 3y agoUnity stock is down about 10% since the announcement. I'm sure that's driving the action plan & messaging more than any actual feelings about harming their userbase. They knew the users would be irate, but investors... That's a different story.
- jugg1es 3y agoI certainly sold all my Unity stock after hearing about the ToS changes. I only invested in them in the first place because I value the indie gaming community and they seemed to be reneging on that with this change.
- EricE 3y agoThrowing some donations towards the open source godot engine would be far more productive!
- glitchcrab 3y agoThey aren't looking to help opensource, they're just looking to line their own pockets some more.
- mthoms 3y agoWhat's wrong with both?
- extesy 3y agoHow does buying Unity stock help indie gaming community? You bought it on the open market from somebody else who was selling it, and Unity hasn't seen a single cent of your money.
- partitioned 3y agoHe didn’t say it helped. Just that he did it because he values the community. It’s possible he is an ethical investor, where you only make investments in companies that follow your beliefs regardless of their potential profitability
- mkoryak 3y agoSorry I missed the original rage inducer. Anyone care to drop a link for my lazy self?
- johnnyanmac 3y agoIt's been a whirlwind and a half this week with a few dozen links pertaining to Unity (and this place doesn't talk about gamedev as much as other communities). But it all started here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37481344 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37481344
- EricE 3y agoOne of more of the concise summaries: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOCTSp_U-KI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZOCTSp_U-KI
- genpfault 3y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(game_engine)#Runtime_fee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unity_(game_engine)#Runtime_fe...
- gwbas1c 3y agohttps://googlethatforyou.com?q=unity%20runtime%20fee%20controversy https://googlethatforyou.com?q=unity%20runtime%20fee%20contr...
- hnis4fascists 3y ago[dead]
- kstrauser 3y agoAlso discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37550353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37550353
- FrustratedMonky 3y agoHopefully it was just a mistake. Like maybe the roll out was mucked up by some middle-managers and didn't get a proper review? Or some newbies in management didn't understand 'install' versus 'purchase'.
- adastra22 3y ago“We’re sorry that you’re upset.” They’re changing how they’re deploying it. They’re not changing the policy.
- ben_w 3y agoEvery time I see "* apologize for the confusion", I now assume ChatGPT wrote the text. This may be a little unfair given ChatGPT is trained on humans writing for other humans; on the other hand, corporations having clichéd stock phrases when they attempt apologies, is itself a cliché because it happens often enough.
- r053bud 3y ago“Write an apology note to a bunch of angry game developers who are made about a recent TOS change. Make it seem like we are going to change the policy back, but in reality we really won’t”
- redbeancoffee 3y agoI used to work for Unity. What used to be a culture of “users first” was replaced with top-down decision making based on balance sheets of made-up numbers. There are a lot of good, well-meaning people there who I’m certain would have presented well-reasoned arguments against this new policy, and I’m equally certain they were overridden by C-level management who are in turn being micro-managed by VC board members whose only goal is “make stock price go up”.
- parasense 3y agoTo quote the tweet: > 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. Let's break that down. * DARVO - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARVO You might say "Gas lighting" or "Deflection" in colloquial terms, and then understand the 2nd sentence: > We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused. That is saying that we are confused, and experiencing angst. As if we do not appreciate or understand the harmless thing. It's an apology at first, but then simultaneously degrades the audience as "confused", as if the audience did not understand the message. Nextly, we see: > We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. Take note the ordering of the 2nd list, and the weird run-on of the first list into the second. They are "Listening" and "Talking" to... The author of these words seems to the type of mind who wants to emphasis the fakeness first, but then minimize the reality last. Read that as "we are not listening, and will be talking to...", and the 2nd list goes the same way, pretty much ignore all the stuff up-front, and look at the last part where is says "partners". Full translation: "We are talking to our Partners, while monitoring dissident employees (some of whom called in bomb threats to the SF office earlier this week), identifying defectors in the influencer community, and auditing belligerent customer accounts likely to evade the licensing. > Thank you for your honest and critical feedback. Again, look at the last part of the writing... the writer does that, they probably mentally compartmentalize the bad news, and mention last. We are reading a not so masterful manipulator, somebody not quite proficient in their personality disorder, whatever that might be... Borderline, Sociopath, Narcissist, or whatever....
- 0cf8612b2e1e 3y agoI would love to be a fly in the wall of Unity or Wizards of the Coast after the reveal of their updated licensing terms. Did the execs expect blowback? How much was expected? Did they estimate X% of users fleeing would be ok? Or had they just been sniffing their own farts the entire time?
- r053bud 3y agoIf they didn’t expect blowback, it really shows how out of touch they are. I’m assuming it’s more like the recent Reddit drama where Huffman was like “we don’t care if people are mad, they won’t go anywhere”.
- mthoms 3y agoThis was the plan the entire time. 1) Announce changes that are even harder to stomach than the bad ones you have planned. 2) Wait for fallout. 3) Backtrack and say "we're listening". 4) Roll out the bad (but not that bad) plan you had in mind the whole time. 5) Customers will be annoyed but relieved. It's right in the enshitification playbook.
- instagib 3y agoMake a contract with them if you use their license/service or use something else?
- pentagrama 3y ago> We apologize for the confusion It was a confusion? I feel like people understand what the change was about, and was vocal about how horrible they think that this change is and its consequences.