10 ms·

Unity U-turns on controversial runtime fee and begs forgiveness

136 points by qwytw 3y ago

Verdex 3y ago
I was probably never going to learn unity in the first place. But when the news came out that shifted to, "Well, now I'm definitely never going to learn unity." However, I missed the news that Unity merged with ironSource. The runtime fees news filled me in on that and also filled me in on some of the less than savory things that ironSource has been up to in the past. Now my position has moved towards, "I guess I shouldn't play anything made in Unity (at least not on machines where I care about their security)." And cancelling the runtime fee isn't likely to shift my position.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > Now my position has moved towards, "I guess I shouldn't play anything made in Unity I'm not a game dev at all, but this is where the whole thing has brought me as well. If it's based on Unity, I'll pass.
  - Uehreka 3y ago
    Ah, I wish it were that easy, but a number of my favorite games (KSP, Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium off the top of my head) are made in Unity. If you play indie PC games you can’t boycott Unity without missing a ton of really good games.
    - srinivgp 3y ago
      If you play games you can't play games without missing a ton of really good games. There are _a ton_ of really good games.
      - Uehreka 3y ago
        The games market is large, but not infinite. Like, there may be many space games, but only one space sim that has the depth and complexity of KSP 1, and that’s KSP 1. Not to mention that a lot of gamers have no idea what engine their favorite games use. For instance, I was shocked to discover that Disco Elysium used Unity because it looks so different from the “stock Unity look”.
        syncbehind 3y ago
        >Not to mention that a lot of gamers have no idea what engine their favorite games use. If you start to boycott something, you typically have done some research (why else would you have wanted to boycott it in the first place). I.e boycotting Nestle means that you research where the company may have their fingers in and avoid that.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      > If you play indie PC games you can’t boycott Unity without missing a ton of really good games. That may be true, but so what? There are more great non-Unity-based games than I have time in my life to play anyway.
    - fcsp 3y ago
      I suppose this is going to change drastically going forward as game devs probably won't want to risk their livelihood on the whims of a company that is ok with making such changes
    - slowmovintarget 3y ago
      I suspect that kind of boycott would hurt the independent developers more than it hurts Unity.
      - syncbehind 3y ago
        Those developers will then need to pivot in response to market changes. But yes, that's often how it goes. If you boycott a child-labor produced coffee, and it just so happens that your favourite indie cafe uses that as their main coffee because it's so cheap! Yea, that cafe will suffer.
        slowmovintarget 3y ago
        I'd be all for a boycott in your example, but not in the case of Unity... as a purchaser of games. As a developer, you'd better believe I'd be looking hard at Godot / Defold / Unreal... or turning off the Unity ads in my products. I don't think Unity's intended pricing change is morally equivalent to child labor.
        syncbehind 3y ago
        I used a hyperbole to get my point across. I'm not equating the two. I mean, even not using them as a development platform is something. But I don't get the logic behind supporting them as a purchaser of games? Is it just FOMO?
        slowmovintarget 3y ago
        No. It's because I don't believe it strikes at the right targets, for lack of a better metaphor. You get collateral damage that I don't think is worthwhile. If the desired goal is to have developers move away from Unity, Unity themselves have given enough incentive. You suggested boycotting the developers that use Unity. I don't get your scorched earth logic. It seems unreasonable to me.
        3y ago
    - syncbehind 3y ago
      > If you play indie PC games you can’t boycott Unity without missing a ton of really good games. The naivete involved in expecting to boycott a product without having any inconveniences never ceases to amuse me. The very nature of boycotting necessitates that you will miss out on things. If you never used the product/byproduct, what effect would your boycott have? It's like a bald person boycotting a hair cuttery, who cares?
      - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
        In the gaming world, boycotts are an absolute joke. I think many gamers don't even know what the word means and will pre-order and play the hell out of a game they're claiming to be boycotting.
  - SXX 3y ago
    So you don't like Unity because of everything happen and how they threated game developers. And for that reason you want to refuse to pay those game developers? As it's now Unity dont collect any telemetry.
    - bobthepanda 3y ago
      Unity already showed they were willing to change contract terms unilaterally, so why anyone should trust that they will stay doing what they currently do is beyond me.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      Not exactly. I don't trust Unity because they've clearly demonstrated that they can't be trusted. I'm not avoiding Unity as some sort of solidarity with wronged developers, I'm avoiding Unity because I don't want to support a company that behaves that way. > As it's now Unity dont collect any telemetry. Maybe not (but maybe -- how would I know?), but Unity clearly has no problems throwing people under the bus if it suits them, so again -- they can't be trusted. On this point or any other.
    - RoyalHenOil 3y ago
      As demonstrated by their previous stance, Unity may choose to track your private data in the future, even on games you already own and purchased with the understanding that there would be no tracking. Tracking players is their intention, and although they have rolled it back (solely due to the strength of the backlash), they have revealed their hand. We now know that tracking players is how they want to monetize heading into the future, and that they have no qualms applying it retroactively to games you already own.
    - hn_acker 3y ago
      > So you don't like Unity because of everything happen and how they threated game developers. And for that reason you want to refuse to pay those game developers? Your framing is wrong. If I really want to buy a game but choose not to, I'm not "refus[ing] to pay" the game developer. Game developers don't deserve to be paid with my money if I decide not to get their games.
  - TheGRS 3y ago
    This is a really weird takeaway for an end-user. This is punishing game developers for using a certain tool. Unless Unity is doing something adverse to the end user I don't see why that should be a factor in your game purchases. I've played plenty of great games made with Unity.
    - JohnFen 3y ago
      I don't like how Unity conducts their business, and I now actively distrust them, so it makes sense to add them to my list of "companies to avoid". I don't want to support businesses that operate as they do. The intent isn't to punish developers, of course, but continuing to give money to a company that I don't want to support is asking more of me than I'm willing to do. In the end, it's just me and my decision will have no effect on anybody. If enough other people also avoid Unity, then devs will have to adapt. That's just life.
- adamredwoods 3y ago
  Another thread said it best (paraphrased): they felt the power, and fear, of how one CEO's action that could change their livelihood. I've felt this when Flash was canceled for iOS. Steve Jobs's "letter about Flash" changed my job outlook in just one day.
- jonplackett 3y ago
  You’re just going to be punishing game devs who are locked in. Sure, make your own games with something else (although unreal has similar rev share) but it seems cruel to take this out on unity devs who have no option
  - debaserab2 3y ago
    If the tool they use to make their game requires customers to install malware onto their machine you can't really blame the customer for avoiding software that is built with said tool.
    - EricE 3y ago
      Declaring they are installing malware is a pretty bold assertion. Care to back that up with something other than feelings?
      - debaserab2 3y ago
        If you've followed the Unity debacle I assume you've already read about this, but a cursory search for "Ironsource malware" on google yields: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unity-ironsource-malware-came-from-bad-actors-who-tried-to-abuse-the-platform https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unity-ironsource-malware-came-... https://www.pcgamer.com/unity-is-merging-with-a-company-who-made-a-malware-installer/ https://www.pcgamer.com/unity-is-merging-with-a-company-who-...
        qwytw 3y ago
        Is there any indication all of the IronSource or other ad stuff will not be optional? Not allowing developers to remove it from their games would certainly be a step too far (at this time anyway, who know what will they come up with in a couple of years).
        anankaie 3y ago
        The problem is that there is no way to trust that Unity will not alter the deal in an underhanded way in the future. I do not want my purchases beholden to their capricious whims. I sympathize with the devs, but sometimes it turns out that platform decisions made in the past are bad. It is what it is.
thangngoc89 3y ago
Well, trust is easily broken and impossible to repair. I have no skins in the game but I wouldn’t touch Unity for my next projects.
- asah 3y ago
  "Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback." https://thalein.medium.com/trust-arrives-on-foot-and-leaves-on-horseback-aacde6e69163 https://thalein.medium.com/trust-arrives-on-foot-and-leaves-...
  - jtriangle 3y ago
    Oddly, I heard that quote yesterday in a youtube video...about a completely different topic. What a curious synchronicity
    - eimrine 3y ago
      Baader–Meinhof phenomenon
      - asah 3y ago
        quite literally, since I also saw this online yesterday and copied it here... (I'd heard it before but was reminded yesterday)
ekanes 3y ago
This seems almost impossible to fix: When a person or company is caught violating their promises, it's a big hurdle to differentiate between: A: "Sorry we got caught / sorry you're upset" and B: "Oh snap. Our internal values are obviously way wrong. The board has fired the CEO, we are going to solve this in the open along with the community, and then we'll bind our own hands in every way legal that we won't do this again." So far this still smells a lot like A.
- sbarre 3y ago
  Yeah if you look at the Unity leadership and board, you can see clearly who is in charge and what their values are. If that doesn't change, then talk is cheap. Unity has entered the enshittification (or more generously "value extraction") phase of their existence, and you should assume that going forward no matter what they do, it will be in the context of prioritizing value extraction over customer success or happiness. Companies are allowed to make money, but how it's done really matters.
- failbuffer 3y ago
  Exactly. Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a big enough rock.
- xyst 3y ago
  They have taken the FB approach. Backpeddle on changes. Wait for heat to cool off. Then back to fucking you over.
- TheGRS 3y ago
  They likely won't ever escape it. Unity entered the market as a free, batteries-included game engine. It rose to prominence in the indie community because it was free and it had a LOT of user-generated materials. Their whole brand has this foundation of being friendly to small developers. You take that away in even the smallest way and they have nothing to stand on. By comparison, Epic didn't have that sort of baggage. They were a big company with a big engine made for big games. And over time they made that engine cheaper and more accessible to smaller devs.
epa 3y ago
Thats the problem with expectations. When you have a free model you need to be freemium with additional features, not adjust pricing to the whole group.
- WillPostForFood 3y ago
  That's what Unity did, they are ~freemium, and tried to raise prices on paying users. They just showed you can do it incredibly stupidly.
xwdv 3y ago
The damage is done. This whole debacle only confirms what I always knew to be true: you must build your own game engines and tooling.
- baal80spam 3y ago
  This is my belief as well. In addition (I might be in the minority here) but I can always tell when a game is made in Unity - it has this cheap, plastic feel to it.
- SXX 3y ago
  Building own engine and tools is not financially viable for 99% of game development companies.
  - superkuh 3y ago
    That's too bad. I guess for profit companies won't then and actual decent human people with more incentives in their lives than only profit will continue to do so.
    - chc 3y ago
      Humans actually need to eat more than for-profit companies do.
      - superkuh 3y ago
        You're all (everyone who replied to my comment) assuming that human game developers only develop games so that they can earn money off them. It's HN so that's not weird, pretty much everyone here has their for-profit blinders on. But what if I told you that not all human behavior is done for profit? Including game development. Not everything has to be "financially viable" and return a profit. The best things in life are made by people without any profit motive at all.
    - the_af 3y ago
      Even without profit in mind: sometimes you just want to build a game. It's easy to get sidetracked by "the engine" when all you wanted was to create a game... Most amateur gamedevs I know all started creating "the engine" and then the actual game never happened.
raziel2701 3y ago
Trust is not a boomerang, when you throw it away it doesn't come back.
- iamsaitam 3y ago
  Great metaphor.
- LadyCailin 3y ago
  Depends, if you’re big enough, it will come back to you after it orbits once.
  - hn_acker 3y ago
    I like the way you put it because to me it holds the connotation that the company which threw away the trust is so massive that its gravity (usefulness, lack of good alternatives, network effects, enterprise stubbornness, mere exposure [1] etc.) brings the trust back. (Well, it might be begrudging distrust rather than trust, but the result is the same if the people come back.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect
maxFlow 3y ago
As a side note, Godot's Development Fund [0] is currently sitting at 51.1k euros/month. Does anybody know where it was at before the Unity pricing revamp announcement? [0] https://fund.godotengine.org/ https://fund.godotengine.org/
- SXX 3y ago
  Accidentally Godot's Development Fund was announced like a day before Unity debacle.
  - dmonitor 3y ago
    It was the same day, even
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lukasus 3y ago
  25k euros on September 12th https://web.archive.org/web/20230912192257/https://fund.godotengine.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230912192257/https://fund.godo...
gumballindie 3y ago
Have they fired that toxic CEO yet? It won't make much of a difference, but the guy's career should come to an end. Time to be freed to focus on other, more important, things.
- sbarre 3y ago
  Everyone seems really focused on JR (the CEO) but I haven't heard much talk about Tomer Bar-Zeev who came to Unity via the ironSource merger (he was a founder), and is "President, Grow" of Unity, and also on the board. I suspect this guy, considering ironSource's past and his current title, may have been more responsible for these changes than the CEO. I assume the CEO has to sign off but the whole strategy of value extraction and nebulous fees just stinks of ironSource.
  - BudaDude 3y ago
    While this may be true, JR has made a number of decisions over the years that has harmed Unity before the merge.
marcodiego 3y ago
I'll repost my comment: I have no involvement and I'm not a game developer (except for small weekend projects). Please do not make any change "to the policy" you have announced! Your decision seemed to be the straw that was lacking for many people to support Godot and I'm rooting for them. Please don't let us down now.
- Uehreka 3y ago
  I think this take is a little overtorqued. Like, yes, this has caused more people to pay attention to Godot. But for those of us with upcoming projects in the next year, we’re all just gonna have to train up on Unreal because Godot is years away from parity with the big engines. So really the outcome here is going to be that Epic/TenCent is going to massively consolidate the gamedev market.
bccdee 3y ago
> Under the revised terms, there is no runtime fee whatever for any game developed with a current version of Unity, only for those developers who adopt the latest version in 2024. So they haven't done a 180. They're no longer going to try and retroactively inflict the runtime fee on existing projects, but it is still going to be a thing going forward.
- WA 3y ago
  Furthermore, a 180 implies that you go the other way onwards. As in: they pay you to use Unity. Which of course is ridiculous, just like the headline.
- karmakaze 3y ago
  I haven't been following closely and find the rest of the paragraph good to know, if not entirely reassuring. > The free Unity Personal will stay free, and the revenue ceiling above which users must upgrade to the next tier has been raised to $200,000. And above $1 million, users will be able to choose between a per-user fee or a 2.5% revenue share, whichever is lesser. If this was the first and only news delivered with the users' concerns in mind, none of this would be such a big deal--that whole retroactive version value extraction play was going too far. The net effect is that the current crop of near-completion Unity-based games may be completed and supported with the now current version.
  - incrudible 3y ago
    > entirely reassuring It's reassuring in the sense that some theoretical problem (costly installs) can be avoided. Otherwise, not really. The big selling point with Unity was that you pay per seat, and that's that. You don't owe them anything beyond that particular fee, no money, no confidential information, nothing. The change of terms is a not-so-tacit admission that their business model does not work and that the whims of the MBA-types are going to dictate the future of the platform. Unreal Engine has basically the same revenue share type of deal (but no per-seat cost), but then its leadership has a proven track record in developing actual games. > The net effect is that the current crop of near-completion Unity-based games may be completed and supported with the now current version. Of course, in the short term nobody is going to switch engines mid-flight. However, in a few years time, when we ask ourselves "How did Unity die?" this change of terms is likely to be identified as the point of no return.
karaterobot 3y ago
I don't think either of the claims in the headline of the article are supported by the content of the article. They didn't u-turn, they modified their terms but are making the same set of changes with new parameters. They did not beg forgiveness, they said they were sorry for how they handled it, but did not say they were sorry for their new policy, or that they were asking anyone to forgive them for it. They basically did the standard thing of "we're sorry for how we communicated this the first time around, but we're still doing it, and we've scheduled a Q&A so we can give you more information". Should I think of articles like this as news or opinion? It's packaged as news, with the reporting standards of a tweet.
- bangonkeyboard 3y ago
  > Should I think of articles like this as news or opinion? As PR.
  - fnordpiglet 3y ago
    As attracting your click with bait.
    - joshspankit 3y ago
      Indeed. I feel like the HN title should be changed to reflect the facts instead of the bait.
- dartos 3y ago
  checks url Pretty sure TechCrunch is mostly PR for tech companies.
  - DonHopkins 3y ago
    You don't say? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GVd_HLlps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GVd_HLlps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex1JuIN0eaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex1JuIN0eaA
- 3y ago
olliecornelia 3y ago
Sadly many game developers are also Gamers.
- _chu1 3y ago
  The real problem is sadly most video game companies are public traded greasefestivals. See Valve for a good honest game company.
louwrentius 3y ago
You can never trust them as they may still just choose to implement it somewhere in the future. The thing is: Capitalism demands perpetual (growing) growth. Pay-per-download would have helped tremendously with this. I don’t believe pay-per-download is dead. Money isn’t free anymore, but companies are desperate for growth. Inflation is currently caused by companies issuing significant price hikes to appease shareholders. I expect more pay-per-download-style shenanigans from other companies or outrageous price hikes going forward, to sustain growth.
- mordae 3y ago
  That's OK. Capitalism demands growth, but infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible. As the attempts to extract value at all (especially reputational) costs ramp up, reputation of the whole system is going to crumble. People are going to look into alternatives then. Godot and Blender.
- rybosworld 3y ago
  > You can never trust them as they may still just choose to implement it somewhere in the future Completely agree. > The thing is: Capitalism demands perpetual (growing) growth. Pay-per-download would have helped tremendously with this. Disagree. The market provided a strong answer in the form of: "No, we hate this model and will literally do extra work (switch game engines) to avoid it".
gigatexal 3y ago
Did Apple talk to them I wonder?
- isk517 3y ago
  Maybe if they got there early enough, I suspect there was a line up composed of all of the larger developers, publishers, and platform holders.
nonrandomstring 3y ago
Seems like Unity are really going to get punished. Plenty of companies renege on promises, or stiff their customers, and we just suck it up and keep coming back. Take Sony, discussed earlier as "deserving" of being hacked, but all the same we keep buying their stuff no matter how despicable their behaviour. Something is different about this. There's a community that seems to have solidity. And they seem hell-bent on rubbing Unity's nose in its own poop. And Unity is small and dependent enough to be really hurt. I expect they will survive, but as markets get more specialised I wonder if in times to come coordinated action will totally take down companies.
- ComputerGuru 3y ago
  I think it’s that Unity actually isn’t that big and evil that (unfortunately?) makes it so they are more likely to pay a price for their egregiousness than truly Machiavellian entities operating at world scale. I wish the world would get likewise up in arms at being similarly abused by the likes of true industrial titans (in and out of the tech sector).
  - nonrandomstring 3y ago
    > I think it’s that Unity actually isn’t that big and evil Yep, I remember when they were getting together, was it around 2006 maybe, when they were the kid on the block and Unreal was heavy. > that (unfortunately?) makes it so they are more likely to pay a price Kinda how the second or third biggest kid attracts the bullies. Not saying the game community are "bullying" Unity, but there are bigger fish to fry.
KronisLV 3y ago
I think this is probably a net positive at least in some regards. Unity (and other company execs) saw that pricing per install will most likely generate a lot of outrage, so profit seeking must be kept to more moderate means. Unity settled on terms that will still generate them some income (which is probably good, given how fast they're burning money), the revenue share is still lower than that of Unreal and if the fireside chat is to be believed, then these terms should hold for a while. Unity won't be making every game/program phone home, at least if you don't use their analytics, the install figures will be self-reported and also the splash screen will be optional. The people with years of Unity experience and purchased assets won't be forced to migrate to something else and will be able to use their good tech and tools (even if the editor can be annoying), and their businesses won't have to pay insane amounts of money for runtime fees. In addition, engines like Godot get a nice boost in popularity and also some funding, which should secure them a better future. Probably not much is changing for the niche engines that I like, but it's still to nice see Godot succeeding in some ways! That whole fiasco could have been avoided altogether, though - just consider the new policies for like half a year and run some numbers first, I'm not sure how they missed out on how their initial plans would affect mobile games!
- Lord-Jobo 3y ago
  I think the actual weight of this incident over long term will fall on whether or not Unity reports noticeable losses of revenue after this. If they don't, the industry wont care and wont learn from their mistake. The people making these decisions dont really pay attention to anything else besides quarterly reports and stock movement, and they rarely actually know much about the industry they work in(from my observations). these are broad generalizations, there will be exceptions definitely.
capableweb 3y ago
> the runtime fee policy has been almost completely reversed Oh, that sounds good! > Under the revised terms, there is no runtime fee whatever for any game developed with a current version of Unity, only for those developers who adopt the latest version in 2024. So, not at all reversed, just pushed further into the future? > Overall the changes seem to address most of the issues people had with the new terms, and importantly it is more or less opt-in This makes it seem like this is a submarine post trying to help Unity to regain some sort of control, rather than a journalistic investigation into the event, where the journalist at least would try to be impartial.
- JohnFen 3y ago
  Well, it is a TechCruch article, so that's not surprising. You need to adjust your filters accordingly.
rybosworld 3y ago
There's a really simple fix: Fire the execs. It's difficult to take this company seriously when they are run by out of touch MBA's who routinely make objectively poor business decisions and then reward themselves handsomely. I think people are increasingly tired of business leaders paying themselves millions when things go well, but facing no repercussions when they don't. "STAT | $494 million - The cumulative stock-based compensation Unity reported paying out over its past three quarters. STAT | $152 million – The cumulative "profit" Unity reported over those same three quarters." https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unitys-self-combustion-engine-this-week-in-business https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unitys-self-combustion-engine-... NOBODY believes they won't try something like this again, because the people responsible are still there. Get rid of the people that broke the trust and I guarantee you'll see the community praise the decision.
- shmatt 3y ago
  I wrote a similar comment yesterday but worth noting again. This isn't the usual group of MBAs looking for a quick buck. These are the people who have come in from ironSource. A company who has made billions by attaching malware in disguise to personal computers[1]. Executives who green lit projects like mentioned in this post really don't care about their users, its all about maximizing profits while stepping on everyone else [1] https://www.benedelman.org/news-021815/ https://www.benedelman.org/news-021815/
  - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
    > This isn't the usual group of MBAs looking for a quick buck. > Executives who green lit projects like mentioned in this post really don't care about their users, its all about maximizing profits while stepping on everyone else Uh...that sounds exactly like a group of MBAs looking for a quick buck.
    - cacois 3y ago
      I think the implication was that this is a more insidious "milk them for all they are worth, damn the consequences" group
hresvelgr 3y ago
Unity would not have pulled this stunt if it wasn't going to make money and they knew they couldn't get away with it. My suspicion is that developers below the 90th percentile likely don't impact their revenue at all and they are likely trying to hit 99th percentile titles like Genshin Impact and Hearthstone, titles which are extremely cross platform and would need to be at the latest engine version to use the console SDKs. This may very well be an intentional shedding of a demographic, as typically lower price tier and free customers tend to be the largest support burden for SaaS companies.
- TheGRS 3y ago
  Yea another odd thing with Unity is that since it was free and very accessible to small game makers, they were also heavily associated with shovelware. Maybe this is also an attempt to get away from that. I just don't see how they have the funds to weather through this shift though, their whole identity was being the small studio engine.
xyst 3y ago
This has already been discussed but under a less click bait title (“… begs forgiveness” — lol) Trust already violated which took years to build. 1 C-level executive decision ruined and betrayed that trust. There is no going back. Open source game engine or bust. Individually, I support GoDot with donations and time (contributions to codebase). If I ever become a game studio, would definitely have a team to continue to contribute to godot as well as monthly monetary contributions for other maintainers.
DoneWithAllThat 3y ago
The amount of mental gymnastics on display here (not to mention bloodthirstiness) to not acknowledge that the new terms are genuinely a huge improvement and likely palatable to the majority of game actual developers in crazy. I have a few friends who work on relatively medium-scale game development operations and every one of them is basically saying “oh thank god, we can work with this”. But reading this thread you’d think it was still a catastrophe, just a slightly smaller one.
- rybosworld 3y ago
  I don't see any comments in this thread that argue the new terms are worse than before. I also don't see any comments that argue the new terms aren't palatable. As far as I can tell, most of the discussion is to the effect of: "does a reversion to only slightly shitty pricing terms make up for initially trying to get away with super shitty terms?"
- JohnFen 3y ago
  > to not acknowledge that the new terms are genuinely a huge improvement I'll acknowledge that! But it doesn't matter. This is the second time that Unity retroactively changed the terms of their deal. That they removed the retroactive part is great, but that they've done it twice also indicates that it will happen again at some point in the future. So, for me, it doesn't matter in the slightest how favorable their new terms are. They've shown their true colors and they can't take that back. That's why I won't be buying any Unity-based games in the future. Unity is a bad actor, and I don't want to support their business.
- hn_acker 3y ago
  > The amount of mental gymnastics on display here (not to mention bloodthirstiness) to not acknowledge that the new terms are genuinely a huge improvement and likely palatable to the majority of game actual developers in crazy. A huge improvement relative to the current pricing policy in effect (the status quo), no. A huge improvement relative to the previous incoming pricing policy, yes. But that's only the half of it. The other half is that Unity cannot be trusted to abide by its own terms of service. I don't need mental gymnastics to decide that Unity will never be palatable again. Unity's terms as of October 2022 included the line: > If material modifications are made to these Terms, Unity will endeavor to notify you of the modification. [1] But in April 2023, Unity silently rewrote the terms, and one of the changes was removing that self-obligation [2]. Ctrl-F for "notif" and you won't find a match. > I have a few friends who work on relatively medium-scale game development operations and every one of them is basically saying “oh thank god, we can work with this”. It's good that Unity decided not to screw your friends after all. But "oh thank god, we can work with this" suggests an aftertaste of dread. I don't make games, but if I did I would not want to rely on the company which gave me such dread. [1] https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/71654bf/Unity%20Software%20Additional%20Terms.md https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/71... [2] https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/master/Unity%20Software%20Additional%20Terms.md https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/ma... (which as of September 26, 2023 corresponds to https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/50329a6/Unity%20Software%20Additional%20Terms.md https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/50...)
unitylol 3y ago
This isn't the kind of situation for forgiveness. The management promoting these unpopular changes this needs to go, and if Unity's board won't take action, developers and customers will.
Tiktaalik 3y ago
Developers were already moving away from Unity (at least traditional pc/console game publishers) months and years before this and this will only accelerate the decline. I've been told that Unity remains one of the best engines for mobile development so maybe those folks will continue to linger around, but I think for everyone else it's accelerated their move to the exit.
raphman 3y ago
The systemic problem with Unity is not only that the leadership makes bad decisions on a whim. Apparently, they made these decisions despite explicit internal opposition from their developers. When a company's leadership ignores their internal expertise, the company starts to rot from the inside.
anigbrowl 3y ago
Now's the time to see if the CEO bought back any of the stock he sold before the announcement.
m3kw9 3y ago
The board meeting: Exec:“they’d have no choice but to pay this new fee, they are fked now” A week later..
ajuc 3y ago
Once a company tries sth like this there's no point going back. They will fuck you up again the moment people stop watching every step their make.
glimshe 3y ago
Unity, if one of your employees makes an egregious move that is not only immoral, but also destroys the trusts of coworkers, do you fire them or forgive?
m-p-3 3y ago
They're not sorry for the trouble and anguish they caused, they're sorry of the bad PR they received from their own actions.

136 points by qwytw 3y ago

I was probably never going to learn unity in the first place. But when the news came out that shifted to, "Well, now I'm definitely never going to learn unity." However, I missed the news that Unity merged with ironSource. The runtime fees news filled me in on that and also filled me in on some of the less than savory things that ironSource has been up to in the past. Now my position has moved towards, "I guess I shouldn't play anything made in Unity (at least not on machines where I care about their security)." And cancelling the runtime fee isn't likely to shift my position.

JohnFen 3y ago
> Now my position has moved towards, "I guess I shouldn't play anything made in Unity I'm not a game dev at all, but this is where the whole thing has brought me as well. If it's based on Unity, I'll pass.
- Uehreka 3y ago
  Ah, I wish it were that easy, but a number of my favorite games (KSP, Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium off the top of my head) are made in Unity. If you play indie PC games you can’t boycott Unity without missing a ton of really good games.
  - srinivgp 3y ago
    If you play games you can't play games without missing a ton of really good games. There are _a ton_ of really good games.
    - Uehreka 3y ago
      The games market is large, but not infinite. Like, there may be many space games, but only one space sim that has the depth and complexity of KSP 1, and that’s KSP 1. Not to mention that a lot of gamers have no idea what engine their favorite games use. For instance, I was shocked to discover that Disco Elysium used Unity because it looks so different from the “stock Unity look”.
      - syncbehind 3y ago
        >Not to mention that a lot of gamers have no idea what engine their favorite games use. If you start to boycott something, you typically have done some research (why else would you have wanted to boycott it in the first place). I.e boycotting Nestle means that you research where the company may have their fingers in and avoid that.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    > If you play indie PC games you can’t boycott Unity without missing a ton of really good games. That may be true, but so what? There are more great non-Unity-based games than I have time in my life to play anyway.
  - fcsp 3y ago
    I suppose this is going to change drastically going forward as game devs probably won't want to risk their livelihood on the whims of a company that is ok with making such changes
  - slowmovintarget 3y ago
    I suspect that kind of boycott would hurt the independent developers more than it hurts Unity.
    - syncbehind 3y ago
      Those developers will then need to pivot in response to market changes. But yes, that's often how it goes. If you boycott a child-labor produced coffee, and it just so happens that your favourite indie cafe uses that as their main coffee because it's so cheap! Yea, that cafe will suffer.
      - slowmovintarget 3y ago
        I'd be all for a boycott in your example, but not in the case of Unity... as a purchaser of games. As a developer, you'd better believe I'd be looking hard at Godot / Defold / Unreal... or turning off the Unity ads in my products. I don't think Unity's intended pricing change is morally equivalent to child labor.
        syncbehind 3y ago
        I used a hyperbole to get my point across. I'm not equating the two. I mean, even not using them as a development platform is something. But I don't get the logic behind supporting them as a purchaser of games? Is it just FOMO?
        slowmovintarget 3y ago
        No. It's because I don't believe it strikes at the right targets, for lack of a better metaphor. You get collateral damage that I don't think is worthwhile. If the desired goal is to have developers move away from Unity, Unity themselves have given enough incentive. You suggested boycotting the developers that use Unity. I don't get your scorched earth logic. It seems unreasonable to me.
        3y ago
  - syncbehind 3y ago
    > If you play indie PC games you can’t boycott Unity without missing a ton of really good games. The naivete involved in expecting to boycott a product without having any inconveniences never ceases to amuse me. The very nature of boycotting necessitates that you will miss out on things. If you never used the product/byproduct, what effect would your boycott have? It's like a bald person boycotting a hair cuttery, who cares?
    - Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
      In the gaming world, boycotts are an absolute joke. I think many gamers don't even know what the word means and will pre-order and play the hell out of a game they're claiming to be boycotting.
- SXX 3y ago
  So you don't like Unity because of everything happen and how they threated game developers. And for that reason you want to refuse to pay those game developers? As it's now Unity dont collect any telemetry.
  - bobthepanda 3y ago
    Unity already showed they were willing to change contract terms unilaterally, so why anyone should trust that they will stay doing what they currently do is beyond me.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    Not exactly. I don't trust Unity because they've clearly demonstrated that they can't be trusted. I'm not avoiding Unity as some sort of solidarity with wronged developers, I'm avoiding Unity because I don't want to support a company that behaves that way. > As it's now Unity dont collect any telemetry. Maybe not (but maybe -- how would I know?), but Unity clearly has no problems throwing people under the bus if it suits them, so again -- they can't be trusted. On this point or any other.
  - RoyalHenOil 3y ago
    As demonstrated by their previous stance, Unity may choose to track your private data in the future, even on games you already own and purchased with the understanding that there would be no tracking. Tracking players is their intention, and although they have rolled it back (solely due to the strength of the backlash), they have revealed their hand. We now know that tracking players is how they want to monetize heading into the future, and that they have no qualms applying it retroactively to games you already own.
  - hn_acker 3y ago
    > So you don't like Unity because of everything happen and how they threated game developers. And for that reason you want to refuse to pay those game developers? Your framing is wrong. If I really want to buy a game but choose not to, I'm not "refus[ing] to pay" the game developer. Game developers don't deserve to be paid with my money if I decide not to get their games.
- TheGRS 3y ago
  This is a really weird takeaway for an end-user. This is punishing game developers for using a certain tool. Unless Unity is doing something adverse to the end user I don't see why that should be a factor in your game purchases. I've played plenty of great games made with Unity.
  - JohnFen 3y ago
    I don't like how Unity conducts their business, and I now actively distrust them, so it makes sense to add them to my list of "companies to avoid". I don't want to support businesses that operate as they do. The intent isn't to punish developers, of course, but continuing to give money to a company that I don't want to support is asking more of me than I'm willing to do. In the end, it's just me and my decision will have no effect on anybody. If enough other people also avoid Unity, then devs will have to adapt. That's just life.
adamredwoods 3y ago
Another thread said it best (paraphrased): they felt the power, and fear, of how one CEO's action that could change their livelihood. I've felt this when Flash was canceled for iOS. Steve Jobs's "letter about Flash" changed my job outlook in just one day.
jonplackett 3y ago
You’re just going to be punishing game devs who are locked in. Sure, make your own games with something else (although unreal has similar rev share) but it seems cruel to take this out on unity devs who have no option
- debaserab2 3y ago
  If the tool they use to make their game requires customers to install malware onto their machine you can't really blame the customer for avoiding software that is built with said tool.
  - EricE 3y ago
    Declaring they are installing malware is a pretty bold assertion. Care to back that up with something other than feelings?
    - debaserab2 3y ago
      If you've followed the Unity debacle I assume you've already read about this, but a cursory search for "Ironsource malware" on google yields: https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unity-ironsource-malware-came-from-bad-actors-who-tried-to-abuse-the-platform https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unity-ironsource-malware-came-... https://www.pcgamer.com/unity-is-merging-with-a-company-who-made-a-malware-installer/ https://www.pcgamer.com/unity-is-merging-with-a-company-who-...
      - qwytw 3y ago
        Is there any indication all of the IronSource or other ad stuff will not be optional? Not allowing developers to remove it from their games would certainly be a step too far (at this time anyway, who know what will they come up with in a couple of years).
        anankaie 3y ago
        The problem is that there is no way to trust that Unity will not alter the deal in an underhanded way in the future. I do not want my purchases beholden to their capricious whims. I sympathize with the devs, but sometimes it turns out that platform decisions made in the past are bad. It is what it is.

thangngoc89 3y ago

Well, trust is easily broken and impossible to repair. I have no skins in the game but I wouldn’t touch Unity for my next projects.

asah 3y ago
"Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback." https://thalein.medium.com/trust-arrives-on-foot-and-leaves-on-horseback-aacde6e69163 https://thalein.medium.com/trust-arrives-on-foot-and-leaves-...
- jtriangle 3y ago
  Oddly, I heard that quote yesterday in a youtube video...about a completely different topic. What a curious synchronicity
  - eimrine 3y ago
    Baader–Meinhof phenomenon
    - asah 3y ago
      quite literally, since I also saw this online yesterday and copied it here... (I'd heard it before but was reminded yesterday)

ekanes 3y ago

This seems almost impossible to fix: When a person or company is caught violating their promises, it's a big hurdle to differentiate between: A: "Sorry we got caught / sorry you're upset" and B: "Oh snap. Our internal values are obviously way wrong. The board has fired the CEO, we are going to solve this in the open along with the community, and then we'll bind our own hands in every way legal that we won't do this again." So far this still smells a lot like A.

sbarre 3y ago
Yeah if you look at the Unity leadership and board, you can see clearly who is in charge and what their values are. If that doesn't change, then talk is cheap. Unity has entered the enshittification (or more generously "value extraction") phase of their existence, and you should assume that going forward no matter what they do, it will be in the context of prioritizing value extraction over customer success or happiness. Companies are allowed to make money, but how it's done really matters.
failbuffer 3y ago
Exactly. Diplomacy is the art of saying "nice doggy" until you can find a big enough rock.
xyst 3y ago
They have taken the FB approach. Backpeddle on changes. Wait for heat to cool off. Then back to fucking you over.
TheGRS 3y ago
They likely won't ever escape it. Unity entered the market as a free, batteries-included game engine. It rose to prominence in the indie community because it was free and it had a LOT of user-generated materials. Their whole brand has this foundation of being friendly to small developers. You take that away in even the smallest way and they have nothing to stand on. By comparison, Epic didn't have that sort of baggage. They were a big company with a big engine made for big games. And over time they made that engine cheaper and more accessible to smaller devs.

epa 3y ago

Thats the problem with expectations. When you have a free model you need to be freemium with additional features, not adjust pricing to the whole group.

WillPostForFood 3y ago
That's what Unity did, they are ~freemium, and tried to raise prices on paying users. They just showed you can do it incredibly stupidly.

xwdv 3y ago

The damage is done. This whole debacle only confirms what I always knew to be true: you must build your own game engines and tooling.

baal80spam 3y ago
This is my belief as well. In addition (I might be in the minority here) but I can always tell when a game is made in Unity - it has this cheap, plastic feel to it.
SXX 3y ago
Building own engine and tools is not financially viable for 99% of game development companies.
- superkuh 3y ago
  That's too bad. I guess for profit companies won't then and actual decent human people with more incentives in their lives than only profit will continue to do so.
  - chc 3y ago
    Humans actually need to eat more than for-profit companies do.
    - superkuh 3y ago
      You're all (everyone who replied to my comment) assuming that human game developers only develop games so that they can earn money off them. It's HN so that's not weird, pretty much everyone here has their for-profit blinders on. But what if I told you that not all human behavior is done for profit? Including game development. Not everything has to be "financially viable" and return a profit. The best things in life are made by people without any profit motive at all.
  - the_af 3y ago
    Even without profit in mind: sometimes you just want to build a game. It's easy to get sidetracked by "the engine" when all you wanted was to create a game... Most amateur gamedevs I know all started creating "the engine" and then the actual game never happened.

raziel2701 3y ago

Trust is not a boomerang, when you throw it away it doesn't come back.

iamsaitam 3y ago
Great metaphor.
LadyCailin 3y ago
Depends, if you’re big enough, it will come back to you after it orbits once.
- hn_acker 3y ago
  I like the way you put it because to me it holds the connotation that the company which threw away the trust is so massive that its gravity (usefulness, lack of good alternatives, network effects, enterprise stubbornness, mere exposure [1] etc.) brings the trust back. (Well, it might be begrudging distrust rather than trust, but the result is the same if the people come back.) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mere-exposure_effect

maxFlow 3y ago

As a side note, Godot's Development Fund [0] is currently sitting at 51.1k euros/month. Does anybody know where it was at before the Unity pricing revamp announcement? [0] https://fund.godotengine.org/ https://fund.godotengine.org/

SXX 3y ago
Accidentally Godot's Development Fund was announced like a day before Unity debacle.
- dmonitor 3y ago
  It was the same day, even
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lukasus 3y ago
25k euros on September 12th https://web.archive.org/web/20230912192257/https://fund.godotengine.org/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230912192257/https://fund.godo...

gumballindie 3y ago

Have they fired that toxic CEO yet? It won't make much of a difference, but the guy's career should come to an end. Time to be freed to focus on other, more important, things.

sbarre 3y ago
Everyone seems really focused on JR (the CEO) but I haven't heard much talk about Tomer Bar-Zeev who came to Unity via the ironSource merger (he was a founder), and is "President, Grow" of Unity, and also on the board. I suspect this guy, considering ironSource's past and his current title, may have been more responsible for these changes than the CEO. I assume the CEO has to sign off but the whole strategy of value extraction and nebulous fees just stinks of ironSource.
- BudaDude 3y ago
  While this may be true, JR has made a number of decisions over the years that has harmed Unity before the merge.

marcodiego 3y ago

I'll repost my comment: I have no involvement and I'm not a game developer (except for small weekend projects). Please do not make any change "to the policy" you have announced! Your decision seemed to be the straw that was lacking for many people to support Godot and I'm rooting for them. Please don't let us down now.

Uehreka 3y ago
I think this take is a little overtorqued. Like, yes, this has caused more people to pay attention to Godot. But for those of us with upcoming projects in the next year, we’re all just gonna have to train up on Unreal because Godot is years away from parity with the big engines. So really the outcome here is going to be that Epic/TenCent is going to massively consolidate the gamedev market.

bccdee 3y ago

> Under the revised terms, there is no runtime fee whatever for any game developed with a current version of Unity, only for those developers who adopt the latest version in 2024. So they haven't done a 180. They're no longer going to try and retroactively inflict the runtime fee on existing projects, but it is still going to be a thing going forward.

WA 3y ago
Furthermore, a 180 implies that you go the other way onwards. As in: they pay you to use Unity. Which of course is ridiculous, just like the headline.
karmakaze 3y ago
I haven't been following closely and find the rest of the paragraph good to know, if not entirely reassuring. > The free Unity Personal will stay free, and the revenue ceiling above which users must upgrade to the next tier has been raised to $200,000. And above $1 million, users will be able to choose between a per-user fee or a 2.5% revenue share, whichever is lesser. If this was the first and only news delivered with the users' concerns in mind, none of this would be such a big deal--that whole retroactive version value extraction play was going too far. The net effect is that the current crop of near-completion Unity-based games may be completed and supported with the now current version.
- incrudible 3y ago
  > entirely reassuring It's reassuring in the sense that some theoretical problem (costly installs) can be avoided. Otherwise, not really. The big selling point with Unity was that you pay per seat, and that's that. You don't owe them anything beyond that particular fee, no money, no confidential information, nothing. The change of terms is a not-so-tacit admission that their business model does not work and that the whims of the MBA-types are going to dictate the future of the platform. Unreal Engine has basically the same revenue share type of deal (but no per-seat cost), but then its leadership has a proven track record in developing actual games. > The net effect is that the current crop of near-completion Unity-based games may be completed and supported with the now current version. Of course, in the short term nobody is going to switch engines mid-flight. However, in a few years time, when we ask ourselves "How did Unity die?" this change of terms is likely to be identified as the point of no return.

karaterobot 3y ago

I don't think either of the claims in the headline of the article are supported by the content of the article. They didn't u-turn, they modified their terms but are making the same set of changes with new parameters. They did not beg forgiveness, they said they were sorry for how they handled it, but did not say they were sorry for their new policy, or that they were asking anyone to forgive them for it. They basically did the standard thing of "we're sorry for how we communicated this the first time around, but we're still doing it, and we've scheduled a Q&A so we can give you more information". Should I think of articles like this as news or opinion? It's packaged as news, with the reporting standards of a tweet.

bangonkeyboard 3y ago
> Should I think of articles like this as news or opinion? As PR.
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  As attracting your click with bait.
  - joshspankit 3y ago
    Indeed. I feel like the HN title should be changed to reflect the facts instead of the bait.
dartos 3y ago
checks url Pretty sure TechCrunch is mostly PR for tech companies.
- DonHopkins 3y ago
  You don't say? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GVd_HLlps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-GVd_HLlps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex1JuIN0eaA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex1JuIN0eaA
3y ago

olliecornelia 3y ago

Sadly many game developers are also Gamers.

_chu1 3y ago
The real problem is sadly most video game companies are public traded greasefestivals. See Valve for a good honest game company.

louwrentius 3y ago

You can never trust them as they may still just choose to implement it somewhere in the future. The thing is: Capitalism demands perpetual (growing) growth. Pay-per-download would have helped tremendously with this. I don’t believe pay-per-download is dead. Money isn’t free anymore, but companies are desperate for growth. Inflation is currently caused by companies issuing significant price hikes to appease shareholders. I expect more pay-per-download-style shenanigans from other companies or outrageous price hikes going forward, to sustain growth.

mordae 3y ago
That's OK. Capitalism demands growth, but infinite growth on a finite planet is impossible. As the attempts to extract value at all (especially reputational) costs ramp up, reputation of the whole system is going to crumble. People are going to look into alternatives then. Godot and Blender.
rybosworld 3y ago
> You can never trust them as they may still just choose to implement it somewhere in the future Completely agree. > The thing is: Capitalism demands perpetual (growing) growth. Pay-per-download would have helped tremendously with this. Disagree. The market provided a strong answer in the form of: "No, we hate this model and will literally do extra work (switch game engines) to avoid it".

gigatexal 3y ago

Did Apple talk to them I wonder?

isk517 3y ago
Maybe if they got there early enough, I suspect there was a line up composed of all of the larger developers, publishers, and platform holders.

nonrandomstring 3y ago

Seems like Unity are really going to get punished. Plenty of companies renege on promises, or stiff their customers, and we just suck it up and keep coming back. Take Sony, discussed earlier as "deserving" of being hacked, but all the same we keep buying their stuff no matter how despicable their behaviour. Something is different about this. There's a community that seems to have solidity. And they seem hell-bent on rubbing Unity's nose in its own poop. And Unity is small and dependent enough to be really hurt. I expect they will survive, but as markets get more specialised I wonder if in times to come coordinated action will totally take down companies.

ComputerGuru 3y ago
I think it’s that Unity actually isn’t that big and evil that (unfortunately?) makes it so they are more likely to pay a price for their egregiousness than truly Machiavellian entities operating at world scale. I wish the world would get likewise up in arms at being similarly abused by the likes of true industrial titans (in and out of the tech sector).
- nonrandomstring 3y ago
  > I think it’s that Unity actually isn’t that big and evil Yep, I remember when they were getting together, was it around 2006 maybe, when they were the kid on the block and Unreal was heavy. > that (unfortunately?) makes it so they are more likely to pay a price Kinda how the second or third biggest kid attracts the bullies. Not saying the game community are "bullying" Unity, but there are bigger fish to fry.

KronisLV 3y ago

I think this is probably a net positive at least in some regards. Unity (and other company execs) saw that pricing per install will most likely generate a lot of outrage, so profit seeking must be kept to more moderate means. Unity settled on terms that will still generate them some income (which is probably good, given how fast they're burning money), the revenue share is still lower than that of Unreal and if the fireside chat is to be believed, then these terms should hold for a while. Unity won't be making every game/program phone home, at least if you don't use their analytics, the install figures will be self-reported and also the splash screen will be optional. The people with years of Unity experience and purchased assets won't be forced to migrate to something else and will be able to use their good tech and tools (even if the editor can be annoying), and their businesses won't have to pay insane amounts of money for runtime fees. In addition, engines like Godot get a nice boost in popularity and also some funding, which should secure them a better future. Probably not much is changing for the niche engines that I like, but it's still to nice see Godot succeeding in some ways! That whole fiasco could have been avoided altogether, though - just consider the new policies for like half a year and run some numbers first, I'm not sure how they missed out on how their initial plans would affect mobile games!

Lord-Jobo 3y ago
I think the actual weight of this incident over long term will fall on whether or not Unity reports noticeable losses of revenue after this. If they don't, the industry wont care and wont learn from their mistake. The people making these decisions dont really pay attention to anything else besides quarterly reports and stock movement, and they rarely actually know much about the industry they work in(from my observations). these are broad generalizations, there will be exceptions definitely.

capableweb 3y ago

> the runtime fee policy has been almost completely reversed Oh, that sounds good! > Under the revised terms, there is no runtime fee whatever for any game developed with a current version of Unity, only for those developers who adopt the latest version in 2024. So, not at all reversed, just pushed further into the future? > Overall the changes seem to address most of the issues people had with the new terms, and importantly it is more or less opt-in This makes it seem like this is a submarine post trying to help Unity to regain some sort of control, rather than a journalistic investigation into the event, where the journalist at least would try to be impartial.

JohnFen 3y ago
Well, it is a TechCruch article, so that's not surprising. You need to adjust your filters accordingly.

rybosworld 3y ago

There's a really simple fix: Fire the execs. It's difficult to take this company seriously when they are run by out of touch MBA's who routinely make objectively poor business decisions and then reward themselves handsomely. I think people are increasingly tired of business leaders paying themselves millions when things go well, but facing no repercussions when they don't. "STAT | $494 million - The cumulative stock-based compensation Unity reported paying out over its past three quarters. STAT | $152 million – The cumulative "profit" Unity reported over those same three quarters." https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unitys-self-combustion-engine-this-week-in-business https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unitys-self-combustion-engine-... NOBODY believes they won't try something like this again, because the people responsible are still there. Get rid of the people that broke the trust and I guarantee you'll see the community praise the decision.

shmatt 3y ago
I wrote a similar comment yesterday but worth noting again. This isn't the usual group of MBAs looking for a quick buck. These are the people who have come in from ironSource. A company who has made billions by attaching malware in disguise to personal computers[1]. Executives who green lit projects like mentioned in this post really don't care about their users, its all about maximizing profits while stepping on everyone else [1] https://www.benedelman.org/news-021815/ https://www.benedelman.org/news-021815/
- Sohcahtoa82 3y ago
  > This isn't the usual group of MBAs looking for a quick buck. > Executives who green lit projects like mentioned in this post really don't care about their users, its all about maximizing profits while stepping on everyone else Uh...that sounds exactly like a group of MBAs looking for a quick buck.
  - cacois 3y ago
    I think the implication was that this is a more insidious "milk them for all they are worth, damn the consequences" group

hresvelgr 3y ago

Unity would not have pulled this stunt if it wasn't going to make money and they knew they couldn't get away with it. My suspicion is that developers below the 90th percentile likely don't impact their revenue at all and they are likely trying to hit 99th percentile titles like Genshin Impact and Hearthstone, titles which are extremely cross platform and would need to be at the latest engine version to use the console SDKs. This may very well be an intentional shedding of a demographic, as typically lower price tier and free customers tend to be the largest support burden for SaaS companies.

TheGRS 3y ago
Yea another odd thing with Unity is that since it was free and very accessible to small game makers, they were also heavily associated with shovelware. Maybe this is also an attempt to get away from that. I just don't see how they have the funds to weather through this shift though, their whole identity was being the small studio engine.

xyst 3y ago

This has already been discussed but under a less click bait title (“… begs forgiveness” — lol) Trust already violated which took years to build. 1 C-level executive decision ruined and betrayed that trust. There is no going back. Open source game engine or bust. Individually, I support GoDot with donations and time (contributions to codebase). If I ever become a game studio, would definitely have a team to continue to contribute to godot as well as monthly monetary contributions for other maintainers.

DoneWithAllThat 3y ago

The amount of mental gymnastics on display here (not to mention bloodthirstiness) to not acknowledge that the new terms are genuinely a huge improvement and likely palatable to the majority of game actual developers in crazy. I have a few friends who work on relatively medium-scale game development operations and every one of them is basically saying “oh thank god, we can work with this”. But reading this thread you’d think it was still a catastrophe, just a slightly smaller one.

rybosworld 3y ago
I don't see any comments in this thread that argue the new terms are worse than before. I also don't see any comments that argue the new terms aren't palatable. As far as I can tell, most of the discussion is to the effect of: "does a reversion to only slightly shitty pricing terms make up for initially trying to get away with super shitty terms?"
JohnFen 3y ago
> to not acknowledge that the new terms are genuinely a huge improvement I'll acknowledge that! But it doesn't matter. This is the second time that Unity retroactively changed the terms of their deal. That they removed the retroactive part is great, but that they've done it twice also indicates that it will happen again at some point in the future. So, for me, it doesn't matter in the slightest how favorable their new terms are. They've shown their true colors and they can't take that back. That's why I won't be buying any Unity-based games in the future. Unity is a bad actor, and I don't want to support their business.
hn_acker 3y ago
> The amount of mental gymnastics on display here (not to mention bloodthirstiness) to not acknowledge that the new terms are genuinely a huge improvement and likely palatable to the majority of game actual developers in crazy. A huge improvement relative to the current pricing policy in effect (the status quo), no. A huge improvement relative to the previous incoming pricing policy, yes. But that's only the half of it. The other half is that Unity cannot be trusted to abide by its own terms of service. I don't need mental gymnastics to decide that Unity will never be palatable again. Unity's terms as of October 2022 included the line: > If material modifications are made to these Terms, Unity will endeavor to notify you of the modification. [1] But in April 2023, Unity silently rewrote the terms, and one of the changes was removing that self-obligation [2]. Ctrl-F for "notif" and you won't find a match. > I have a few friends who work on relatively medium-scale game development operations and every one of them is basically saying “oh thank god, we can work with this”. It's good that Unity decided not to screw your friends after all. But "oh thank god, we can work with this" suggests an aftertaste of dread. I don't make games, but if I did I would not want to rely on the company which gave me such dread. [1] https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/71654bf/Unity%20Software%20Additional%20Terms.md https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/71... [2] https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/master/Unity%20Software%20Additional%20Terms.md https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/ma... (which as of September 26, 2023 corresponds to https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/50329a6/Unity%20Software%20Additional%20Terms.md https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/TermsOfService/blob/50...)

unitylol 3y ago

This isn't the kind of situation for forgiveness. The management promoting these unpopular changes this needs to go, and if Unity's board won't take action, developers and customers will.

Tiktaalik 3y ago

Developers were already moving away from Unity (at least traditional pc/console game publishers) months and years before this and this will only accelerate the decline. I've been told that Unity remains one of the best engines for mobile development so maybe those folks will continue to linger around, but I think for everyone else it's accelerated their move to the exit.

raphman 3y ago

The systemic problem with Unity is not only that the leadership makes bad decisions on a whim. Apparently, they made these decisions despite explicit internal opposition from their developers. When a company's leadership ignores their internal expertise, the company starts to rot from the inside.

anigbrowl 3y ago

Now's the time to see if the CEO bought back any of the stock he sold before the announcement.

m3kw9 3y ago

The board meeting: Exec:“they’d have no choice but to pay this new fee, they are fked now” A week later..

ajuc 3y ago

Once a company tries sth like this there's no point going back. They will fuck you up again the moment people stop watching every step their make.

glimshe 3y ago

Unity, if one of your employees makes an egregious move that is not only immoral, but also destroys the trusts of coworkers, do you fire them or forgive?

m-p-3 3y ago

They're not sorry for the trouble and anguish they caused, they're sorry of the bad PR they received from their own actions.