Unity goes full Unity

[MS-06FZ Zaku II Kai]

1 hour ago, Daytime Waitress said:

What's to stop the shareholders of this publicly-traded company from ousting someone so obviously injurious to their own financial interests?

I mean, I assume it's something along the lines of, "the board of directors heard 'revenue increase' and are also going along with it", but I'm curious.

To "slightly" paraphrase Doctor Bertruger from Doom 3: "The board doesn´t know one thing about (videogames), all they care about is money and product. Don´t worry, the´ll get their product >:) "

Edited September 14, 2023 by MS-06FZ Zaku II Kai

[Lila Feuer]

1 hour ago, Gez said:

So switching from Unity to something else, like Kex for example, would not be more difficult than switching from Doom 3 to Unity has been in the first place.

 

I'm surprised they didn't use Kex in the first place. Bring on the Kex my dudes. @Edward850 @Kaiser

[Edward850]

Just now, Lila Feuer said:

 

I'm surprised they didn't use Kex in the first place. Bring on the Kex my dudes. @Edward850 @Kaiser

Doom classic and 64 started at about the same time, and we were doing doom64 because of Kaisers disassembly work rather than Kex. Doom64 is what sold Kex for later projects essentially.

[Lila Feuer]

3 minutes ago, Edward850 said:

Doom64 is what sold Kex for later projects essentially.

That makes sense, seeing as Strife is a pretty niche game, Turok a little less so.

[Wo0p]

10 hours ago, TheShep said:

 

They say that CEOs tend towards psychopathy.

 

Yeah, leadership roles in general. I just wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they were "normal" people in my theory. Just to mitigate the tendency to villify "the other" with cartoonish exaggeration. It's much too easy and imo untrue to say that all CEOs are psychopaths, is all I'm saying. Many of them probably, but not all.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

6 hours ago, MS-06FZ Zaku II Kai said:

To "slightly" paraphrase Doctor Bertruger from Doom 3: "The board doesn´t know one thing about (videogames), all they care about is money and product. Don´t worry, the´ll get their product >:) "

To quote from Dr. Bertruger: "They simply can't handle a life here. They're exhausted and overworked. If I had a larger, more competent staff and bigger budget, even these few accidents could have been avoided."

[scalliano]

https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates.1482750/page-143#post-9316466

 

I don't believe this for a second.

[MS-06FZ Zaku II Kai]

19 minutes ago, scalliano said:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates.1482750/page-143#post-9316466

 

I don't believe this for a second.

Lmao, what a convenient timing. Just fake being threatened to avoid any and all responsibility and farm pity points on news outlets.

[Redneckerz]

23 minutes ago, scalliano said:

https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-plan-pricing-and-packaging-updates.1482750/page-143#post-9316466

 

I don't believe this for a second.

Getting swatted?

 

But yea, it would be best if they just reverted things and apologized for ill-concieved thinking.

[aloysiusfreeman]

6 hours ago, Wo0p said:

 

Yeah, leadership roles in general. I just wanted to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they were "normal" people in my theory. Just to mitigate the tendency to villify "the other" with cartoonish exaggeration. It's much too easy and imo untrue to say that all CEOs are psychopaths, is all I'm saying. Many of them probably, but not all.

 

Typically, I assume people above a certain net worth are psychopaths. 

 

And let's look up John here....$1.4 billion. Psychopath.

[Wo0p]

13 minutes ago, aloysiusfreeman said:

 

Typically, I assume people above a certain net worth are psychopaths. 

 

And let's look up John here....$1.4 billion. Psychopath.

 

Sure, I understand the sentiment. I would advise just to be careful with generalisations as it leads so often to baseless character assassination, but that said you might be right. But let's not derail the topic further with our discussion. It requires its own thread if anything :)

[Kinsie]

The London-based law firm Sheridans has posted their analysis of the Unity Stuff over at LinkedIn.

Quote

It’s clearly early days with Unity's changes to its pricing policies and it may be that the PR backlash will determine what happens next. However, it is far from certain that Unity’s plans will be able to progress even if it doesn’t effect a U-Turn – at least not without significant legal risk.

3 things immediately come to mind:

1. It looks very much like an "abuse of a dominant position" and therefore very likely to engage unfair competition / anti-trust rules on both sides of the Atlantic. It's highly likely that the Competition and Markets Authority (UK), European Commission and Department of Justice (US) would be materially concerned about situations where an undertaking with a dominant position in the market (like Unity) makes unilateral decisions on pricing and conditions where their provision of middleware (especially in mobile) is a vital component to so many gaming businesses. Amongst other things, it may have a devastating impact and chilling effect on games businesses, their ability to continue trading and innovation more generally in the games markets globally.

2. Unilateral price changes in B2B contracts may be subject to the reasonableness test in the Unfair Contract Terms Act 1977 as rendering performance substantially different to what was expected. It seems clear from the reactions over the last 24 to 48 hours (and Unity’s initial response) that the reasonableness of this new structure can be called into question. (UK)

3. This might also invoke the UK and EU’s Platform to Business Regulation. This generally governs the balance of power between platforms and businesses that rely on platforms to reach end users. Particular concerns include:
a. Giving businesses a reasonable and proportionate notice period to allow for technical and commercial adaptations to proposed changes to terms. Given the magnitude of this change this period should arguably be considerably more than the period given by Unity; and
b. Prohibitions on retroactive changes to terms.


So it is far from clear that these changes will be enforceable / ever actually be able to be implemented in a lawful or legal manner.

We will be watching this space – and of course ensuring that our clients’ interest are protected.

 

[Dark Pulse]

On 9/13/2023 at 8:38 AM, Karnasis said:

There is no fucking way this was a decision made by a human, I am now inclined to believing that Lizard Men run the world in secret and decided to do this to make us suffer, then believe that an actual human being, did this believing it was a good idea.

Shit, if only it were Mantis Men. Then at least Cave Johnson could bail us out.

[Mystic 256]

I wonder if this means they will have to replace the doom unity port with something else

maybe nightdive could make a new port

[scalliano]

2 hours ago, Kinsie said:

The London-based law firm Sheridans has posted their analysis of the Unity Stuff over at LinkedIn.

 

I am convinced that Riccitiello and his cohorts know all of this and are deliberately tanking the company in the hopes of a prospective buyout, developers be damned.

[scalliano]

Double-post, but quick update for transparency:

 

https://www.polygon.com/23873727/unity-credible-death-threat-offices-closed-pricing-change

 

Grain of salt, of course (this IS Polygon, after all), but if true, then the threat to the NA offices was indeed legit and came from an actual Unity employee. I remain sceptical given the timing, frankly.

[Murdoch]

5 hours ago, scalliano said:

Grain of salt, of course (this IS Polygon, after all), but if true, then the threat to the NA offices was indeed legit and came from an actual Unity employee. I remain sceptical given the timing, frankly.

 

Obviously someone not keen to remain employed and a free man.

[DogsRNice]

On 9/14/2023 at 3:33 PM, Dark Pulse said:

Shit, if only it were Mantis Men. Then at least Cave Johnson could bail us out.

He's a giant metal head stuck in the aperture science basement though 

[Daytime Waitress]

7 hours ago, scalliano said:

Double-post, but quick update for transparency:

 

https://www.polygon.com/23873727/unity-credible-death-threat-offices-closed-pricing-change

 

Grain of salt, of course (this IS Polygon, after all), but if true, then the threat to the NA offices was indeed legit and came from an actual Unity employee. I remain sceptical given the timing, frankly.

 

Cops are involved so there's gotta be some legitimacy to it, but the phrasing definitely doesn't help any skepticism:

 

Quote

offices in Austin, Texas and San Francisco were closed just as Unity CEO John Riccitiello was scheduled to address staff

 

[Murdoch]

1 hour ago, Daytime Waitress said:

 

Cops are involved so there's gotta be some legitimacy to it, but the phrasing definitely doesn't help any skepticism:

 

 

 

It's obviously a legitimate threat at this point. Cops generally do not take kindly to having their time wasted. 

[AmethystViper]

On 9/14/2023 at 3:46 PM, Mystic 256 said:

I wonder if this means they will have to replace the doom unity port with something else

maybe nightdive could make a new port

As much as I like the Unity port, it's a shame that it never got the same kind of love or quality-of-life updates that the Quake remasters got among other issues I and others reported on Steam.

[Kyka]

Well this will definitely develop unity between the corporation and the developers.

 

 

 

 

 

ba dum tish

[Duke of Pathoris]

On 9/14/2023 at 8:58 PM, Lila Feuer said:

 

I'm surprised they didn't use Kex in the first place. Bring on the Kex my dudes. @Edward850 @Kaiser

Boy I'd love if you could download Kex and a nice SDK for it in the same way you can Unity 3D and Unreal.

[scalliano]

11 hours ago, Murdoch said:

 

It's obviously a legitimate threat at this point. Cops generally do not take kindly to having their time wasted. 

That's fair, but given that "muh deth threts" is a common shield used by shitheels online, it's understandable that people would have doubts. Hopefully we'll have more details in the coming days.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

This will be the end of the Asset Flip trend on Steam, for the Runtime fee policy.

[Astar]

[roadworx]

so, there's an interesting post that's been making the rounds

 

Quote

In 2020 Unity went public, and a bunch of shit heads bought their way onto Unity's board of directors. Ultimately the CEO works for the Board, so when these new bosses tell him to do something self destructive, he does it.

Here are the names you should be talking about instead of John:

Tomer Bar Zeev

Roelof Botha

Egon Durban.

(Edit: I forgot to say that they are Board members)

Remember IronSource, that dog shit monetization company that absolutely everyone in the industry dumped, and was circling the drain until Unity bought them for $4.4 billion? Tomer Bar Zeev is the founder of IronSource, and following the merger he became Unity's 3rd president (along with John and Marc) ... yes, this is the asshole who sold a package of malware under the guise of monetization software & ultimately is the root cause of this install tax. Given IronSource's history of malware, I feel that it is safe to say that the Unity runtime will likely start getting flagged by antivirus programs and casually request admin rights during installation.

How Unity got infected with IronSource, is that Sequoia Capitol and Silver lake pledged to invest $1 billion into Unity if the deal went through. Frankly, the math doesn't add up for Unity to trade $4.4 billion to buy a plague blanket of a company, only to receive $1 billion in return. Especially when a rival mobile monetization company offered to pay Unity $17 billion if they called off the IronSource deal & merge with them instead. Unless that $1b was for the sake of C-suite bonuses, in which case all of this makes perfect sense.

But who the Hell is Roelof Botha & Egon Durban, and why are they important names? Roelof is a Director of Sequoia, Egon is the founder of Silver Lake, and both of them have ties back to Elon Musk ... which is pretty obvious for how fast Unity has caught on fire.

If Egon's name is familiar, it is because he was on Twitter's Board and was the one who pushed to have them accept the deal, & then got thrown off the board when they realised that he was just spying for Elon during the resulting lawsuit. He also was the one who helped Elon with his fake " Taking Tesla private" scam.

Roelof was the CFO of PayPal before it got acquired and has a long history of being involved with mergers that result in a lot of money for some, but absolute shit deals for end users and employees.

 

[Wadmodder Shalton]

I wonder what id Software has to say about the current Unity situation, given that the 2019 re-releases of Doom and Doom II used a Unity wrapper. I've bet that they will have plans to migrate to another engine for the re-releases of Doom and Doom II, perhaps even to the Kex engine at some point like Quake 1 & 2 and Doom 64 has.

[OliveTree]

kex engine unity-doom is fascinating lmao.

 

If unity doesn't back down from this idea I'm sure they're aware they have that in their cards

[june gloom]

On 9/16/2023 at 2:23 PM, Wadmodder Shalton said:

This will be the end of the Asset Flip trend on Steam, for the Runtime fee policy.

Yes, but at what cost?