Unity cancels town hall over reported death threats
theverge.com
theverge.com
It would be one thing if Unity were hosting the game on their infra, but I still have to pay Unity a fee if I host the download on my own website?
> For my money, the most interesting part of the whole Unity debacle is that by a strict reading of the new policies, ceasing to offer one's Unity-based games for sale won't even work as a means of getting around the fees: if your Unity-based game is no longer available for sale after January 1st, you'd still be on the hook for the Unity Runtime installation fee for new installs performed by previous legitimate purchasers, even in cases where such installs are performed from physical or archival media or are otherwise impossible for you to prevent.
This all feels like Unity is pushing an obviously terrible concept so they can back down to a slightly-less-terrible one and look slightly more reasonable. I'd bet they will switch to a larger per-sale fee after a little longer of people making noise.
Unfortunately, the leadership at Unity does not agree with you.
Unity's core selling point was a pay-per-seat fee with no royalty. Hence a decent number of big productions went with Unity over Unreal. Now Unity wants more money, and thinks said big productions are "free loading". It is as if an all you can eat buffet decided they should charge for entry plus per plate. "But a lot of customers come in, pay one fixed fee, then eat a lot of food" said the employees of the all you can eat buffet. "Other restaurants charge 20$ a plate. We are simply asking for the same.", said the employees of the all you can eat buffet.
I'm interested in how the courts would rule on it. I can't imagine courts siding with an agreement change, without consideration for the other party, and applying to games developed in the past retroactively.
Yes -- and by most copyright laws, _of course_.
Bob builds his game using Software X. Regardless of where Bob's game is hosted, he has to pay for Software X according to its license terms.
Unity is being unreasonable on 10000 avenues, but Where It's Hosted isn't one.
But did Unity not want to do the town hall over videoconferencing (if offices shut), or was there some other reason that they didn't want to do the town hall?
But, I also wouldn't be surprised if leadership doesn't have great answers to the questions their employees would have asked if the meeting had happened.
That said, this was a thing well before the internet. I used to work at a TV and radio station, and the head of security had his office right next to us in IT. Any letters sent to our on air talent were filtered through him first, and a huge amount had stamps on the outside of the envelope saying "This letter was sent from a correctional facility" along with the name of the institution. Lots of letters ranging from creepy to outright threatening. I didn't regularly get to see them so I couldn't give you any hard numbers, but one thing I noticed that made me skeptical of claims that women get harassed/threatened more than men is that our weatherman by himself got about as many creepy letters as most of our female talent combined.
1. It includes people who are not broadcast figures, which is the vast majority of people. It's possible that, in public, in the workplace, and in school, a woman is more likely to be harassed than a man.
2. The nature of harassment/threats against women is probably biased towards the more emotion-provoking (sinister, intimidating, sexual, etc). I.e. the kinds of things that tend to engender more concern, in the sense of how bad it feels to imagine/witness, how likely it is to come to something more, the likelihood of a power imbalance (physical or otherwise), and its long-term effects on the recipient.
Most of these people probably released shitty furry dating games for 1,99€ on Steam, so nothing new.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37510958 - Video-Game Company Unity Closes Offices Following Death Threat
If you're running a commercial game studio in such a brutally competitive market as video games, how can you afford to use FOSS? Your choices are go without high-end features that your competitors do have; or divert resources from your game content to build them in-house. Both seem less attractive than "just buy a commercial engine" to many studios.
Also, inhouse tooling will need to be built regardless, whether the engine is commercial, in house from scratch, or FOSS.
If the studios give back to the FOSS engine source code, it creates a virtuous cycle, like with the Linux kernel. Everyone wins.
On my napkin: for a $30 indie title at the 200k install threshold it washes out to be a 0.67% “revenue share”. Unreal charges 5%.
So can someone show me the math where indie devs are getting screwed? How is this possibly so bad that people are sending “credible death threats” to the CEO?
Or is the issue just the attempt to apply the terms retroactively? That I understand. If Unity said “going forward this is pricing, we aren’t going to retroactively apply the runtime fee to installs prior to Jan 1, 2024”, would the fuss die down?
user installs the game on their pc? unity wants the fee paid for that
same user installs it on their laptop? pay again
same user upgrades their pc and has to install the game again? unity wants their install fee
I believe they also initially said that deinstall + install would incur another charge, but backpeddalled there (weird)
What i think people aren't getting is Unity probably implemented the per install fee in anticipation of the Apple vision pro. An extremely large amount of vision pro apps are going to be using Unity because of the new partnership with apple.
There are now new fees that people didn't have to pay previously. I.e. devs used to use unity and now they still use unity but have to pay more than they did before. Unreal might not even factor in for them.
Indie devs potentially make negative profits at the best of times. That doesn't make death threats (even "credible" ones...) ok though. Just use Godot and move on.
With Unity, users don't like the new labrynthian TOS. It doesn't help that multiple times people have said "I need to pay if I release a free to play game?" And Unity has clarified "no, that isn't what we meant, you won't need to pay for those." It is either on the Unity legal team for writing the terms so poorly or the marketing team for translating them poorly. Either way, trust has been lost. If Unity builds in a legal back door to charge later for phantom installs or retroactive usage or whatever, that makes an operational risk that devs might want to avoid.
Also, separately, the masses will send idle death threats for nearly anything. Given a large enough consumer base, idle death threats will be sent for any change (even a positive one) or no change at all. I'm guessing that McDonalds' CEO doesn't make noise about it when it happens.
There's also the fact that Unity charging "per install" also includes things like game demos (which are free), or games given to subscribers of things like PlayStation Plus, where the creator is paid a fixed amount upfront based on an estimate of how many people will download the game--but, if more people download the game than originally estimated, then you could end up losing money thanks to Unity.
I've read that Unity clarified that this doesn't apply to Demos (but mistakes happen) and they would charge the platform MSFT/ Sony/ etc. for subscriber stuff -- which, oh yeah, pick that fight with MSFT & Sony, so smart.
So an horrible market is dying. Good.
It's very interesting that Apple has been increasingly emphasizing high-end games, starting with the Apple Silicon Macs, and just recently with the iPhone 15 Pro. Apple buying Unity is not out of the question. They don't have a lot of other attractive options.
We've been living in the global internet age for the past ~25 years, this shouldn't be a shock to anyone.
You’re alleging Unity fabricated these death threats?
Sure? It’s still a death threat.
Sending employees home has a real cost. The existence of death threats, moreover, is unlikely to change developers’ hearts and minds. The nuttier ones will write it off as a conspiracy theory. Most will see it as irrelevant to their interests.
People who make death threats don’t need to underwrite their insanity. Their incoherence doesn’t make them less dangerous.
If, hypothetically, a company just managed to piss off, I don't know...everyone, one strategy to garner some cheap sympathy and have an excuse to cancel public gatherings might be to highlight some of those they were getting all the time anyway.
Citation needed. I’ve never worked at a firm that received a death threat. If we did, I would expect it to be taken very seriously by senior management and law enforcement.
You expect it would be? IOW, you wouldn't automatically be told about a death threat, so you wouldn't know if the company received a death threat.
I've worked for at least two companies that received "death threats"; I've also worked with folks who were individually stalked, unrelated to their job.
Most "death threats" are vague and unsubstantiated: some (pseudo) anonymous e-mail threatening general violence. They're so common that most companies (and the police) ignore them.
A _specific_ threat will usually get reported to and acted upon by the police, but that often requires naming an individual person and something else, like a specific place or a weapon or such.
As a general statement, I would agree with the person who wrote above, "that every company over a certain size gets a certain number of death threats."
I would, in the last ten years.
> Most "death threats" are vague and unsubstantiated: some (pseudo) anonymous e-mail threatening general violence
These (e.g. “I hope you all die*) aren’t typically referred to as death threats. Any one of naming a target, specifying a method or stating personal intent (versus generally hoping harm befalls one) qualifies as a death threat.
"I hope" is not a threat. I specifically said "threatening general violence".
Someone (pseudo) anonymously e-mailing "I'm going to kill you all," is generally considered a threat in the US, though it's usually ignored because it's vague and unsubstantiated.
Without knowing what "threat" Unity received, it could have been anything.
In the past ten years, has your company (companies?) received general threats of violence? Not "I hope", but "I will"?
Sure. Add any one of a weapon, day or time, location or person and it becomes a specified threat.
> Without knowing what "threat" Unity received, it could have been anything
I agree. But again, it’s a video game company. The cost of deferral is low. Even if it were an “I’m going to kill you all” threat, deferring until investigated is prudent. And if a company takes a threat seriously, law enforcement will, too.
> In the past ten years, has your company (companies?) received general threats of violence? Not "I hope", but "I will"?
No.
That never happens. Self interest trumps notions of decency. (Particularly in the context of just a threat, regardless of how credible.)
Is the timing convenient for management? Sure. Never let a crisis go to waste. Does that make their actions imprudent? Of course not. They’re a video game company. These aren’t stakes worth gambling against lives.
I can sympathise with someone while acknowledging they should go to jail, and also sympathising with the people they’re attacking for taking prudent safety measures.
They have all the interest in the world in playing this aspect down and playing up the inevitable reaction to backing human beings into an existential corner: fight, flee, or freeze. In shock, someone says “you come after me, I can come after you, too.” Blaming them is beside the point: you don’t want death threats made to you? Don’t make them to others. It’s pretty simple.
If this is “a surefire way to lose my sympathy,” you never had any sympathy in the first place.
> Update: San Francisco police told Polygon that officers responded to Unity’s San Francisco office “regarding a threats incident.” A “reporting party” told police that “an employee made a threat towards his employer using social media.” The employee that made the threat works in an office outside of California, according to the police statement.
Assuming that death threats actually took place and they were actually credible.
Seems silly for a company to not be able to act because of death threats. That seems like a viable reason for an individual or a very small dev, but it seems like there’s a now a way to just stop Unity from doing stuff.
Cynically, I assume they just don’t want the negative PR and wanted a reason to cancel.
"A large employee gathering" for a lot of companies happens every day in the office. How much security presence does the average office have, in your experience? In mine, the answer is not that much. I've never seen enough that I'd think the same level would be enough for death threats outside of things like defense contractors or military. Everywhere else it would be pretty easy to walk in, shoot the front desk people, take their badge, go anywhere in the building.
Before that I worked for a fortune 100 company and our regional office was in a shared office building that had receptionists and 1-2 armed guards who kind of roamed. They weren’t always visible but they were usually in the lobby.
And I worked for startups they had no one at all and just a door with a key and then keycard scanner.
I’ve visited google and Microsoft’s campuses and they have pretty strict security. So I think it’s a size and budget thing.
It would be extremely difficult to walk into my employer, shoot the front desk people and take their badge.
Also you don’t want that on your conscience? Your colleagues’ lives and wellbeing against a corporate town hall.
It’s a video game engine. They help make video games. They’re sending employees home, to continue working from home, and cancelling a town hall. These are stupid stakes to gamble against lives while a death threat is being investigated.
Which is fine for you, a bystander with no impact. If you’re management, on the other hand, you don’t get to wait for evidence of credibility. Because that evidence may come in blood-stained walls.
What do you think a death threat entails?
"""When officers arrived on scene, they met with a reporting party who informed them that an employee made a threat towards his employer using social media. The reporting party also said that the employee works at an out of state location for the company, but that they had been unable to reach the outside jurisdiction to make a report.
The reporting party was advised to contact the jurisdiction in which the incident occurred, and officers took a courtesy report."""
You've taken the rhetorical position of fighting a rear guard action against common sense to support your point that the town hall should go forward. Your arguments have actually done more damage to that cause than good. And with these death threats, the cause of going forward with a town hall was already being viewed askance even before your rhetorical 'help'.
from the outside, the gaming universe seems to be comprised of some of the most atrocious people on the planet. Astounding levels of vitriol/violence/crybaby behavior, week after week in the news.
Also silly: forgetting that a group is not its worst members.
Remember that every single group with which you identify has had unstable members who behaved badly. Whether criminal behavior, death threat, bullying, or plain poor decisions, there are reprehensible people who superficially share your interests, appearance, background, or gender.
I mean, have you joined the voice chat for a popular shooter recently? There is a lot of vitriol and crybaby behaviour.
Example: It is likely that any given random violent crime was committed by a man. Some are therefore convinced that all men are violent on average, even though it is quite unlikely for any random man to be violent.
Misogyny, racism, and verbal abuse has been the norm since day one. Now you have that plus swatting, doxxing, and affiliated real-world harassment.
Nothing about this needs defending with platitudes about “not all gamers!” Everyone knows it’s not all gamers. That doesn’t mean, as you’re attempting to suggest, that the gaming universe doesn’t have serious and unique problems.
No, and no one said you did. For the second time, argue what someone says.
> Your comment that “not everyone is bad”
Here you even put quotes around something no one wrote.
Anyway thank you for the pointer that groups are groups, I guess? Not sure what you were trying to add to the conversation.
That is disappointing.
There is one common factor with all of the toxic communities, forums and chat rooms that formed your impression of "the gaming universe" over 18 years. When you figure out what that common factor is, you will definitely find the many non-toxic, welcoming and inclusive gaming communities out there.
By the way the police announced that the death threats came from a Unity employee and not from a member of the "gaming community".
https://www.polygon.com/23873727/unity-credible-death-threat...
Threats of violence are wrong and illegal.
But companies should have security in place to protect their buildings for large gatherings. And that security should be able to reasonably protect against jerks who give death threats.
The descent into a low-trust society is hurried along by commentary like this, so no, no thank you. It's not normal and it should not become normal.
It is normal. Look around next time you’re at a tech conference. There’s probably armed guards somewhere. I went to WWDC 10 years ago and they had security. Same for SXSW.
Pretty much any mass gathering.
Unity isn’t some small org. They are worth billions and are a target even in normal times where people aren’t death threating them.
Of course, I agree that life shouldn’t be like this, but it is. We’re already in a low-trust society. We’ve been in it for decades.
Remember when Timothy McVeigh blew up just a regular federal building and killed normies and kids and whatnot? I think since then there’s been a lot more security. It’s more likely that Timothy McVeigh would be shot and killed if he was detected and tried to blow up his truck this time.
This is sad. And I’d prefer not if society could fix this so it’s not necessary.
But if I was going to a big all hands with a thousand coworkers and my employer didn’t have security that could protect me from some rando showing up with a gun, I wouldn’t go to that all hands. And I would probably not work for that company.
Not for any ideological reason. Just because I don’t want to die.
Not in most of the developed world. And legally, rarely in America.
For that [EDIT: dealing lethal force] you need to hire off-duty cops. And I would think thrice before working in an office that felt it needed off-duty cops on hire. (I would also vote for more police. Security is a public good.)
So, in nearly the entire 'developed world,' security guards can indeed carry guns.
[1] Time magazine even wrote about this a few months ago: https://time.com/6275440/insecure-private-security-replacing... -- it says that "about 30" states even allow guards to be licensed as "private police" with full arrest powers.
For an example, here is California's regulatory site: https://www.bsis.ca.gov/industries/guard.shtml -- California, one of the most notoriously anti-gun states -- allows properly licensed security guards to arrest people, as well as to carry tear gas, batons, and firearms.
[2] https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/use-firearms-private-security...
[3] https://dannychoo.com/archive/en/posts/firearms-in-japan
[4] https://multisectraining.edu.au/do-security-guards-carry-wea...
[5] https://novage.ms/canadian-laws-security-guards-need-to-know...
Now look up authority to dispense lethal force. Much more limited compared to police.
It’s a peculiar argument you are making attempting to make it seem like only only law enforcement officers are allowed to use lethal force.
But not to run into a room to dispense it. If the armed guard happens to be under threat, yes, they can shoot to kill. But if someone starts shooting inside while they’re at the door, their legal rights are typically restricted to apprehension.
This is simply not true. Most states that regulate armed security guards have a duty to protect. It’s part of the training they receive and licensure to be able to carry a weapon for their job as an armed security guard.
Also, in most states, a private citizen carrying a weapon can who is just a bystander is legally allowed to use lethal force to protect other people and even if that means to run into a room and dispense it.
I think what may be confusing you is that guards can’t just blast for anything (like cops can). But if there’s someone with a gun drawn (or other lethal weapons) then it’s basically open season for anyone to kill that person to eliminate that threat.
Most people won’t seek out danger if they hear gunshots or see something. But armed guards have that as their job.
If I hire a security guard who is licensed to carry a gun and they don’t intervene if some psycho is waiving a gun around then that guard is doing a bad job.
Guards with guns are very different from the mall cop type people who you see as loss prevention officers that can’t do much. But they aren’t there to protect you from harm, they are there to reduce shoplifting.
Source? Duty to protect doesn’t even apply to cops in America.
> it’s basically open season for anyone to kill that person
And if they miss and hit someone else? There is no liability shield for them as there is for cops. This is why there are virtually no examples of armed security subduing a shooter. It’s randos or cops.
Maybe I’ve fallen for cops’ marketing. But when hiring for events in four states, moonlighting LEOs come with an advertised advantage of being able to pull a trigger without thinking twice.
It’s more common than you think. That’s why there are armed private security laws and regs.
Looks like there are 239,000 in the US [0]. This doesn’t include law enforcement.