An open letter to our community
blog.unity.com
blog.unity.com
Crow had to be eaten but it looks like they're only tasting the feathers.
If this were a 48- or 72-hour turnaround, maybe. But Unity lost a lot of goodwill amongst developers and there are some they may never get back as a result.
When you lose that audience and enthusiasm among the people who influence next year's technical decisions, eventually you enter the dustbin of history.
This is even more pronounced for Unreal, where Final Fantasy VII Remake, Valorant, Apex Legends Mobile, Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order and Survivor, Octopath Traveler, and tons of other wildly profitable games are made in it. CD Projekt Red is making the next Witcher game in Unreal as well. Square Enix has a ton of money and thousands of employees, as does Riot Games, EA, and plenty of other huge companies. Nearly all of these companies have developed their own engines in the past, but Unity and Unreal are just really hard to beat: not only can they offer great performance and stability, as well as easy multiplatform support (can publish on Windows, PlayStation, Switch, Xbox, iOS, Android, etc.), but it also can make development easier since new employees likely already are familiar with the engine, versus if you build your own it can take months for new employees to be productive and contribute much of anything to the project.
Often times they'll still make changes to the engine's source code (miHoyo didn't just download the latest Unity LTS from the website or Unity Hub), but that's still considerably less work than building your own engine from scratch, and in many cases even that's not necessary.
This is why I stopped paying JetBrains, despite them 100% walking back their idiotic licensing change proposal many years ago. I love(d) the products, but could no longer trust the decision-makers.
Seems the same model it was when they moved to subscriptions:
https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/206544479-Subs...
https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What...
Yes!
> Seems the same model it was when they moved to subscriptions
Indeed, but there was a period of brain-dead decision making in 2015 where they announced a very different direction and back-tracked 2 weeks later.
They announced plans for an evergreen subscription model, but the flip side was that they'd brick your IDE (with no fallback) the moment your subscription lapsed[1]. The only reason the subscription model seems unchanged from their initial one was because of the outrage their controversial change generated.
I found this unconscionable - they backtracked (faster than Unity to their credit, but still)
Walk-back or not, Unity is demonstrably not boring and predictable anymore. That's done.
(It also was only going to kick in once your revenue hit a certain point.)
The CEO John R. didn't chime in here, and that would have meant him being accountable for this decision and its effect on Unity. His mask slipped here.
There was no way they couldn't. Its literally not practical.
ACCOUNTABILITY would not be practical.
Them charging for whatever they can make up and claim to be true, is neither walked back or not walked back. It's waiting to happen again, in whatever way they dream up. You're assuming they wouldn't simply make stuff up and that there would be a chain of accountability, so the process would make sense.
Such things are for making money, not sense. You have not seen the last of them.
> After initially telling Axios earlier Tuesday that a player installing a game, deleting it and installing it again would result in multiple fees, Unity'sWhitten told Axios that the company would actually only charge for an initial installation. (A spokesperson told Axios that Unity had "regrouped" to discuss the issue.)
It applying to free games was walked back immediately and isn't news
2 recommendations:
1. This is where a "neuro-diverse" person or two can really be an asset. The social dynamic in corporations often leads to people eventually shaking their heads in agreement, even if they have big underlying concerns. Those of us somewhere on the spectrum are less likely to understand those social dynamics in the first place and be more willing to call out BS.
2. Good corporate leaders have trusted outside council that they can run ideas by to get brutally honest feedback.
Basically, execs (especially public company execs) have the responsibility for growing revenue and earnings. Ideally they do that by just making better products, but some times you do need to "thread the needle" by charging more for your products while not pissing off customers too much.
I'm sure the devs and customer support folks were screaming bloody murder, but they are also not responsible for satisfying public markets, so it's easier to say those things without having to worry about revenue growth.
So point being, I'm sure execs thought there would be some blowback, but they probably felt it would be "manageable", and like others have said, they overestimated the irreplaceability of Unity. So its important at the exec level to have someone who can whisper in your ear, someone who does understand the requirement for growing revenue, that can honestly say "you've managed to convince yourself of this bullshit."
Thinking back to recent controversies:
- reddit with third party apps
- the D&D open gaming license
- redhat and centos
- etc...
Another "genius" improvement. Yes, I recommend buy factorio directly from the dev now.
A lot of devs and studios are, they know they are, Unity knows they are, and there's little anyone can afford to do about it. I suspect most of the crowd that ostensibly abandoned Unity will return because they've already sunk too much time and energy into the platform, and that's the path of least resistance. They will tolerate whatever deal Unity gives them because they can't afford to do otherwise. Even if they liked the alternatives, the only reasonable business decision is to return to Unity and pretend this never happened.
Unfortunately this probably means much of the interest in Godot and other open source alternatives this debacle created is about to evaporate. Inertia is a harsh mistress.
I'd written off Reddit personally around five-six years ago. This despite having a fairly long-lived bloggy subreddit (and a small smattering of others) on the site, which I still use as a reference (despite having taken it private).
It wasn't specifically on account of the specific technical decisions they'd made, or the site changes (or lack of site changes) resulting, but the fact that those decisions were being made. That is, as with other business organisations I've encountered over the years, Reddit had repeatedly proven themselves antithetical to my own interests and values.
I suspect that's the issue Unity's going through here, and that though the final endgame may take some time in coming, it could well doom the company.
One business strategy that seems to have been increasingly widely adopted over the past decade or two, or perhaps I'm only simply far more cognisant of it and recognise it where it occurs, is the "walk right up to the creepy line" approach (as Eric Schmidt put it: <https://thehill.com/policy/technology/71739-schmidt-google-g...>), or moving products or services right to the pain or tolerance threshold.
In the short term this can work. It can even be successful over a longer term, in cases. But there are two inherent problems with the concept:
1. The threshold, whether it's pain, tolerance, creepiness, or whatever, can change, and often startlingly suddenly. At which point the organisation is caught high and dry.
2. The long-term erosion of trust and affection for the firm and its products effectively primes a trigger of latent demand for any viable alternative which appears. An example that comes to mind is the exclusive launch of Apple's iPhone in the US by AT&T. On the day that Verizon began officially supporting the iPhone on their own network, people were cramming Verizon stores and phone lines trying to make the switch. (A cow-orker at the time was one of those people.) They were absolutely fed up with AT&T's service and behaviour. See: <https://web.archive.org/web/20110112092318/http://www.engadg...> and <https://web.archive.org/web/20101007000511/http://online.wsj...>, discussed at the time: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2092273> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1765104>.
I've seen IBM, Microsoft, and Google subject to similar shifts, some more pronounced than others, over the years.
Leaving a considerable goodwill moat around offerings is an alternative. I'm too far outside the consumer mainstream to know what business, products, services, and/or brands exemplify this, though I suspect Costco and Trader Joe's might be among these.
When did we start talking about the airline industry?
But seriously, the reason it works for the airline industry is because there is literally no other alternative, unlike in this case.
TINA. Until suddenly, with COVID-19, there was an alternative.
And the real estate market is now (slowly) imploding.
At some point with all companies the finance people take over. But well-loved products and companies are never created by finance people - they're created by people with a passion for something.
It was interesting seeing some people bounce off it on the grounds of woeful inefficiency. I don't remember the person, but one Unity refugee traced the path of a raycast and Godot more or less needed to treat it as a dynamically typed generic thing, going through a huge rigamarole to get a result.
It's possible to hack in more direct access for those who can make sense of it. I don't think there's a thing going on in Godot's 3d engine that some of these Unity refugees can't understand. They're running into arbitrary obstacles based on Godot's attitude towards what's clean and elegant code. These obstacles could go away really quickly under the right conditions…
There was a whole HN thread about it[0], and the response[1].
It already is pretty darn performant - but without the many convenience features unity and unreal have. Also it does lack means to modify vertex buffers directly on the GPU - a feature I liked in Unity (https://docs.unity3d.com/ScriptReference/Mesh.GetVertexBuffe...). However, I think godot shouldn't try and implement everything - the project should focus on getting core functionality performant and flexible enough.
Everything else - managing massive world, etc, should be done by 3rd parties and monetised. I hope the game dev world wont take the web dev world path where code is in oversupply and there are little options to monetise.
Unity's asset store allowed many people to gain freedom by selling assets. I think godot should follow the same path. But indeed for that the engine needs even more low level access exposed in a nice manner.
Very beneficial for the consumer however. Right now the bar to create a good videogame is rather high, and this leads to the current hellscape where so many videogames are plagued with lootboxes, season passes and other microtransactions to make up for the multiple years in dev time required with many employees.
If the tooling gets better to the point that it takes less time and less devs to create good games that don't require the insane levels of monetisation, then this trend is more likely to be reversed.
For example, the Cloth bindings with annotations like [NativeHeader("Modules/Cloth/Cloth.h")] and [NativeClass("Unity::Cloth")]:
https://github.com/Unity-Technologies/UnityCsReference/blob/...
>These obstacles could go away really quickly under the right conditions…
I'm not sure why you feel the need to paraphrase this so much but the GDextension API is a thing and it is more efficient but it hasn't been implemented for C#. The blog poster extrapolated from the C# bindings that there are unfixable flaws in the engine when in reality the C# bindings aren't up to date yet.
Very much an unforced error on their part.
My anecdoate is that many people in this industry don't even know the existance of Godot. Yeah, I mean Godot, not Love2D or LibGDX. People can work in video games but are completly unaware of Godot.
Now they ALL know it.
Oh wait, apparently he is no longer CTO as of May 2023.
Well, what was his last official statement?
https://blog.unity.com/community/updated-terms-of-service-an...
"When you make a game with Unity, you own the content and you should have the right to put it wherever you want. Our TOS didn't reflect this principle - something that is not in line with who we are.
We charge a flat fee per-seat -- not a royalty on all of your revenue. Building Unity takes a lot of resources, and we believe that partnerships make better services for developers and augment our business model -- as opposed to charging developers to pay for Unity’s development through revenue share.
When you obtain a version of Unity, and don’t upgrade your project, we think you should be able to stick to that version of the TOS."
Well, that all sounds pretty good to me! Perhaps its time for Joe to pull a Steve Jobs style comeback.
But I'd take that 1000x over what other c execs were doing at other places I worked at.
Basically had no input on the AI side which I found odd given that (at least at the time) JR etc were suggesting that AI was going to be leading the future of U
Obviously we saw what happened so *shrug*
I'm happy for all the Unity developers out there that are breathing a sigh of relief. Hopefully they can ship their ongoing projects but I'd be hesitant about a continued long term relationship with Unity after this.
This isn't the first Unity backlash and I'd be surprised if it's the last.
Most non mobile Unity developers?
Unity has cultivated this reputation as a provider for artsy indies and small studios, and now some larger AAs, but I think they want to be a provider for mobile casinos. That's where all the money is, and they are less likely to balk at more fees.
They burned the trust bridge and nothing they _ever_ do or can say will bring that trust back.
According to the GP, this already was their second mistake like this. I'm not in game development and I'm not aware of the first, but maybe someone else can explain what/when their first "mistake" was.
It's a can of worms that cannot be closed. Even the apology-promises they're making right now are subject to random change, because they've made clear that they don't see their own ToS as binding for them. The article says, "We will make sure that you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity editor you are using – as long as you keep using that version," and we're supposed to be reassured by that, but they've already said that exact thing before and shown that it was meaningless. What's to stop them from deciding next week that they changed their minds on their commitments again? They may have learned that they can't make such grand changes all at once without a boycott, but they could think that they can still roll out the same types of changes piecemeal over the next few years (and they might be right). What's to stop them from finding new ways to skirt around these commitments in the future (for example: adding some sort of planned obsolescence to future LTS versions to ensure that, even though you are technically allowed to use them under an old ToS, actually doing so would be completely untenable)?
Personally, I wouldn't trust anything this company says unless I have a legally binding contract with them, with clear damages defined if they break it (this may be the case for some larger studios, and that's fine for them). They can say anything they want in a PR release.
That’s not really how trust works. If I was a Unity developer, I’d still be migrating, just not in total panic mode.
I don't make games, I have nothing at stake in this fight, but this just feels like PR damage control and to be completely honest, I don't think most software engineers are so absolutely dependent on (proper noun) Unity to risk this company doing shady stuff again, and I suspect this entire ordeal will work as great marketing for engines like Unreal.
A part of me thinks that the CEO (and all the other executive morons who decided to make the installation fee) was sitting there thinking "what are they going to do? Move to Godot?", but if that was their line of thinking, and if they seriously did not think they were competing with Unreal, then I really do not see what business they have being multimillionaires in charge of any kind of decision-making process.
I haven't seen any evidence they did that, it's mostly been FUD from Godot supporters. The initial communication was messy, but where are actual TOS changes that are being touted so loudly?
ETA:
You updated your post with the TOS, but from what I read the concern was that the new TOS said it applied to any new distribution of the Unity Runtime, without specifying versions and the like.
In which case I think you will agree that is plenty of notice and most likely unrelated to be maliciously related to what's being announced now. They've even walked back the applicability to old versions as seen in GP.
That said, that's a big "if", I'm just regurgitating what I read in news articles.
https://web.archive.org/web/20220716041837/https://unity.com...
At this point I'm pretty sure this is a dishonest attempt to dig up a 2020 change (if this clause even ever existed, which I've seen zero proof of) and correlate it to a 2023 announcement as if these things were done in tandem.
Downvote me all you want. I don't think Godot et al will survive with these scummy tactics.
ETA:
Also, if you're going to edit your responses after you post them, I recommend using the `delay` feature in your HN settings, or adding an addendum section like I'm doing here, as it's a little unfair to people responding to you to make undisclosed changes so it looks like people responding to you aren't responding to all your points. I'm not saying you're being dishonest, I'm just saying that it feels a little unfair to responders.
I did find the TOS in question, as expected, it's very old (from 2019):
https://web.archive.org/web/20201111183311/https://github.co...
So people saying "who's to say they won't do this again," if four years isn't enough for you to catch up, I don't know what to tell you.
Edit: They have also brought the repo back, which was likely another unrelated change:
> Notwithstanding this Section 1.4, any modification of the Unity Software Additional Terms is subject to Section 8 of the Unity Software Additional Terms.
If you click on the "Unity Software Additional Terms" link within that clause, it will take you to the July 2022 snapshot of those terms in the Internet Archive (https://web.archive.org/web/20220716082334/https://unity.com...). Section 8 reads:
> Unity may update these Unity Software Additional Terms at any time for any reason and without notice (the “Updated Terms”) and those Updated Terms will apply to the most recent current-year version of the Unity Software, provided that, if the Updated Terms adversely impact your rights, you may elect to continue to use any current-year versions of the Unity Software (e.g., 2018.x and 2018.y and any Long Term Supported (LTS) versions for that current-year release) according to the terms that applied just prior to the Updated Terms (the “Prior Terms”). [etc...]
As of March 2023, those terms were still present in the TOS (https://web.archive.org/web/20230303043022/https://unity.com...), moved to section 6 (Modifications to these Software Terms and Long-Term Supported versions).
The terms disappear in the May 2023 snapshot (https://web.archive.org/web/20230528084511/https://unity.com...), which states that the last update to the TOS was April 3rd, 2023, which is fully consistent with all of the reporting about this change.
Not only is there no conspiracy from Godot, the reporting is correct. The TOS was modified between March/May of 2023 to remove the reported clause and the Internet Archive proves it.
You mean this screenshot, right? https://gameworldobserver.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/uni...
Right here: https://unity.com/legal/terms-of-service/software-legacy
Scroll down about 80% of the page to section 8.
If you go to the next snapshot (https://web.archive.org/web/20230413210637/https://unity.com...), Section 6 will be missing and you'll see the following header at the top of the TOS:
> Last updated: April 3, 2023
> What’s changed: We have posted an update to our Unity Editor Software Terms to, among other things, provide for our Industry Offering. We’ve also updated other sections, including those relating to data collection and modification of terms.
Interestingly, their linked FAQ (https://web.archive.org/web/20230605071610/https://unity.com...) provides no mention of the fact that they've removed the clause. I can't know what was going through Unity executives' heads when that FAQ was written, but they apparently didn't think it important to draw attention or specifically notify users about that revocation of their rights.
Their CEO gives me the impression of a rich but unsophisticated mba type who can only deliver revenue growth by raising prices. I doubt he even thought about captive customers and lack of what he might have thought alternative engines, let along open source and free.
He’s the type that thinks open source is maybe a toy.
I knew he was a stink when i read that he ordered unity employees back to offices. He thought he can order customers a new fee. He confirmed my suspicion. A shame that we as a society and industry allow these zeroes to end up leading tech companies.
EA Donates Original City-Building Game, SimCity, to ''One Laptop per Child'' Initiative:
https://ir.ea.com/press-releases/press-release-details/2007/...
OLCP EA Contract:
https://donhopkins.com/home/olpc-ea-contract.pdf
And I've given him credit for doing that here:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23251414
When Unity joined the Blender development fund as a Patron member while Riccitiello was CEO of Unity, I also gave him positive feedback and sincerely thanked him again, telling him how important Blender is to Unity game developers, and how important it is for them to work well together.
Unity Joins the Blender Development Fund as a Patron Member:
https://www.blender.org/press/unity-joins-the-blender-develo...
I recommended he watch Ton Roosendaal's excellent "Money doesn't interest me" interview, in which he does not hold back on his feelings about Autodesk:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJEWOTZnFeg
And also this video of Ton getting hit by a ceiling tile during a talk. (Presumably perpetrated by Autodesk!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJwG-qt-sgk
Then when Joe Biden endorsed Unity three times in his inaugural address, I asked Riccitiello how much Unity paid for that product placement, but he wouldn't tell me:
>"With Unity we can do great things, important things!"
>"For without Unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury."
>"And Unity is the path forward."
>-Joe Biden's inaugural address.
Then after Unity recently announced they're pulling the rug out from under their developers, I posted to Riccitiello's Facebook page a screen snapshot of the github star ranking table showing that Godot suddenly had a 535.6% increase in stars, and sincerely thanked him again, writing "Thank you for your substantial contribution to open source gaming engines, at the expense of your own company!"
So I'm pretty sure he's aware of open source software, but I don't think he actually meant to benefit the Godot project so much at the expense of Unity.
The Godot folks, who have greatly benefited from this fiasco through no fault of their own, immediately condemned the death threat that somebody (who turned out to be a Unity employee) posted, which caused Unity to cancel an event and close their office.
https://twitter.com/godotengine/status/1702413121086705951
>Godot Engine @godotengine
>We extend our sincere solidarity and support to the Unity workers. The recent reactions have left us profoundly disappointed. Threats of violence should have no place in the gamedev community.
The truth behind the Unity "Death Threats":
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/16j21jg/the_truth_...
>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.
Reddit thread from 8 years ago, with recent posts:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/3cxogb/til_unity_c...
TIL Unity CEO John Riccitiello was former CEO of EA. He saved EA from declining profits by sellings games EA made online (Origin) rather than physical packages and raising game quality. Also, he's barely known for being CEO at Unity Technologies.
>drakfyre 8 yr. ago
>I am honestly really pleased the hate has died down. Riccitiello is a pretty damn good CEO and Unity's former CEO (though a SUPER COOL dude) really didn't have the practice nor want to be a CEO of such a rapidly expanding company.
>rvc3m8 8 days ago
>now, that didn't age well, did it? ;)
>drakfyre 7 days ago
>No, no it did not, not at all...
The 41 most Unreal Donald Trump quotes of 2018:
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/12/20/politics/trump-lines-of-t...
JANUARY 20, 2021: A National Day of Unity
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/presidential-action...
President Joe Biden 2021 Inaugural Address:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UlbyOeMCL0g
Inaugural Address by President Joseph R. Biden, Jr.:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/20...
To overcome these challenges – to restore the soul and to secure the future of America – requires more than words.
It requires that most elusive of things in a democracy:
Unity.
Unity.
With Unity we can do great things. Important things.
I know speaking of Unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy.
History, faith, and reason show the way, the way of Unity.
For without Unity, there is no peace, only bitterness and fury.
This is our historic moment of crisis and challenge, and Unity is the path forward.
And together, we shall write an American story of hope, not fear.
Of Unity, not division.
Did you watch the video of Autodesk attacking Ton Roosendaal with falling ceiling plaster? (I didn't make that part up: It happened just after Ton mentioned Autodesk, so he immediately joked: "That was Autodesk!")
Ton Roosendaal gets hit by ceiling at Blender Conference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eJwG-qt-sgk
>During his Blender Foundation/Institute panel, Ton Roosendaal gets almost hit in the head by a piece of plaster falling from the ceiling of the conference center.
I'm a casual observer in this space. Is Unreal not a viable alternative?
It is hard to think of a diplomatic response to this specific framing. Of course the first substantive paragraph was this. It's inevitable, and I'm convinced it's encoded into some fundamental physical constant.
If a company actually, once, for-real avoided this specific sort of mealy-mouthed, boilerplate-indirect-corporatese semi-apology, I would seriously consider using their product solely on that merit alone. I'm fairly certain I'm not the only one who feels that way, and it's sort of amazing that nobody appears to have figured that out.
Surely someone in some sort of corporate PR position at some company is reading this. Think about it. Seriously think about it.
---
Edit: this isn't a personal criticism of the author either, I'm pretty darn sure that this the post was vetted and revised by at least one layer of PR and legal. The issue is an intractably systemic one that is not rectifiable by any individual. Outside of maybe the C-suite, I'm skeptical the that it makes any sort of sense to attribute blame to any individual for this type of corporate apology.
So you do a blameless post-mortem where you outline what went wrong, your five whys, and what steps you are taking to make sure it doesn't happen again.
The Rust leadership did it right during the RustConf scandal. Key figures resigned (from leadership, not from their respective teams), changes in procedure were announced, process transitions were accelerated, etc.
Here Unity is just saying "here's somsome decisions we're lightly amending, sorry you got upset".
We were always told C-level compensation is as absurd as it is because they're expected to fall on their sword for fucking up. Keeping your position after defrauding customers is not a sign of good faith, it's just another [social] contract broken.
I really do not understand what it is that they actually do, outside of being an extremely overpriced and lazy spokesperson.
Their main purpose is to occupy the same social circles as other executives and board members.
Many CEO's (and execs in general) are not extraordinary people in any sense of the word.
I think people underestimate just how often a business leader gets to where they are because of nepotism. Many of the biggest companies in the world operate like a royal dynasty, with children inheriting the leading roles from parents.
When you consider that decision making is often inherited, rather than earned, these displays of incompetence make much more sense.
I've seen dozens of people on LinkedIn claiming that Elon Musk invented self-landing rockets, and they get mad at me when respond with "no he fucking didn't! He hired people to figure that stuff out".
So I think "Fine, I guess you could make some kind of transitive argument that he hired the right people so he's responsible for the self-landing rocket", but in the same breath they will claim he's not responsible for any of the failures involved with his handling Twitter.
Well which is it? Is this executive some genius pulling all the strings of the company and should be given credit for all the innovations? Or are they just idiots like the rest of us and like to take credit for when things go well?
Most CEOs don't micromanage to the level Musk does, most CEOs wouldn't have ran SpaceX the way Musk did, competent engineers or not. If all it took was hiring the right people, Blue Origin would have left them in the dust.
(That said, yes, he should definitely be considered responsible for the failures with Twitter)
Because they can. What do you have to fight back with? All you can do is bargain individually, and they'll laugh at that.
We were? I thought it was as simple as "big leader + big company = big money". Made sense in the days where those leaders rose the company off the ground. Not so much when it's just some MBA that comes in or a friend of some other rich guy that simply wants to increase stock numbers.
Have a reminder that Godot (an open source MIT License) game engine could use your support, Godot offers a way to address this long term instead of relying on a contract with an untrustworthy company:
Use:
Homepage with download links for Latest and LTS versions for Android, Linux, macOS, Windows, and Web (you can build for iOS but cannot write on it).
Code/document/contribute:
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/contributing/ways_to_...
Donate/fund: https://fund.godotengine.org/
IMO there is nothing Unity can realistically do to regain trust, when a corporation shows you what their goals are and how they plan to reach them; believe it.
This letter should be seen as a rickety runway extension: finalize any Unity projects you already have in development, but make sure you move to another engine in the immediate future.
But if they are considering a 3rd Hollow Knight it'd be the biggest W if they chose an open-source engine (and hopefully not take 7 years, but TBH I'd take my time too if I made hollow knight money).
I have no doubt that as long John R. and Tomar B. continue to run the show, that the company will behave unethically again in the future.
"When we first introduced the Runtime Fee policy, we used the term “installs” which the community found to be unclear so we’re using the term "initial engagement" as the unit of measure."
The community did not find this unclear. The original pricing scheme was very straightforward about developers being charged multiple times for a user that reinstalls a game, or install it across multiple devices.
This is Unity trying to rewrite history so they don't seem like the bad guys.
Yup, even going so far as to rewrite the FAQ and pretend they never said the initial answer, it only being noted as "(Updated, Sept 14)"[0]
For full context, the original Q/A was
> Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game / changes their hardware, will that count as multiple installs?
> A: Yes. The creator will need to pay for all future installs. The reason is that Unity doesn’t receive end-player information, just aggregate data.
and has since been edited to
> Q: If a user reinstalls/redownloads a game, will that count as multiple installs?
> A: We are not going to charge a fee for reinstalls. The spirit of this program is and has always been to charge for the first install and we have no desire to charge for the same person doing ongoing installs.
> (Updated, Sep 14)
> Q: Do installs of the same game by the same user across multiple devices count as different installs?
> A: Yes - we treat different devices as different installs.
> (Updated, Sep 14)
[0]: https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-plan-pricing-and-packa...
By lying about the situation so transparently, it's clear to me that this is nothing more than damage control, and that the loss of trust does not deserve to be earned back.
https://www.facebook.com/robert.tercek/posts/pfbid0RPPNvecme...
Including un-ironic replies like this one commenting "some insight into what the gamer peasants are talking about" and quoting one game developer's factual reaction, to which the NFT shill replied by calling it "unhinged conspiratorial speculating that poisons the whole atmosphere".
https://www.facebook.com/robert.tercek/posts/pfbid0RPPNvecme...
I took the NFT shill to task on that, with quotes and links and receipts. I pointed out that he and Unity were the ones "poisoning the whole atmosphere" by gaslighting, calling developers "confused" when they actually understood all too well, and if anyone was "poisoning the whole atmosphere" first and foremost, it was John Riccitiello literally and publically calling game developers "some of the biggest fucking idiots".
https://www.pocketgamer.biz/interview/79190/unity-ironsource...
Twice the NFT shill snarkily blamed game developers for the death threat. First he baselessly accused game developers of "often" making death threats, then he gleefully berated game developers for not condemning it (which they actually did, but he didn't bother to notice), demanding they condemn it without actually condemning it himself, when it was actually a Unity employee who made the death threat, not a game developer:
"Game developers often find colorful ways of making their disappointment known."
https://www.facebook.com/robert.tercek/posts/pfbid0RPPNvecme...
"I notice that none of game developers who shared their righteous indignation last week had the courage to speak up and condemn the cowards who phoned in death threats to Unity offices. Keep it classy, game developers."
https://www.facebook.com/robert.tercek/posts/pfbid0RPPNvecme...
>Here are the Godot folks, who have greatly benefited from this fiasco through no fault of their own, condemning the bomb threat, and proving you wrong. No, Robert Tercek, you are wrong when you blame game developers for the bomb threat with no evidence, when the police say it was a Unity employee, and when you falsely claim that game developers "OFTEN find colorful ways of making their disappointment known" like making bomb threats.
>Godot Engine @godotengine
>We extend our sincere solidarity and support to the Unity workers. The recent reactions have left us profoundly disappointed. Threats of violence should have no place in the gamedev community.
https://twitter.com/godotengine/status/1702413121086705951
The truth behind the Unity "Death Threats":
https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/16j21jg/the_truth_...
>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.
The PacMan Fever / NFT Shilling thread:
https://www.facebook.com/robert.tercek/posts/pfbid0RPPNvecme...
Next they are gonna push a narrative of greedy mid level managers over hiring and building fiefdoms like everyone else. The Metagame for the C level is zero risk and zero accountability
They can fuck right off and fire the CEO
Management knew this was going to be controversial including internally so they hid it from employees who could have told them just how bad the idea was and how many edge cases they had to consider.
Management needs to be fired.
I don't think this is enough that I would consider Unity for a new project (compared to my niggling doubts on my projects using Godot and Bevy in the past that maybe I should just bite the bullet and learn the "grown up" engine, until this announcement). That would require something a bit more iron clad renouncing their claim to be able to change the deal like this.
I don't know if Unity considers it a success that they've moved from their customers being in a "port everything now" rush to "Well I wouldn't take that deal, and a lot of customers will now not be upgrading Unity or developing their next titles in Unity".
But I guess as a consumer this moves my position to "someone should sue them for a declaratory judgement that making this retroactive is not legal" to "Well, guess I'm not investing in learning Unity".
- $1,000,000 income floor for a trailing 12 months
- Doesn't apply to old versions
- Billed a lesser amount of 2.5% revenue if available, so low-cost indie games don't get destroyed
Not to mention, removing the requirement to have "Made with Unity" on the free version? Surprised they would change this - it wasn't really a problem for most people, and afaik getting rid of the "Made with Unity" was one of the main reasons people would buy the non-free versions of Unity.
I think this is probably the best they could have done for indie devs. As it turns out, pushback works. They did destroy a lot of trust with developers with this move though. Going to be hard to get any of that back.
It's not beyond the realm of reasonable belief to assume they can or will roll out some breaking change eventually that forces upgrades.
The goodwill has been burned and now everything needs to be contractually spelled out.
Or, for a good number of people, they can bail out to Godot for 2D or Unreal for 3D or consoles.
If you come up to someone, point a gun at their head, and scream you're going to murder them it's very likely there is no walking back even if you put the gun away and then state more reasonable demands. Everyone knows you have a gun in your back pocket and you're insane enough to use it.
This is all pure speculation based on what I would do if I was on Unity's board. I'm confident that his contract has all sorts of gotchas and landmines, so there is probably a ton of expensive lawyering happening right now on both sides.
You're only going to see major(-ly incompetent) studios from now on using it (ie, big enough to pressure Unity into complying to their licensing requirements, ie, Microsoft or Nintnedo kind of big).
Being able to choose 2.5% revenue share (half of Unreal) does not sound bad to me. And very glad they removed the retroactivity of the new fees.
How high up does this rank in “the dumbest decisions you can make” chart?
There is no amount of walkback that will work here. The only possible way out, if any is even possible, would be a summary dismissal of their entire leadership team due to gross incompetence. These people don't deserve even minimum wage, much less the millions they make. A junior business manager out of school wouldn't have made such irresponsible, company-killing move. These are some of the worst executives in gaming history, to be honest.
1) What type of person gets hired as CEO?
2) What type of person excels as CEO?
3) What type of person seems most suited to being a CEO while actually being least suited?
Possible Answers:
1) the salesmen, the connected, the take-crediting, the attractive, the eloquent, the politically savvy, the ambitious, the tactical
2) the decisive, the persevering, the give-crediting, the communicative, the empathetic, the trustworthy, the humble, the strategic
3) When confidence is unwarranted
Both types of people have high confidence, but only one type has a good reason to be confident. Both types are effective in making plans and executing upon them, but where the first type’s plan’s focus on personal success, the second type’s plans focus on mutual success.
Is there a good way to distinguish between the two? Yes, but subtly — have their former direct reports gone on to success outside of the candidate’s current sphere of influence? The first type will drag along the people they can trust to support their personal ambitions, elevating them in the process. The second type will elevate their direct reports without grasping on to them as life preservers in choppy political seas.
Being a good CEO is a very difficult job, and should be rewarded. It is the most important job anyone can have at a company. It is also the hardest to fill with the right person, given the hordes of ill-suited confidence men seeking their own stardom.
I have absolutely no stake in this and I’m sure these aren’t the same people, but it is interesting.
From reading the original proposal and this new one, they should’ve gone first with this one. I’m sure unity developers will hesitatingly continue their work.
In this case I think those can (rightfully and reasonably) be the same people. If a company rolls out a pricing/licensing change that is so detrimental to the developers that it seems like no reasonable developer would have thought it was a good idea, then it looks like the company rolled it out either without talking to their developers or without taking their feedback into account, both of which are equally bad.
In cases like this where the business acted so egregiously, the damage is done and trust might not be restorable long-term without C-level heads rolling.
If you file for divorce, and in reaction they buy you flowers and other gifts, it doesn't mean they're suddenly fixed and have always been a good partner.
It's also very likely they got some legal letters from Pokémon Go or other similarly large Unity based games, and they still don't care about what the online community has to say.
That's because many folks recognize that the fundamental problem is not the proposal, it is the mechanism by which that proposal was crafted, refined, and finally approved that is rotten.
Walking back the proposal is fine in the near term, but without drastic change to the fundamentals of the company and its leadership, you'll just end up in the same situation in the future, it is just a matter of when.
I'm aware of these not-downloadable-but-is-digital services/stores/platforms that do:
- app stores (Apple takes 30%, Google takes 30%)
- content (YouTube keeps 45%, Twitch takes a cut)
- e-commerce (Etsy 5% transaction fee; eBay takes a %)
- music/podcast (Spotify; SoundCloud)
- e-learning (Udemy; Teachable)
- gaming (Steam takes 30%; Epic takes %12)
- rental (AirBNB service fees; Turo commission on each car rental)
- freelancing (Upwork's sliding fee; Fiverr takes 20%)
But Unity is DOWNLOADABLE software, not a platform/app-store/SaaS. So, why revenue share? Surely most devs just make free-standing/downloadable games that don't tie into any platform-y features?
AFAIK, even Unity Enterprise [0] is just source code, support, 3-year LTS bug fixes, and the only real thing that's platform-y is the build server, which seems to cost extra anyway.
What makes games so special?
From a viewpoint of "will it be compatible with a DRM-free release that doesn't phone home" (i.e., playing by GOG rules), this doesn't seem to solve the problem at all. What is in it for them? Why per install and not per sale?
For all intents and purposes, this is meaningless until they update the old ToS to prevent this from happening again.
As I recall, they inevitably changed the current one with a clause saying “we explicitly can’t pull the rug out from folks anymore with this license”. Simply ensuring that while they can create new licenses for new content, that can’t mess with creators who adopted the previous one.
Unity did just that the last time this happened, in 2019: https://blog.unity.com/community/updated-terms-of-service-an...
They silently deleted the then-added clause allowing you to use the ToS you agreed to before this most recent attempt.
https://youtu.be/m4OzqgTa_hk?si=xiuNmYNVEgNoZ-Dj&t=455
I have linked to his interactive exploration of their fee calculator, which should set many "what if" scenarios to rest.
Nobody can really say anything educated about the long-term impact on trust, but I suspect that if they can Riccitello things will return to something of a baseline and nobody will be talking about it in a year.
I trully cannot fathom Riccitello's tenure remaining viable on the other side of this. He is a dead man walking, corporately speaking.
I'm reminded of a favorite allegory which seems perfect for today:
New CEO walks into her office just as the old CEO is leaving. Old CEO says congrats and good luck; I left you three sealed envelopes which you should open in times of crisis.
Things go well until they don't. First letter says "blame your predecessor".
This fixes things until the next crisis. Second letter says "blame the technology".
Nothing could go wrong, until it does. Third letter says "write three letters".
I’m Marc Whitten, and I lead Unity Create which includes the Unity engine and editor teams.
I want to start with simply this: I am sorry.
We should have spoken with more of you and we should have incorporated more of your feedback before announcing our new Runtime Fee policy. Our goal with this policy is to ensure we can continue to support you today and tomorrow, and keep deeply investing in our game engine.
You are what makes Unity great, and we know we need to listen, and work hard to earn your trust. We have heard your concerns, and we are making changes in the policy we announced to address them.
Our Unity Personal plan will remain free and there will be no Runtime Fee for games built on Unity Personal. We will be increasing the cap from $100,000 to $200,000 and we will remove the requirement to use the Made with Unity splash screen.
No game with less than $1 million in trailing 12-month revenue will be subject to the fee.
For those creators on Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise, we are also making changes based on your feedback.
The Runtime Fee policy will only apply beginning with the next LTS version of Unity shipping in 2024 and beyond. Your games that are currently shipped and the projects you are currently working on will not be included – unless you choose to upgrade them to this new version of Unity.
We will make sure that you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity editor you are using – as long as you keep using that version.
For games that are subject to the runtime fee, we are giving you a choice of either a 2.5% revenue share or the calculated amount based on the number of new people engaging with your game each month. Both of these numbers are self-reported from data you already have available. You will always be billed the lesser amount.
We want to continue to build the best engine for creators. We truly love this industry and you are the reason why.
I’d like to invite you to join me for a live fireside chat hosted by Jason Weimann today at 4:00 pm ET/1:00 pm PT, where I will do my best to answer your questions. In the meantime, here are some more details.*
Thank you for caring as deeply as you do, and thank you for giving us hard feedback.
Marc Whitten
That got people thinking that it's an unacceptable risk and they are working on mitigations.
You are not doing good job if your company or business model can be killed by anyone else than you or your customers.
Awaiting countless variants of "who the hell thought this price change sounded like a good idea, and are they fired yet".
Unity has a major lock on the VR/AR/MR space.
I feel Unity violated trust of community. No going back. Today it’s a claw back. Tomorrow (future) it’s back to f’ing over the community once the heat wears off. Or a new CEO is appointed.
Basically policy changes that were absolutely abysmal and pretty much killed the entire Unity engine for most people. Now walk-back but trust is broken forever.