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.
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.
It applying to free games was walked back immediately and isn't news
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.)
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.