Unity has temporarily closed its offices in San Francisco and Austin, Texas and canceled a town hall meeting after receiving death threats. The company made the call as a precaution against possible retribution after it announced a contentious change to its business model this week.
There’s a big difference between “start charging money for their software in a way you disagree with” and “destroy your livelihood.”
I’m gonna take you at your word that it sounds like you’re saying threatening violence against the Unity management is okay. So even in the case of genuinely abusive and damaging companies (Nestle, Shell Oil), I think changing the rules so they’re answerable to a justice framework is a way better way to go, as opposed to abandoning the justice framework and hoping nothing bad will happen. MLK and Gandhi came to this understanding when faced with a lot more evil systems than the Unity developers. Basically, there is an answer, but if the problem is that they hold the power and they’re abusing it, taking the contest in the direction of a more power-based and less justice-based dynamic is tempting but it definitely isn’t gonna get you the results you want. It’s just gonna make things worse.
“But under the changes announced today, Unity Personal and Unity Pro users will pay fees if they hit $200,000 in revenue in a year and 200,000 lifetime installs. For anywhere from one to a million installs, those users will pay 20 cents per install. “It’s a price increase.”
If I have a mobile game selling for $1 on the apple store for instance and it uses Unity, and has has a million downloads/installs I then owe Unity $200,000 for an app that I didn’t even make $500,000 on because app stores like apple’s charge a 30% cut, sales exist, and it says installs which may mean a person buys the app once and installs it on more than one device. But that doesn’t in any way directly affect my livelihood as a developer or anything. Right?
But there are commercial entity, it’s their right to do so, with thebway thebcurrent laws and market is setup. “The free market will remove them from the equation if they’re not offering an attractive product at an attractive rate, in the face of competitors offering such”… in theory. In practice, I say fuck em. Stop using unity. Stop playing games made in unity. Let them die. A better offering will appear when they are off the table.
Not all replies to you are a direct representation of what you’re hoping people are going to fixate on. That’s not in your control. You may not realize this but we are all equally sentient and have our own thought processes. The rest of us aren’t NPCs…
AFAIK, the retroactive nature of it doesn’t apply to already released games, but to games released with the new license terms. So if you released that mobile game last year, you wouldn’t need to pay $200k or whatever next year. However, if you release that same game next year, you would have to retroactively pay that $200k once the downloads exceeded the stated max.
So the solution is: don’t use Unity next year, especially if you’ll be selling a game for $1. It sucks since in-progress games would have to be reworked, and Unity should suffer for that, but it shouldn’t ever come to threats of violence.
That’s actually fair. But the point is that the popularity of a game could tank a developer with this business model. It could also affect past profits and purchases specifically because of the bit about downloads. It doesn’t differentiate between a user who’s downloaded a paid app on 6 different phones, 1 phone, 1000 phones. So if I for instance paid for I dunno Plants vs Zombies one time, the developer releases it with an update patch, I and then downloaded it onto every phone I have had since then or will have in the future that could be 10,.15, 20 downloads over my lifetime. What if I have a work phone? They’re not saying they can’t implement this even with old games. I don’t think they meant retroactively. I think they mean new installs of old games that have updates.
I guess I’d have to read through the contract, but generally these things only apply to games released after the new terms take effect, but updates to games released prior. So the dev would be fully aware of the policy at the point of releasing the game.
Unity seems to be catering to games with a recurring revenue model (ads, microtransactions, etc), and discouraging other revenue models, and I think most developers will recognize that with this pricing model.
So I don’t think Unity is trying to screw already released games, they’re just trying to limit their appeal to a certain type of game revenue model.
If software you use changes their pricing in a way that, in three month’s time, because you made only $500k last year and your game uses a freemium model such that you get a shitload of installs but don’t necessarily draw revenue from every install, so that that 20c per install adds up to the fact that you’ll be losing money come January, should you threaten the people at that software company with death? At that point, I think no.
If instead of that, they do something more akin to what Reddit did to the Apollo devs, and change the pricing such that they don’t have time to adjust, lie about it, and publicly defame the devs, basically make it literally impossible for the company to stay in business, should Christian have threatened to kill spez? I think no.
If instead of that, they destroy your whole industry, so that you literally can’t work as a software dev anymore, at your game company or any other or in any other software-related industry, and you have to retrain yourself to something totally different, should you threaten them with death? At that point I think it’s a little more of a tactical decision rather than a moral one, because they are crossing that line into “Fuck the system this is wrong” territory, but I would still argue that literally waging war on them wouldn’t accomplish as much as trying to get your democratic government to address the issue some other way.
If instead of that, they created an economic system so that it was impossible for you to get any job, software or otherwise, except back-breaking physical work with a high chance of maiming or killing you, and you still got starvation wages, should you threaten them with death? At that point, maybe; that’s the point we were at in the late 1800s and it’s hard to say it was wrong to fight a small war about it. At that point it’s more about tactics, and the workers in the 1800s didn’t have a tiny fraction of the democratic power you do, so they went to literal war and for the most part it worked in the end.
If instead of that, they ruined your economy and your government, made it so you had no voting rights, could be abused or killed by members of the government of a different racial group who were all super racist against you, so you had the starvation wages and the unsafe labor conditions and also unsafe conditions outside of work and no way out economically and no real democratic way to address the situation, is it appropriate to threaten them with death? At that point, definitely not. Again, blacks in the US and Indians in British India faced that situation, and they decided the only way out was through nonviolent resistance.
Again, I’m not trying to tell you to do nothing. I’m saying death threats are a silly and unproductive thing to do in this case. Somewhere here I posted a video of a guy in Walgreens who felt the policeman was being unfair and got super loud about it to resolve the situation. Death threats, in this situation, I think are gonna have pretty much that level of effectiveness.
If your whole rant is about the death threats I think you missed the point. Because I wasn’t making a point about the death threats. I was pointing out that this particular business model they’re introducing could literally cause the creator of a game to go broke trying to pay it depending on the popularity of their product. That’s broken. And Unity should have known it was broken. And saying they’ve had credible death threats after announcing this plan is to me the same as what Spez did with Reddit after he did the AMA for his API increase and expected no backlash.
I will say this though. I’d rather have death threats that no one follows through with that are “credible” and change a company’s behaviour than have to riot in the streets. Rioting causes a lot of collateral damage to people and places that are not involved. Historically though, the elite create systems where violence slowly but surely becomes the only avenue for change. I’m not saying this is one of them. I am saying this is capitalism and the reason everything is the way it is in the world right now. Rich people wanting to get richer at the expense of poor people.
I was pointing out that this particular business model they’re introducing could literally cause the creator of a game to go broke trying to pay it depending on the popularity of their product. That’s broken. And Unity should have known it was broken.
Yeah, agreed.
Rioting causes a lot of collateral damage to people and places that are not involved. Historically though, the elite create systems where violence slowly but surely becomes the only avenue for change. I’m not saying this is one of them. I am saying this is capitalism and the reason everything is the way it is in the world right now. Rich people wanting to get richer at the expense of poor people.
Yeah, 100% agreed. That’s why I keep talking about real economic injustice and how I feel about it, even though I think applying those tools to this specific situation is way unnecessary.
If your whole rant is about the death threats I think you missed the point. Because I wasn’t making a point about the death threats.
I think you may be the exception then. We’re talking under a headline about death threats, and the reason I was a little salty about it was that it seems like there are a bunch of people here who genuinely think death threats are a good response to this situation, and to me that’s pretty nutty.
If I’m reading this message from you right, we’re pretty much in agreement: This is a sorta shitty situation, and sometimes genuine economic injustice demands radical solutions, but at the end of the day this is a pretty minor issue.
I will say this though. I’d rather have death threats that no one follows through with that are “credible” and change a company’s behaviour than have to riot in the streets.
You do realize that this is exactly how these MAGA hard-core faithfuls think, right? “Well if you’re going to run your bakery / social media company / election in a way I don’t like, I’ll threaten to kill you, because at the end of the day if you change your behavior that’s justified”? You kinda lost me again with this one.
Some are, yes (the Oathkeepers and etc). A lot of them aren’t, though – they’re just making death threats that are “credible” to change someone’s behavior, and a lot of them actually use that exact logic that this is a better way than rising up and having actual violence (with the implication that that’s what’ll happen if the threats don’t change the behavior). But that’s all good with you, right?
I’m just trying to be a jerk about it, I’m just taking you at face value about the things you’re supporting. If that’s offensive, I think you should stop supporting them.
Here’s a question. Do you think the rest that showed up on Jan 6th were just taken in by mob mentality, or?
I have to wonder about the difference here too. If what you’re saying is true, civil rights movements across the world have been little more than people who felt that they were justified to commit acts of violence because that’s the only way to change a behaviour they felt was detrimentally affecting them. And what you’re saying is that’s wrong. But chances are it has a direct effect on your freedoms that you enjoy today. So who’s wrong here? The realist who knows that they may someday be driven to violence because their livelihood or rights are endangered.or infringed, or the person who wants to pretend we live in a world where we can effect change only through non violent means?
And keep in mind that while this particular example of capitalist greed and overreach does not affect rights and freedoms, it is part of a systemic problem that on the whole is detrimentally effecting rights and freedoms as well as people’s ability to live. Because capitalism is all about keeping a class of poor people poor to exploit profits.
I’m also not convinced the threats are that credible. I think that’s a sympathy play. Them trying to be the victim.
Force Protection is used all over the world by governments and militaries literally daily. It is definitely something that humans have been doing for the entirety of their history. And what you’re saying is that you have a sliding scale for what you feel is warranted and what is not. Not that you don’t think that threats should be used. Just that death threats is too far.
Here’s a question. Do you think the rest that showed up on Jan 6th were just taken in by mob mentality, or?
I think people had all kinds of individual intentions and mentalities, but the bulk of the crowd was convinced that American democracy was being overthrown in broad daylight in front of their eyes. They thought that because they’d been systematically lied to in very crafted and calculated ways and weren’t equipped with, or didn’t want to use, the tools that would have let them figure out the truth. That’s what makes the whole thing so incredibly dangerous – it’s actually pretty reasonable to go to literal war if you think American democracy is ending. The problem is that there’s a huge chunk of the country that thinks that, when it’s not true (or… well… not in the way that they think 🥲). And so, lo and behold, they’re steadily becoming more and more willing to go to war.
(And this also gets back to the tactical aspect that I keep coming back to – How Democracies Die has a great breakdown of how to behave in a collapsing democracy, and one of the things that they found through their research is that “cheating” to fight back against the emergent fascist movement that is cheating to steal their power often makes things worse. It accelerates that abandonment of democratic norms and hastens the collapse. In that case, there are a lot of situations where the best thing is to fight back within the system, even when your opponents are going outside the system so you have to fight an uphill battle, to maintain the democracy in the long run.)
If what you’re saying is true, civil rights movements across the world have been little more than people who felt that they were justified to commit acts of violence because that’s the only way to change a behaviour they felt was detrimentally affecting them. And what you’re saying is that’s wrong.
So, I don’t actually think violence is never justified. In some other comment in this thread, I broke down some different scenarios from history where a body of people resorted to different types of resolutions when their rights were being “legally” trampled and what I thought of each one (just from my personal POV). I talked about the labor movement having violent confrontations with police and private security when their economic freedoms were being denied (more accurately, they fought back when attacked with violence). To me I think that was 100% fine.
So one other example that comes to mind is that early night of the BLM protests, when they took over the 3rd precinct and burned it down. This might sound surprising since I have a mostly “pro police” viewpoint, but I actually think that was pretty justified. There’s a severe injustice (you’re killing us in the streets without consequences), it’s been known for a while, we tried nonviolent means of addressing it (peaceful protest, going through the courts), it cannot just remain unaddressed, and it seems like we’re out of options. Okay, fuck it man, if that’s what’s up, then let’s go.
So here’s the distinction: I definitely think there are individual departments that commit genuine atrocities and get away with it. I strongly disagree with the the “that’s every US cop” narrative, but it does happen. And so the distinction is that this was a genuine war crime, and that’s the precinct that did it. It’s hard for me to say people in that precinct should hold a rally within their designated area to chant about how it’s wrong and then go home and hope it doesn’t happen again. I can guarantee that that event changed the calculus of a lot of police and police leadership nationwide in a way that peaceful protest will not.
(Edit: Side note, burning down the precinct was also clearly a crime, and I think they wound up sending someone to prison for 4 years for it. That side of it to me is justified also. If it’s so big an emergency that you claim the right to upend other people’s lives to make things change, it needs to be so big an emergency that it’s okay to upend your own life as a result of making things change. Trying to apply it in one direction but not the other – as a lot of the January 6th people did – is pure, selfish, deluded, dangerous bullshit.)
And keep in mind that while this particular example of capitalist greed and overreach does not affect rights and freedoms, it is part of a systemic problem that on the whole is detrimentally effecting rights and freedoms as well as people’s ability to live. Because capitalism is all about keeping a class of poor people poor to exploit profits.
Yeah, I agree with all that. That’s why I’m being a little careful not to say that this is all just a silly overreaction to a software company’s pricing. But at the same time… I think people should think about what they genuinely want and how to get there. Sending death threats to the Unity offices is, I think, going to:
Maybe scare some individual people that work at Unity
Maybe change the pricing, although I think the fundamental idiocy of the pricing change is more likely to do that honestly
Maybe get you arrested for a felony
Do jack shit to address the underlying economic factors
… and, crucially, it’s going to add one little iota in favor of the idea that if something’s happening that you don’t like, you need to make threats of serious violence unconstrained by a justice framework or a long-term plan. That’s a pretty popular idea right now, mostly from the conservative side, and I don’t think it needs more people to sign onto it.
That only works if there is a path already in place to do these things and a willingness to take that path. People are sick and tired of trying to go through “official” channels to fix things when it’s obvious those channels are designed in a way that completely works against them. Yes, this potentially could destroy the livelihood for some and if threatening waste of oxygen management that cares nothing for others is the only path to create change, than it’s a great time to be a vendor selling pitch forks and torches.
… which is why I made that sorta non sequitur about MLK and Gandhi, and why I say down below that you need to read history. There are a wide range of examples of people attempting to overcome all kinds of injustices, with all kinds of means violent and nonviolent and every place in between, including ones where the system was wayyyy more stacked against them than they are in the current modern day United States as pertains to a software company changing its pricing.
Honestly I’m not even saying you’re wrong necessarily about this being an unfair or bad thing or an injustice. I don’t know enough about Unity to have any idea. I just think if you’re talking about violence against the company’s employees because this crosses the line so far into some kind of landscape where any means are necessary, you need to get some perspective about this specific situation, and read into some examples of how what you’re recommending plays out as a solution to economic injustice.
I have mixed feelings about upvoting you because point 2 is a wall of text and hard to read /s ;)
You are correct however.
The real key is realizing that any subscription based platform has the potential of jerking you around.
However given the sheer volume of impacted developers and the easily calculated uh class action Value, I am sure there is a predatory pricing lawsuit in there somewhere.
Another approach might be to form a publisher coop who can negotiate a better price on behalf of its members. That too likely will sour at some point.
Or just pay the license fee while determining how to exit the platform if it isn’t generating revenue … or stick with it if it works.
Yeah, that too. I mean at the end of the day it’s a software company changing its pricing. I’m addressing this from the perspective of “If we take it as granted that this is an economic injustice, what’s the right way to address it,” but from the POV of Indians working at the salt factory or miners in the late 1800s having gunfights for their right to strike, they’d laugh their asses off at what’s being called “injustice” here.
the industry has shown that it can and will ignore anything else…not that i believe that legitimate death threats were made. i think it’s a sympathy ploy personally
WTF, I honestly hesitated to post this, because I felt like “We shouldn’t threaten the Unity management” was so obvious that I felt ridiculous taking it seriously enough to break down the reasons. But the votes clearly indicate that that’s not the consensus.
All I can say is, y’all need to study history a lot more than you have. I get that you feel justified in your viewpoint, but there’ve been a lot of people who felt justified in their viewpoint who then got proper fucked up because of it.
If people did it your way we would still have slavery and women wouldn’t be able to vote or hold jobs. There comes a point where the people preaching the reasoned approach are simply helping the oppressors. I’m not saying people should go out making death threats, but expecting people who’s livelihoods are threatened by greed to shut up and martyr themselves or go through broken channels that don’t work is stupid and not going to happen.
expecting people who’s livelihoods are threatened by greed to shut up and martyr themselves or go through broken channels that don’t work is stupid and not going to happen.
So, I’m actually specifically not telling you that this whole thing is ridiculous and you should just be a good citizen and get back in line. If you look back over my posts you’ll see that I’m addressing it more than anything from a perspective of “If you want economic justice, what is the most effective way to get it?”
This guy wanted to be treated and talked to respectfully, and to understand what was going on and feel safe in the situation he was in. Those are 100% reasonable things to want. Would you say that the way he went about pursuing those things got him the result that he wanted?
Notice how the cops try to get him to accept a search of his car? That’s them hoping they can find something to destroy this man’s life. They have absolutely zero reason for the search. The issue is a busted break light. They should just ticket him for that instead of wasting time and resources on their antagonistic bullshit.
Antagonism level of the cops here: 3/10, I have some notes
Antagonism level of the suspect: 12/10, dude is literally SCREAMING at and totally ignoring the totally legal and reasonable behavior of the cop who’s just trying to conduct a traffic stop on him
I get that both the cop and the big dude are basically just scared and reacting poorly out of fear. Two particular things really pissed me off from the cops’ side: At the end they can’t seem to understand, or don’t want to understand, that they’re fucking up his shoulders. There’s no urgency to standing him back up, and he’s understandably upset because he’s in a lot of pain, and he seems pretty ready at that point to work with them, if they show him a little calm and empathy or just back off and let the medically qualified hospital staff deal with him. And, in the beginning, the whole situation was escalated by the initial cop, who clearly seemed scared and unsure and didn’t do a perfect job and specifically requested an uncalled-for violent response just because the guy was yelling and being unreasonable (“step it up” basically means “I am in a physical fight right now and may lose, drop everything you’re doing and come in guns blazing,” it’s one of the highest-priority calls you can make and clearly didn’t apply to the situation he was in).
Two separate times in my life, I’ve seen cops deescalate situations where someone was yelling or arguing heatedly in their faces, and it went fine and no one got arrested. They can do it if they’re good at the job. But, that doesn’t mean you can just refuse to participate in a traffic stop, wander off somewhere else and keep conducting your personal business, start SCREAMING aggressively at the police in a Walgreen’s when they try to talk to you, and have an expectation that it’s all on them to make sure it turns out well, otherwise that’s unfair. IDK what ultimate outcome he realistically expected from what he did other than getting violently arrested once more cops arrive. And yeah, at that point, they’re going to look for whatever they can charge you with and aim to fuck up your life.
(Edit: And – one of the very first things they do once the situation is stable is go to try to check on his cuffs to make sure they’re not too tight. When they try to do that, he just starts screaming aggressively at them again and they give up, but one of the first things on their mind is trying to make sure he’s ok, which they in no way had to do.)
What outcome would you suggest that the cops do in this situation? Just leave, or let him leave, or what? You say they should have just ticketed him, but that was literally what the first cop was trying to do and it looks to me like big dude was 100% ready to just get back in his car and leave without accepting the ticket.
Judging by the yt comments, you’re subscribed to a channel that caters heavily to racists, so I don’t have high hopes here.
Antagonism level of the cops here: 3/10, I have some notes
Called in backup. Put victim on ground in handcuffs. Tried to search his car without cause. Harmed the victim needlessly.
Antagonism level of the suspect: 12/10,
Literally walked away to avoid conflict.
I get that both the cop and the big dude are basically just scared and reacting poorly out of fear.
Only one of them is armed with a lethal weapon and regularly assaults people. The cop is actively pursuing conflict, whereas the victim is avoiding it.
Two particular things really pissed me off from the cops’ side: At the end they can’t seem to understand, or don’t want to understand, that they’re fucking up his shoulders. There’s no urgency to standing him back up, and he’s understandably upset because he’s in a lot of pain, and he seems pretty ready at that point to work with them, if they show him a little calm and empathy or just back off and let the medically qualified hospital staff deal with him.
I see absolutely no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt. It’s their job. They regularly have people in a position like that. They were hurting him intentionally.
And, in the beginning, the whole situation was escalated by the initial cop, who clearly seemed scared and unsure and didn’t do a perfect job and specifically requested an uncalled-for violent response just because the guy was yelling and being unreasonable (“step it up” basically means “I am in a physical fight right now and may lose, drop everything you’re doing and come in guns blazing,” it’s one of the highest-priority calls you can make and clearly didn’t apply to the situation he was in).
What you’re saying here is that the first cop was fixing to get someone killed. 3/10 though.
But, that doesn’t mean you can just refuse to participate in a traffic stop, wander off somewhere else and keep conducting your personal business, start SCREAMING aggressively at the police in a Walgreen’s when they try to talk to you, and have an expectation that it’s all on them to make sure it turns out well, otherwise that’s unfair. IDK what ultimate outcome he realistically expected from what he did other than getting violently arrested once more cops arrive.
He was afraid. Justifiably so, given that the cop acted in a way that could have gotten him killed. The generous reading here is that you’re making excuses for gross incompetence. Why?
And yeah, at that point, they’re going to look for whatever they can charge you with and aim to fuck up your life.
Why should we just accept that as a given? That’s not their job.
What outcome would you suggest that the cops do in this situation?
You’re ignoring the long history of systemic abuse that plays into this. To improve that, it is the party favored by the power imbalance who must go above and beyond.
Do you think the cops in that video acted with excellence?
Actual reasonable approach: follow the man in. Don’t keep making demands of him to stop, etc. Just keep up and explain to him that you’re going to ticket him for a broken break light, and if he accepts that you’ll be on your way. If he refuses, instruct him to get it fixed asap and take down his number plate so you can send the ticket in the mail. Cars usually have several brake lights. One of them being broken really isn’t a big deal.
Just leave, or let him leave, or what?
Not the worst outcome, but I know you’re horny for some JUSTICE.
Judging by the yt comments, you’re subscribed to a channel that caters heavily to racists, so I don’t have high hopes here.
Right, it’s clearly a channel that looks purely from the police’s POV. I watch other stuff from all kinds of different viewpoints. Audit the Audit is probably the most evenhanded one in terms of breaking down when the police did wrong, or when the citizen involved did something wrong, or both.
I definitely try not to come just from a purely “pro police” standpoint; to me what’s important is coming up with a system that works. I would be fully in support of:
More police accountability when they do something illegal
Better training, something like Verbal Judo and elements of psychology – i.e. help the cops not to antagonize people when they walk up to them, like this particular cop did in this particular interaction, and got the guy all amped up and then punished him for being amped up.
So with that all being said, I don’t feel like coming at things from a purely “anti-police” standpoint makes sense either. Maybe this dude has a warrant for some violent crime. He honestly gets pretty much no sympathy from me based on his behavior, because I suspect that he interacts with people this way in his personal life, too. He parks in the handicap space using someone else’s placard, he shouts over the cop and insists things that are clearly not accurate (“I’m not under arrest!”) and tries to bully his way to the cop accepting them. To be honest, for as much as I agree he was reacting out of fear, this whole interaction makes him seem like a POS that likes to throw his weight around and starts shouting if things aren’t exactly how he likes them. If I saw someone walk up to a cop and say something, and the cop reacted that way – which, yes, some cops do in some situations – I would make pretty much the exact same POS judgement about that cop based on what I observed. Just the fact that ultimately he got bullied, instead of being able to be the bully like he was trying to do, doesn’t change my assessment of how he acted at the outset.
Antagonism level of the suspect: 12/10,
Literally walked away to avoid conflict.
I get that both the cop and the big dude are basically just scared and reacting poorly out of fear.
Only one of them is armed with a lethal weapon and regularly assaults people. The cop is actively pursuing conflict, whereas the victim is avoiding it.
But that’s not the whole context! If I came up to your table in a restaurant, took your wallet, and then walked away and tried to leave, and screamed at you if you tried to follow me, I don’t get to blame you for “actively pursuing conflict.” There’s unresolved business we need to talk about, same as in this video.
Actual reasonable approach: follow the man in. Don’t keep making demands of him to stop, etc. Just keep up and explain to him that you’re going to ticket him for a broken break light, and if he accepts that you’ll be on your way. If he refuses, instruct him to get it fixed asap and take down his number plate so you can send the ticket in the mail. Cars usually have several brake lights. One of them being broken really isn’t a big deal.
If you want to change the system so the police can’t stop you for a brake light out, we can do that. There have already been some reforms after BLM, and some areas (e.g. cash bail) that clearly still need reform. But it needs to be, okay what’s a good whole system and how do we change things? Not just that we change them on the side of the road because someone’s shouting and if we counter-escalate in accordance with written law, that’ll wind up in a situation that’s bad for the shouting person.
Would you be in favor of changing the system so that what you’re describing is the prescribed behavior for cops in this situation? I.e. written law that if someone leaves a traffic stop for a minor infraction just shouts in your face for you to get the fuck outta here and leaves, you take down their plate number and deal with it via the mail?
Edit: And, just to throw my own answer in - how I think the cop should have reacted in this particular moment was somewhat similar to what you said, just without letting the guy bully his way out of the citation. I’ve actually seen a cop deescalate in a similar situation by using this general approach: Hey man, all I really need to you do is X, Y, Z. If you can do that, I’ll be out of your way and you can go about your night. If you don’t want to do that, then you are going to go to jail. But that’s not what I want to do. I want for you to do X, Y, Z so we can resolve our business and everything can be good. But I will take you to jail if you don’t do those things. Here’s what’s up, here’s the reason, and what I want to do is talk to you a little and then we can go on our way.
In the case I observed, it took a while (I think around 10 minutes) for the other person to calm down, and a whole lot of it has to do with the tone and body language involved. It is hard to do that, remain calm and steady and patient while someone bigger than you is screaming in your face. I actually can get why the cop here was rattled and reacted badly. But, that being said, him being calm and more understanding and less just repeating “Do X, Y, Z. Do X, Y, Z. Do X, Y, Z,” like he’s the boss and everyone’s supposed to obey, would have gone a long way on the cop’s side to making this have a better outcome.
“But under the changes announced today, Unity Personal and Unity Pro users will pay fees if they hit $200,000 in revenue in a year and 200,000 lifetime installs. For anywhere from one to a million installs, those users will pay 20 cents per install. “It’s a price increase.”
If I have a mobile game selling for $1 on the apple store for instance and it uses Unity, and has has a million downloads/installs I then owe Unity $200,000 for an app that I didn’t even make $500,000 on because app stores like apple’s charge a 30% cut, sales exist, and it says installs which may mean a person buys the app once and installs it on more than one device. But that doesn’t in any way directly affect my livelihood as a developer or anything. Right?
But there are commercial entity, it’s their right to do so, with thebway thebcurrent laws and market is setup. “The free market will remove them from the equation if they’re not offering an attractive product at an attractive rate, in the face of competitors offering such”… in theory. In practice, I say fuck em. Stop using unity. Stop playing games made in unity. Let them die. A better offering will appear when they are off the table.
That’s not what I disputed.
Not all replies to you are a direct representation of what you’re hoping people are going to fixate on. That’s not in your control. You may not realize this but we are all equally sentient and have our own thought processes. The rest of us aren’t NPCs…
Right.
AFAIK, the retroactive nature of it doesn’t apply to already released games, but to games released with the new license terms. So if you released that mobile game last year, you wouldn’t need to pay $200k or whatever next year. However, if you release that same game next year, you would have to retroactively pay that $200k once the downloads exceeded the stated max.
So the solution is: don’t use Unity next year, especially if you’ll be selling a game for $1. It sucks since in-progress games would have to be reworked, and Unity should suffer for that, but it shouldn’t ever come to threats of violence.
That’s actually fair. But the point is that the popularity of a game could tank a developer with this business model. It could also affect past profits and purchases specifically because of the bit about downloads. It doesn’t differentiate between a user who’s downloaded a paid app on 6 different phones, 1 phone, 1000 phones. So if I for instance paid for I dunno Plants vs Zombies one time, the developer releases it with an update patch, I and then downloaded it onto every phone I have had since then or will have in the future that could be 10,.15, 20 downloads over my lifetime. What if I have a work phone? They’re not saying they can’t implement this even with old games. I don’t think they meant retroactively. I think they mean new installs of old games that have updates.
I guess I’d have to read through the contract, but generally these things only apply to games released after the new terms take effect, but updates to games released prior. So the dev would be fully aware of the policy at the point of releasing the game.
Unity seems to be catering to games with a recurring revenue model (ads, microtransactions, etc), and discouraging other revenue models, and I think most developers will recognize that with this pricing model.
So I don’t think Unity is trying to screw already released games, they’re just trying to limit their appeal to a certain type of game revenue model.
If software you use changes their pricing in a way that, in three month’s time, because you made only $500k last year and your game uses a freemium model such that you get a shitload of installs but don’t necessarily draw revenue from every install, so that that 20c per install adds up to the fact that you’ll be losing money come January, should you threaten the people at that software company with death? At that point, I think no.
If instead of that, they do something more akin to what Reddit did to the Apollo devs, and change the pricing such that they don’t have time to adjust, lie about it, and publicly defame the devs, basically make it literally impossible for the company to stay in business, should Christian have threatened to kill spez? I think no.
If instead of that, they destroy your whole industry, so that you literally can’t work as a software dev anymore, at your game company or any other or in any other software-related industry, and you have to retrain yourself to something totally different, should you threaten them with death? At that point I think it’s a little more of a tactical decision rather than a moral one, because they are crossing that line into “Fuck the system this is wrong” territory, but I would still argue that literally waging war on them wouldn’t accomplish as much as trying to get your democratic government to address the issue some other way.
If instead of that, they created an economic system so that it was impossible for you to get any job, software or otherwise, except back-breaking physical work with a high chance of maiming or killing you, and you still got starvation wages, should you threaten them with death? At that point, maybe; that’s the point we were at in the late 1800s and it’s hard to say it was wrong to fight a small war about it. At that point it’s more about tactics, and the workers in the 1800s didn’t have a tiny fraction of the democratic power you do, so they went to literal war and for the most part it worked in the end.
If instead of that, they ruined your economy and your government, made it so you had no voting rights, could be abused or killed by members of the government of a different racial group who were all super racist against you, so you had the starvation wages and the unsafe labor conditions and also unsafe conditions outside of work and no way out economically and no real democratic way to address the situation, is it appropriate to threaten them with death? At that point, definitely not. Again, blacks in the US and Indians in British India faced that situation, and they decided the only way out was through nonviolent resistance.
Again, I’m not trying to tell you to do nothing. I’m saying death threats are a silly and unproductive thing to do in this case. Somewhere here I posted a video of a guy in Walgreens who felt the policeman was being unfair and got super loud about it to resolve the situation. Death threats, in this situation, I think are gonna have pretty much that level of effectiveness.
If your whole rant is about the death threats I think you missed the point. Because I wasn’t making a point about the death threats. I was pointing out that this particular business model they’re introducing could literally cause the creator of a game to go broke trying to pay it depending on the popularity of their product. That’s broken. And Unity should have known it was broken. And saying they’ve had credible death threats after announcing this plan is to me the same as what Spez did with Reddit after he did the AMA for his API increase and expected no backlash.
I will say this though. I’d rather have death threats that no one follows through with that are “credible” and change a company’s behaviour than have to riot in the streets. Rioting causes a lot of collateral damage to people and places that are not involved. Historically though, the elite create systems where violence slowly but surely becomes the only avenue for change. I’m not saying this is one of them. I am saying this is capitalism and the reason everything is the way it is in the world right now. Rich people wanting to get richer at the expense of poor people.
Yeah, agreed.
Yeah, 100% agreed. That’s why I keep talking about real economic injustice and how I feel about it, even though I think applying those tools to this specific situation is way unnecessary.
I think you may be the exception then. We’re talking under a headline about death threats, and the reason I was a little salty about it was that it seems like there are a bunch of people here who genuinely think death threats are a good response to this situation, and to me that’s pretty nutty.
If I’m reading this message from you right, we’re pretty much in agreement: This is a sorta shitty situation, and sometimes genuine economic injustice demands radical solutions, but at the end of the day this is a pretty minor issue.
You do realize that this is exactly how these MAGA hard-core faithfuls think, right? “Well if you’re going to run your bakery / social media company / election in a way I don’t like, I’ll threaten to kill you, because at the end of the day if you change your behavior that’s justified”? You kinda lost me again with this one.
I don’t agree with the Maga statement. Mostly because from what I have seen they actually are frothing at the mouth for violence.
Some are, yes (the Oathkeepers and etc). A lot of them aren’t, though – they’re just making death threats that are “credible” to change someone’s behavior, and a lot of them actually use that exact logic that this is a better way than rising up and having actual violence (with the implication that that’s what’ll happen if the threats don’t change the behavior). But that’s all good with you, right?
I’m just trying to be a jerk about it, I’m just taking you at face value about the things you’re supporting. If that’s offensive, I think you should stop supporting them.
Here’s a question. Do you think the rest that showed up on Jan 6th were just taken in by mob mentality, or?
I have to wonder about the difference here too. If what you’re saying is true, civil rights movements across the world have been little more than people who felt that they were justified to commit acts of violence because that’s the only way to change a behaviour they felt was detrimentally affecting them. And what you’re saying is that’s wrong. But chances are it has a direct effect on your freedoms that you enjoy today. So who’s wrong here? The realist who knows that they may someday be driven to violence because their livelihood or rights are endangered.or infringed, or the person who wants to pretend we live in a world where we can effect change only through non violent means?
And keep in mind that while this particular example of capitalist greed and overreach does not affect rights and freedoms, it is part of a systemic problem that on the whole is detrimentally effecting rights and freedoms as well as people’s ability to live. Because capitalism is all about keeping a class of poor people poor to exploit profits.
I’m also not convinced the threats are that credible. I think that’s a sympathy play. Them trying to be the victim.
Force Protection is used all over the world by governments and militaries literally daily. It is definitely something that humans have been doing for the entirety of their history. And what you’re saying is that you have a sliding scale for what you feel is warranted and what is not. Not that you don’t think that threats should be used. Just that death threats is too far.
I think people had all kinds of individual intentions and mentalities, but the bulk of the crowd was convinced that American democracy was being overthrown in broad daylight in front of their eyes. They thought that because they’d been systematically lied to in very crafted and calculated ways and weren’t equipped with, or didn’t want to use, the tools that would have let them figure out the truth. That’s what makes the whole thing so incredibly dangerous – it’s actually pretty reasonable to go to literal war if you think American democracy is ending. The problem is that there’s a huge chunk of the country that thinks that, when it’s not true (or… well… not in the way that they think 🥲). And so, lo and behold, they’re steadily becoming more and more willing to go to war.
(And this also gets back to the tactical aspect that I keep coming back to – How Democracies Die has a great breakdown of how to behave in a collapsing democracy, and one of the things that they found through their research is that “cheating” to fight back against the emergent fascist movement that is cheating to steal their power often makes things worse. It accelerates that abandonment of democratic norms and hastens the collapse. In that case, there are a lot of situations where the best thing is to fight back within the system, even when your opponents are going outside the system so you have to fight an uphill battle, to maintain the democracy in the long run.)
So, I don’t actually think violence is never justified. In some other comment in this thread, I broke down some different scenarios from history where a body of people resorted to different types of resolutions when their rights were being “legally” trampled and what I thought of each one (just from my personal POV). I talked about the labor movement having violent confrontations with police and private security when their economic freedoms were being denied (more accurately, they fought back when attacked with violence). To me I think that was 100% fine.
So one other example that comes to mind is that early night of the BLM protests, when they took over the 3rd precinct and burned it down. This might sound surprising since I have a mostly “pro police” viewpoint, but I actually think that was pretty justified. There’s a severe injustice (you’re killing us in the streets without consequences), it’s been known for a while, we tried nonviolent means of addressing it (peaceful protest, going through the courts), it cannot just remain unaddressed, and it seems like we’re out of options. Okay, fuck it man, if that’s what’s up, then let’s go.
So here’s the distinction: I definitely think there are individual departments that commit genuine atrocities and get away with it. I strongly disagree with the the “that’s every US cop” narrative, but it does happen. And so the distinction is that this was a genuine war crime, and that’s the precinct that did it. It’s hard for me to say people in that precinct should hold a rally within their designated area to chant about how it’s wrong and then go home and hope it doesn’t happen again. I can guarantee that that event changed the calculus of a lot of police and police leadership nationwide in a way that peaceful protest will not.
(Edit: Side note, burning down the precinct was also clearly a crime, and I think they wound up sending someone to prison for 4 years for it. That side of it to me is justified also. If it’s so big an emergency that you claim the right to upend other people’s lives to make things change, it needs to be so big an emergency that it’s okay to upend your own life as a result of making things change. Trying to apply it in one direction but not the other – as a lot of the January 6th people did – is pure, selfish, deluded, dangerous bullshit.)
Yeah, I agree with all that. That’s why I’m being a little careful not to say that this is all just a silly overreaction to a software company’s pricing. But at the same time… I think people should think about what they genuinely want and how to get there. Sending death threats to the Unity offices is, I think, going to:
… and, crucially, it’s going to add one little iota in favor of the idea that if something’s happening that you don’t like, you need to make threats of serious violence unconstrained by a justice framework or a long-term plan. That’s a pretty popular idea right now, mostly from the conservative side, and I don’t think it needs more people to sign onto it.
That only works if there is a path already in place to do these things and a willingness to take that path. People are sick and tired of trying to go through “official” channels to fix things when it’s obvious those channels are designed in a way that completely works against them. Yes, this potentially could destroy the livelihood for some and if threatening waste of oxygen management that cares nothing for others is the only path to create change, than it’s a great time to be a vendor selling pitch forks and torches.
Unity isn’t that great, that’s why their stock price is in the shitter.
… which is why I made that sorta non sequitur about MLK and Gandhi, and why I say down below that you need to read history. There are a wide range of examples of people attempting to overcome all kinds of injustices, with all kinds of means violent and nonviolent and every place in between, including ones where the system was wayyyy more stacked against them than they are in the current modern day United States as pertains to a software company changing its pricing.
Honestly I’m not even saying you’re wrong necessarily about this being an unfair or bad thing or an injustice. I don’t know enough about Unity to have any idea. I just think if you’re talking about violence against the company’s employees because this crosses the line so far into some kind of landscape where any means are necessary, you need to get some perspective about this specific situation, and read into some examples of how what you’re recommending plays out as a solution to economic injustice.
I have mixed feelings about upvoting you because point 2 is a wall of text and hard to read /s ;)
You are correct however.
The real key is realizing that any subscription based platform has the potential of jerking you around.
However given the sheer volume of impacted developers and the easily calculated uh class action Value, I am sure there is a predatory pricing lawsuit in there somewhere.
Another approach might be to form a publisher coop who can negotiate a better price on behalf of its members. That too likely will sour at some point.
Or just pay the license fee while determining how to exit the platform if it isn’t generating revenue … or stick with it if it works.
Yeah, that too. I mean at the end of the day it’s a software company changing its pricing. I’m addressing this from the perspective of “If we take it as granted that this is an economic injustice, what’s the right way to address it,” but from the POV of Indians working at the salt factory or miners in the late 1800s having gunfights for their right to strike, they’d laugh their asses off at what’s being called “injustice” here.
People are reacting to the feeling of a lack of choice & nothing in it for them.
With death threats
the industry has shown that it can and will ignore anything else…not that i believe that legitimate death threats were made. i think it’s a sympathy ploy personally
WTF, I honestly hesitated to post this, because I felt like “We shouldn’t threaten the Unity management” was so obvious that I felt ridiculous taking it seriously enough to break down the reasons. But the votes clearly indicate that that’s not the consensus.
All I can say is, y’all need to study history a lot more than you have. I get that you feel justified in your viewpoint, but there’ve been a lot of people who felt justified in their viewpoint who then got proper fucked up because of it.
If people did it your way we would still have slavery and women wouldn’t be able to vote or hold jobs. There comes a point where the people preaching the reasoned approach are simply helping the oppressors. I’m not saying people should go out making death threats, but expecting people who’s livelihoods are threatened by greed to shut up and martyr themselves or go through broken channels that don’t work is stupid and not going to happen.
So, I’m actually specifically not telling you that this whole thing is ridiculous and you should just be a good citizen and get back in line. If you look back over my posts you’ll see that I’m addressing it more than anything from a perspective of “If you want economic justice, what is the most effective way to get it?”
This guy wanted to be treated and talked to respectfully, and to understand what was going on and feel safe in the situation he was in. Those are 100% reasonable things to want. Would you say that the way he went about pursuing those things got him the result that he wanted?
He seems terrified.
Notice how the cops try to get him to accept a search of his car? That’s them hoping they can find something to destroy this man’s life. They have absolutely zero reason for the search. The issue is a busted break light. They should just ticket him for that instead of wasting time and resources on their antagonistic bullshit.
Okey dokey, let’s talk.
Antagonism level of the cops here: 3/10, I have some notes
Antagonism level of the suspect: 12/10, dude is literally SCREAMING at and totally ignoring the totally legal and reasonable behavior of the cop who’s just trying to conduct a traffic stop on him
I get that both the cop and the big dude are basically just scared and reacting poorly out of fear. Two particular things really pissed me off from the cops’ side: At the end they can’t seem to understand, or don’t want to understand, that they’re fucking up his shoulders. There’s no urgency to standing him back up, and he’s understandably upset because he’s in a lot of pain, and he seems pretty ready at that point to work with them, if they show him a little calm and empathy or just back off and let the medically qualified hospital staff deal with him. And, in the beginning, the whole situation was escalated by the initial cop, who clearly seemed scared and unsure and didn’t do a perfect job and specifically requested an uncalled-for violent response just because the guy was yelling and being unreasonable (“step it up” basically means “I am in a physical fight right now and may lose, drop everything you’re doing and come in guns blazing,” it’s one of the highest-priority calls you can make and clearly didn’t apply to the situation he was in).
Two separate times in my life, I’ve seen cops deescalate situations where someone was yelling or arguing heatedly in their faces, and it went fine and no one got arrested. They can do it if they’re good at the job. But, that doesn’t mean you can just refuse to participate in a traffic stop, wander off somewhere else and keep conducting your personal business, start SCREAMING aggressively at the police in a Walgreen’s when they try to talk to you, and have an expectation that it’s all on them to make sure it turns out well, otherwise that’s unfair. IDK what ultimate outcome he realistically expected from what he did other than getting violently arrested once more cops arrive. And yeah, at that point, they’re going to look for whatever they can charge you with and aim to fuck up your life.
(Edit: And – one of the very first things they do once the situation is stable is go to try to check on his cuffs to make sure they’re not too tight. When they try to do that, he just starts screaming aggressively at them again and they give up, but one of the first things on their mind is trying to make sure he’s ok, which they in no way had to do.)
What outcome would you suggest that the cops do in this situation? Just leave, or let him leave, or what? You say they should have just ticketed him, but that was literally what the first cop was trying to do and it looks to me like big dude was 100% ready to just get back in his car and leave without accepting the ticket.
Judging by the yt comments, you’re subscribed to a channel that caters heavily to racists, so I don’t have high hopes here.
Called in backup. Put victim on ground in handcuffs. Tried to search his car without cause. Harmed the victim needlessly.
Literally walked away to avoid conflict.
Only one of them is armed with a lethal weapon and regularly assaults people. The cop is actively pursuing conflict, whereas the victim is avoiding it.
I see absolutely no reason to give them the benefit of the doubt. It’s their job. They regularly have people in a position like that. They were hurting him intentionally.
What you’re saying here is that the first cop was fixing to get someone killed. 3/10 though.
He was afraid. Justifiably so, given that the cop acted in a way that could have gotten him killed. The generous reading here is that you’re making excuses for gross incompetence. Why?
Why should we just accept that as a given? That’s not their job.
You’re ignoring the long history of systemic abuse that plays into this. To improve that, it is the party favored by the power imbalance who must go above and beyond.
Do you think the cops in that video acted with excellence?
Actual reasonable approach: follow the man in. Don’t keep making demands of him to stop, etc. Just keep up and explain to him that you’re going to ticket him for a broken break light, and if he accepts that you’ll be on your way. If he refuses, instruct him to get it fixed asap and take down his number plate so you can send the ticket in the mail. Cars usually have several brake lights. One of them being broken really isn’t a big deal.
Not the worst outcome, but I know you’re horny for some JUSTICE.
Right, it’s clearly a channel that looks purely from the police’s POV. I watch other stuff from all kinds of different viewpoints. Audit the Audit is probably the most evenhanded one in terms of breaking down when the police did wrong, or when the citizen involved did something wrong, or both.
I definitely try not to come just from a purely “pro police” standpoint; to me what’s important is coming up with a system that works. I would be fully in support of:
So with that all being said, I don’t feel like coming at things from a purely “anti-police” standpoint makes sense either. Maybe this dude has a warrant for some violent crime. He honestly gets pretty much no sympathy from me based on his behavior, because I suspect that he interacts with people this way in his personal life, too. He parks in the handicap space using someone else’s placard, he shouts over the cop and insists things that are clearly not accurate (“I’m not under arrest!”) and tries to bully his way to the cop accepting them. To be honest, for as much as I agree he was reacting out of fear, this whole interaction makes him seem like a POS that likes to throw his weight around and starts shouting if things aren’t exactly how he likes them. If I saw someone walk up to a cop and say something, and the cop reacted that way – which, yes, some cops do in some situations – I would make pretty much the exact same POS judgement about that cop based on what I observed. Just the fact that ultimately he got bullied, instead of being able to be the bully like he was trying to do, doesn’t change my assessment of how he acted at the outset.
But that’s not the whole context! If I came up to your table in a restaurant, took your wallet, and then walked away and tried to leave, and screamed at you if you tried to follow me, I don’t get to blame you for “actively pursuing conflict.” There’s unresolved business we need to talk about, same as in this video.
If you want to change the system so the police can’t stop you for a brake light out, we can do that. There have already been some reforms after BLM, and some areas (e.g. cash bail) that clearly still need reform. But it needs to be, okay what’s a good whole system and how do we change things? Not just that we change them on the side of the road because someone’s shouting and if we counter-escalate in accordance with written law, that’ll wind up in a situation that’s bad for the shouting person.
Would you be in favor of changing the system so that what you’re describing is the prescribed behavior for cops in this situation? I.e. written law that if someone leaves a traffic stop for a minor infraction just shouts in your face for you to get the fuck outta here and leaves, you take down their plate number and deal with it via the mail?
Edit: And, just to throw my own answer in - how I think the cop should have reacted in this particular moment was somewhat similar to what you said, just without letting the guy bully his way out of the citation. I’ve actually seen a cop deescalate in a similar situation by using this general approach: Hey man, all I really need to you do is X, Y, Z. If you can do that, I’ll be out of your way and you can go about your night. If you don’t want to do that, then you are going to go to jail. But that’s not what I want to do. I want for you to do X, Y, Z so we can resolve our business and everything can be good. But I will take you to jail if you don’t do those things. Here’s what’s up, here’s the reason, and what I want to do is talk to you a little and then we can go on our way.
In the case I observed, it took a while (I think around 10 minutes) for the other person to calm down, and a whole lot of it has to do with the tone and body language involved. It is hard to do that, remain calm and steady and patient while someone bigger than you is screaming in your face. I actually can get why the cop here was rattled and reacted badly. But, that being said, him being calm and more understanding and less just repeating “Do X, Y, Z. Do X, Y, Z. Do X, Y, Z,” like he’s the boss and everyone’s supposed to obey, would have gone a long way on the cop’s side to making this have a better outcome.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Audit the Audit
Verbal Judo
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