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- cross-posted to:
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- [email protected]
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Good God, what an arsehole.
We apologize for the confusion…
Confusion? No, there was no confusion. You announced a policy that was terrible, but there was nothing confusing about it, it was just stupid. I wasn’t at all confused you condescending twat, I fully understood what was being announced, as did everyone else, hence the backlash.
The article says it best:
Developers remain critical of this latest statement from Unity. “There wasn’t any ‘confusion’,” said Trent Kusters of Jumplight Odyssey studio League of Geeks. “In fact, the exact opposite is the concerning issue here; That we all, very clearly, understood the devastating impact and anti-developer sentiment of your new pricing model far better than you ever did (or cared to) before rolling it out.”
We apologise for you all being hysterical, and any Angst that may have caused.
Twats.
I don’t think Unity has any chance of healing while that moron is still there. He poisonous.
We were confused about how much backlash there would be. We didn’t think it would hurt our bottom line this much. Sorry for the confusion.
We thought you would love to throw money at us!
They were confused why we didn’t love their amazing decision. Don’t we care about the shareholders?
Do not believe their lies. Do not accept their token gestures. Abandon them. Let them burn. If you tolerate this your children will be next. Trust no one.
‘confusion’. Yeah, right. Not a single person was confused. You went for the cash grab and it blew up in your face.
Now you’re going to go for slightly less cash grab and because it’s ‘better’ and ‘we listened’ everyone is supposed to just accept it. Been here before…
It’s like if I mugged you at gun point and said “give me all your money”, and you said “this is bullshit, I don’t want to give you my money.”
Then I said, “I’m sorry for your confusion, but I’m going to shoot you in the fucking face if you don’t give me all your money.”
Developers remain critical of this latest statement from Unity. “There wasn’t any ‘confusion’,” said Trent Kusters of Jumplight Odyssey studio League of Geeks. “In fact, the exact opposite is the concerning issue here; That we all, very clearly, understood the devastating impact and anti-developer sentiment of your new pricing model far better than you ever did (or cared to) before rolling it out.”
That’s the exact point. The apology is a joke.
Indeed. They had the whole chart showing exactly what would be paid by who. Their original post was designed not to be confusing and it wasn’t.
The confusion is that they want more money and are confused why developers don’t want to give them more money.
A resounding “fuuuuuck yooouuu” from all quarters is due for this pathetic apology.
This seems to be a case of start with a horrible plan that they know will make everyone angry only to roll it back to a plan that still sucks but isn’t quite as bad to try to reduce the sting. The thing is, I don’t think their customers are that stupid.
They underestimate their customers. They keep forgetting they’re business to business, not business to customer.
Developers are other businesses, even if they’re a business with an employee of one, although often they are small but not tiny teams. The relationship that they have with unity is a business relationship and it can end at any time should that relationship cease to be productive, for we don’t have random undying loyalty to one platform, that wouldn’t be financially sensible.
How to be a company in 2023
- Make a controversial move to please your shareholders without caring about your loyal customers.
- Don’t use a proper PR team, just use the same apology template on Twitter that everyone is using.
- People are angry… Could anyone seen that coming? 🙈
- Undo some changes without addressing the root problem.
- ???
- Profit (if by profit, you mean loose every inch of respect people had about you)
Rinse & repeat, because we’re all humans and we can’t learn from our mistakes. Surely, this won’t happen again… right?
Why do you think it was a mistake? They put themselves in the spot where taking back just the most egregious fees will be considered a victory by the users while in reality the company basically got what they were hoping for.
It’s like on a Turkish bazaar when you buy a fake jersey. He will ask for 800 lira and then you talk him down to 400 and feel like a winner, but the jersey is maybe worth 100.
Companies don’t desire to be treated as people under the law, the 1886 Supreme Court decision that interpreted the 14th Amendment as corporate personhood was the most racist decision we still live with today. The amendment was written to grant freed slaves citizenship, but the same greedy capitalists that benefited from slavery used it to begin the neofeudaism that still enriches the few while causing suffering for the masses today and it’s only getting worse. Don’t “love” any corporation, they’re literally born out of the greatest evil in US history.
That’s not an apology.
And if we’re talking about apologies and corrective action: the only real way forward is a completely fresh executive team at Unity. Anything short of that means they’re simply going to try this all again in a slightly different fashion once focus on their clusterfuck dies down.
The real question is whether or not people will continue to use Unity. Apologies mean less than nothing in a case like this regardless of whether or not they’re sincere. This is a company that’s shown their cards. Why give them business when you can go elsewhere?
Personally, this has made me start looking more into Godot. I’ve got a project I’m going to be working on that I was going to do in Unreal, but this Unity stuff has made me skeptical of tying my creative output to any one company that can’t be easily replaced. Getting that wrapped up with a proprietary platform that comes with licensing that might change just seems like a bad idea now. Maybe Unreal is okay today, but what about down the road? Why start building into a system that there’s no guarantee won’t enshittify a few years down the road?
I’d like to get my major mechanical stuff squared away and develop a visual style and then tell more stories without reinventing the wheel every time. Once I’ve got my assets built on top of an engine, I’d rather add to it over time than arbitrarily scrap it every few years. Updating and refactoring is all well and good, but I’m not in it to code the same system over and over.
That makes Godot look pretty appealing, and any closed source corporate offering look pretty shady.
Shareholders need to demand board change, I doubt it’s entirely on C.
A trifecta of VC and PE firms own a majority share or Unity’s shares. Those guys love a monetization scheme, which is all this is. The board’s not going anywhere.
“Well I’m sorry that you feel that way.”
That’s how this comes off. The ultimate non-apology. Fuck off, Unity.
Edit: something to consider is that Unity intentionally made this change as terrible as it is so that they could put out this apology, and roll things back to where their main goal was the entire time. It’s kind of like when you list your house for a high price so that it gets negotiated down to the price range you wanted from the outset. Don’t be shocked if Unity changes this a bit but keeps it essentially the same. It means they can then reflect on history and go “hey, remember that time we listened to the developers?” while still fucking them over.
They seem to think we’re all stupid.
That’s not always true. People were claiming the same tactic is what reddit was doing, but they’ve actually stuck with their original pricing.
Well yeah but reddit really just wanted all third party apps gone so that they could force everyone to use their shit app.
hindsight is 20-20. My point is not to jump to conclusions, nobody knows what is going on through their head. They may be really that fucking stupid, as most executive staff tend to be.
I’d say greed is right up there with greed and “don’t give a shit”
Reading this suggests they’re just greedy assholes and nothing more.
Ding ding ding, that is almost always the answer
This is called the “Door in the face method” of bargaining. Start with a request so high and absurd that you “slam the door in their face” because it’s so absurd.
The next time they try, they’ll come back with an offer that sounds far more reasonable than the original request. Since you’re still primed with the previous context, your brain makes it sound less bad than it probably is ("At least it’s not the first offer!). You’re more likely to accept after this.
The opposite technique is called “foot in the door”, start with a small request (get your foot in the door) and then increase the ask after the small request goes over.
Seems like they assumed their original foot-in-the-door would hold the slam, here.
Anyone who still uses Unity for their new projects after this would have to be completely stupid. Of course they’ll jack up the pricing again as soon as they can.
Some groups have invested a lot of time and money into a product based on Unity.
Let me introduce you to the concept of sunk cost.
In economics and business decision-making, a sunk cost (also known as retrospective cost) is a cost that has already been incurred and cannot be recovered.
The money already spent cannot be gotten back. Spending more continuing to develop using Unity instead of cutting your losses and moving on is a fools game.
I’m generally a bit weary of the sunk cost fallacy being absolute.
I think, in most cases it will be though. Furthermore, I think a developer needs to do a cost analysis to know for sure. They should include the consideration that if Unity get away with this AND it makes them more money, they will gouge for more.
For any new developer, this has to be a huge red flag.
Many of these groups are small indie companies or single individuals, with limited money. This is more an all in scenario then sunk cost.
I am not saying it is an easy or pleasant decision.
Many of these groups are small indie companies or single individuals
And they are the people who will be least able to afford this price increase or the next or the next.
It sucks but that is the reality.
Cut your losses and move on.
A lot of developers have really tight profit margins and/or their current projects heavily rely on what Unity provides. “Cutting their losses and move on” would mean bankruptcy. They might be able to switch to other engines in the future but right now leaving Unity behind is not a valid decision for them.
If you really cared for feedback, you would have consulted game developers and your own employees on this scheme to hear it was a bad idea.
No matter what the revised plan is (besides a total reversal), the aim here is to do the switch part of a bait-and-switch, to change the rules on people who have invested their time and experience with Unity.
