HorrorScope wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 14:34:

Digitalfiends wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 14:25:

HorrorScope wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 13:44:
So many publicly traded companies are hurting for growth, they are trying to monetize anything. My company is now wanting subscriptions on some products and micro-fee's on api's which we never had. We also raise our rates every year, that up to this point was supposed to be all we needed to recoup costs. They then try to compare our model to Netfilx and they aren't the same at all, it's like telling a 1/3 of the story when they do that. But it is either find more revenue or layoffs, because Wall Street doesn't sleep.

The continual pursuit of constant economic growth is leading to so many societal problems (corporate greed, mistreatment of workers, poor mental health, layoffs, etc) and at a certain point, is unstainable. The singular pursuit of maximizing profits has definitely led to the downfall of many companies.

I used to love working with Unity but honestly, Unreal Engine is the better product as a whole. I think it's going to be hard for Unity to come back from this. I do hope they survive, if only to provide an alternative/competition to Unreal Engine, but I'm not optimistic.

Unity needed its Fortnite to make all problems vanish. Yeah we're possibly coming into a bad era, this is pure numbers, if we don't produce kids it falls apart. Boomers exiting, generations not taking their place in sheer numbers. It's a real problem that isn't a conspiracy. The shit end is we don't need more people now, that causes other issues. Some are looking at this as a 25 year correction, we'll see.

Yep. Demographics drives everything. People are the beating heart of every economy. Often ignored, like air for mammals or water for fish. But if people ain't making babies, your economy is going to shrink.

Steele Johnson wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 16:29:
Once they realize that they can't recover from the damage they've created, they'll probably change their name hoping that it will give the impression that it's a completely different and new company

Hey it worked for 'X'.

Umm....

* REMOVED *

This comment was deleted on Sep 18, 2023, 19:39. Reason: Enough political shitposting

Riahderymnmaddog wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 17:24:
Am I the only one here seeing the pure geniuses of charging a fee retroactively? Think of how many rocket ships Jeff Bezos will be able to fly once he raises prices on Amazon music retroactively, .25 cents for every song you have ever played...

I'm going to retroactively charge Blue for every post I have made on this site since joining. Just $1 each. I should be able to get a new car after he pays up.

Steele Johnson wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 16:29:
Once they realize that they can't recover from the damage they've created, they'll probably change their name hoping that it will give the impression that it's a completely different and new company

Might I suggest, "Disunity."

m1llion204 wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 13:28:
Even if they roll back everything, Unity will still be dead to me

As Greentiger said the other day, Unity can't unring this bell.

Am I the only one here seeing the pure geniuses of charging a fee retroactively? Think of how many rocket ships Jeff Bezos will be able to fly once he raises prices on Amazon music retroactively, .25 cents for every song you have ever played...

Think of kids in college being trained on Unity, just burning the dollars.

Once they realize that they can't recover from the damage they've created, they'll probably change their name hoping that it will give the impression that it's a completely different and new company

Flatline wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 14:21:

Jim wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 13:13:
eh, any time a company makes major changes like this... it is probably because they are losing money and someone gets tasked with turning the company around. similar to the D&D ruleset licensing fiasco. when you look at unreal engine every .1 release they do is big news. Unity, not so much. What have they done recently? their engine can be used to produce great looking games, but it also produces a lot of junk.

Unity has a big profitability problem but it's kind of in a death spiral now. As I understand it they don't support their engine very well to begin with despite being an insanely bloated company.

Unity has had major issues with profitability for a long time and despite this they still went and tossed billions at various companies (like ironSource). If they had managed to push ironSource ads onto every Unity game, they could potentially have turned a profit due to the massive amount of Unity games out there. With some of the clauses in the original announcement, that certainly seems like the end goal.

Depending on what you need (as well as your license), official support for the engine ranges from excellent to non-existant.

Yeah, blame your customers for their stupidity. Always a good strategy in an apology.

Will be interesting to watch how this bonfire turns out over the next weeks

I have it on good authority (not a trust me bro source) that Sweeney has switched from lighting his cigars with $50 bills to $100 bills. He is also getting facial massages to alleviate the pain from grinning 24/7 (yes, he can not even wipe the grin off his face when he sleeps!). Finally, he is receiving carpal tunnel syndrome treatment because his wrist is sore from signing thousands of thank-you letters to the Unity management.

El Pit wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 14:22:
Unity boss: "Damn, we tried. Okay, change some wordings and we will try again in 18 to 24 months."

Well... it does seem to work, at least with gamers. Developers may have longer attention spans.

HorrorScope wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 13:44:
So many publicly traded companies are hurting for growth, they are trying to monetize anything.

That is the problem with capitalism and the ridiculous salaries of CEOs. All of them feel the need to squeeze every last penny out of the workers. They have already done those games so now they have to move back to squeezing the customer even more. Corporations only live to feed the wealth of their already wealthy shareholders. They are a parasite on society almost as much as lawyers.

Quboid wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 13:38:

Prez wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 13:14:
Half of my recommended videos on YouTube are by developers explaining how to transition from Unity to another engine like they themselves are doing. I doubt that anything that Unity does going forward will make a difference.

I wish I could start a poll - any guesses on which company Riccitello will fuck up next?

Supposedly since the merger with ironSource, the board is nearly all investment managers. If John Riccitiello quits, it's more likely be because he's sick of being the person that the even worse people use as a human shield.

Yeah, even worse than the guy who wanted to charge $1 to reload in Battlefield.

rip Unity.

Sorry, but absolutely zero sympathy for Riccitello. His history of inept, incompetent management in the videogame industry that made it a worse hobby for all involved means he gets nothing but disdain from me.

Heh, I love it. This won't really help. Only developers who are pretty much finished with their products (looking at you, Cities Skylines 2) are going to be happy about it, and it still won't get them to use Unity for the next project. *I* certainly wouldn't take that gamble.

Digitalfiends wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 14:25:

HorrorScope wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 13:44:
So many publicly traded companies are hurting for growth, they are trying to monetize anything. My company is now wanting subscriptions on some products and micro-fee's on api's which we never had. We also raise our rates every year, that up to this point was supposed to be all we needed to recoup costs. They then try to compare our model to Netfilx and they aren't the same at all, it's like telling a 1/3 of the story when they do that. But it is either find more revenue or layoffs, because Wall Street doesn't sleep.

The continual pursuit of constant economic growth is leading to so many societal problems (corporate greed, mistreatment of workers, poor mental health, layoffs, etc) and at a certain point, is unstainable. The singular pursuit of maximizing profits has definitely led to the downfall of many companies.

I used to love working with Unity but honestly, Unreal Engine is the better product as a whole. I think it's going to be hard for Unity to come back from this. I do hope they survive, if only to provide an alternative/competition to Unreal Engine, but I'm not optimistic.

Unity needed its Fortnite to make all problems vanish. Yeah we're possibly coming into a bad era, this is pure numbers, if we don't produce kids it falls apart. Boomers exiting, generations not taking their place in sheer numbers. It's a real problem that isn't a conspiracy. The shit end is we don't need more people now, that causes other issues. Some are looking at this as a 25 year correction, we'll see.

HorrorScope wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 13:44:
So many publicly traded companies are hurting for growth, they are trying to monetize anything. My company is now wanting subscriptions on some products and micro-fee's on api's which we never had. We also raise our rates every year, that up to this point was supposed to be all we needed to recoup costs. They then try to compare our model to Netfilx and they aren't the same at all, it's like telling a 1/3 of the story when they do that. But it is either find more revenue or layoffs, because Wall Street doesn't sleep.

The continual pursuit of constant economic growth is leading to so many societal problems (corporate greed, mistreatment of workers, poor mental health, layoffs, etc) and at a certain point, is unstainable. The singular pursuit of maximizing profits has definitely led to the downfall of many companies.

I used to love working with Unity but honestly, Unreal Engine is the better product as a whole. I think it's going to be hard for Unity to come back from this. I do hope they survive, if only to provide an alternative/competition to Unreal Engine, but I'm not optimistic.

Unity boss: "Damn, we tried. Okay, change some wordings and we will try again in 18 to 24 months."

Jim wrote on Sep 18, 2023, 13:13:
eh, any time a company makes major changes like this... it is probably because they are losing money and someone gets tasked with turning the company around. similar to the D&D ruleset licensing fiasco. when you look at unreal engine every .1 release they do is big news. Unity, not so much. What have they done recently? their engine can be used to produce great looking games, but it also produces a lot of junk.

Unity has a big profitability problem but it's kind of in a death spiral now. As I understand it they don't support their engine very well to begin with despite being an insanely bloated company.

I think there would have been grumbling but understanding if they didn't try to retroactively monetize published games by marking old installs towards their quota. If they had done this moving forward with games licensed/published in 2024 along with a new terms of service for newly published games they probably would have weathered that storm better. Better yet, they should have talked to/worked with devs before springing this with a basically 100 day warning period.

Lots of unenforced screw ups that keep happening. They told a dev that they didn't consider Planned Parenthood a charity, even though it's registered as one, and even more insane they said that a children's hospital wasn't considered a charity but a political group.

Dragging politics into this is a real "hold my beer" kind of moment when the situation is already on fire.