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Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

farewell.bostonunitygroup.com

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Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#31

Post by fooqux »

solardev wrote: post #16
miohtama wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is why it is good to build on the top of open source solutions

Does that really help? Even when open-source, it's only a matter of time before an Oracle or Google or Microsoft or Meta takes it over (if they didn't develop it to begin with). I wonder if it's less about the source code here but about the people involved, and how to prevent a consolidation of capital and power in the hands of greedy financiers. Maybe developing the projects as nonprofits (like Blender or Mozilla),…

> Does that really help? Even when open-source, it's only a matter of time before an Oracle or Google or Microsoft or Meta takes it over (if they didn't develop it to begin with).

Of course it can help. For example, when Oracle bought MySQL, it was forked and we got Maria. When Emby pissed off people, it was forked and we got Jellyfin. There are plenty of other examples.

Whether or not you like these products, the point is that open source gives the community the ability to continue development if the original project gets bought and/or otherwise changes its philosophy for the worse.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#32

Post by dylan604 »

raytopia wrote: post #17
dylan604 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i remember back when Avid decided they were no longer going to offer a Mac version of their NLEs because Apple's new machines were only going to have 3 expansion slots. while admittedly, there were probably a much smaller number of affected users than the Unity decision, it did cause a huge amount of turmoil. urban legend has people dumping their Avid stations on the doorstep of the Avid offices. Avid survived. Unity…

Unity will survive but this could be the start of a steady decline of users, which isn't good for any game engine. Leads to a loss of knowledge which makes the engine even less popular. Ghe whole situation is somewhat similar to when GameMaker Studio switched to subscription model.

what would be better for the community would be not just a decline in devs using the engine, but also the devs working on the engine. working for Unity should now be a stain just like working for FB/socials/ad-tech. there will be tons of people willing to do it, but hopefully the great minds leave the rot

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#33

Post by linkdd »

nottorp wrote: post #23
solardev wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does that really help? Even when open-source, it's only a matter of time before an Oracle or Google or Microsoft or Meta takes it over (if they didn't develop it to begin with). I wonder if it's less about the source code here but about the people involved, and how to prevent a consolidation of capital and power in the hands of greedy financiers. Maybe developing the projects as nonprofits (like Blender or Mozilla),…

> Even when open-source, it's only a matter of time before an Oracle or Google or Microsoft or Meta takes it over Except you can fork the last open source version and continue as before. See ... mariadb?

MariaDB, OpenTofu, etc... Those are the exceptions.

Forking is easy. Maintaining a fork, keeping the quality and innovation alive, and the community involved is hard.

There are many more failed forks than successful forks. So saying "you can fork" is utopist at best. Sure you can, but you'll probably be the only one maintaining it and it will slowly rot as there won't be a community to keep it bug-free and compatible with new hardware/standards.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#34

Post by nottorp »

jimmaswell wrote: post #20
soulbadguy wrote: post #9

like getting blood from a stone... Most of those open-source companies turn "evil" stories (like IBM/redhat ) seems to follow the same pattern. IMO, there is a limit of the amount of value one can extract from those venture. Trying to increase revenue beyond a certain limit will always result very bad outcome. But i also think it's a lesson for the gaming industry. Why is something as core are a game engine, not some…

Redhat is evil now?

... more like dead for all practical purposes ?

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#35

Post by gs17 »

generalizations wrote: post #24
TylerE wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate... Unity isn't close to profitable, and never has been. At some point money has to be made or the lights get turned off.

Well, that kinda makes sense then. If they weren't profitable, then this could be seen as a last-ditch survival strategy.

This strategy is still pretty awful. If 2.5% revenue share after $1,000,000 would be enough to survive on, they probably could have opened with matching Unreal's 5% instead of all the bullshit and won people over.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#36

Post by jameshart »

miohtama wrote: post #7
kdottt wrote: post #5

"More importantly, we've seen how easily and flippantly an executive-led business decision can risk bankrupting the studios we've worked so hard to build, threaten our livelihoods as professionals, and challenge the longevity of our industry. The Unity of today isn't the same company that it was when the group was founded, and the trust we used to have in the company has been completely eroded." Profoundly sad, and c…

This is why it is good to build on the top of open source solutions

Great advice… Unless you’re a game studio who wants to ship on PlayStation and Switch some day. If you want to build on an engine that lets you target proprietary platforms your options are, in practice, limited.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#37

Post by thorncorona »

codetrotter wrote: post #30
jimmaswell wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Redhat is evil now?

https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2023/im-done-red-hat-enter...

Hard to run an open source enterprise company when Amazon's playbook is to take your shit for free and host it themselves.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#38

Post by MrRadar »

Buttons840 wrote: post #21
malfist wrote: post #6

I think enshitification will be the word of the year this year

I have mixed feelings about the word "enshitification". Like a politician shutting down thought and debate by simply labeling something "socialism", half the people using the word don't really know what it means, or at least, they don't know the original meaning. The word comes to be fake form of intellectual sophistication. A politician says the word and people think "oh, he knows the fancy word, he must be right",…

"Enshittification" is not a hard word. It's describes itself: "En-" to make, "shit" bad, "-ification" the process of; in sum the process of making something bad. I think everyone understands that the products and services they use daily are getting worse and now they have a word to describe that experience. I think that by basing itself on the mild swear "shit" it actually distances itself from academic jargon or other fancy words to try to be something that is closer to the common person.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#39

Post by MrDrMcCoy »

TylerE wrote: post #18
dylan604 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

i remember back when Avid decided they were no longer going to offer a Mac version of their NLEs because Apple's new machines were only going to have 3 expansion slots. while admittedly, there were probably a much smaller number of affected users than the Unity decision, it did cause a huge amount of turmoil. urban legend has people dumping their Avid stations on the doorstep of the Avid offices. Avid survived. Unity…

Avid is still around, but it's not looking very healthy. They've fired whole dev teams - one of whom was largely hired by a competitor, who have now developed a competing project that is eating Avid alive in that (fiarly niche) space.

Where can we read more about this? I'm at least curious to know who that competitor is.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#40

Post by Aditya_Garg »

yoyohello13 wrote: post #28
kdottt wrote: post #5

"More importantly, we've seen how easily and flippantly an executive-led business decision can risk bankrupting the studios we've worked so hard to build, threaten our livelihoods as professionals, and challenge the longevity of our industry. The Unity of today isn't the same company that it was when the group was founded, and the trust we used to have in the company has been completely eroded." Profoundly sad, and c…

"Good will" is an asset just like any other to be spent when the time is right. Sometimes a company will make the wrong bet and accidentally go out of business. Far more often there is a ton of backlash, their reputation goes in the tank, then they spend the next couple years building good will back up until the majority of people forget all about the past transgressions. Meanwhile the unpopular decision makes stacks…

Besides Reddit, do you have other examples ?
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