Unity's oldest community announces dissolution • Hacker News Board

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#41

Post by rany_ » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 7:12 PM UTC

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…

I guess it's a gamble on whether you could gain users faster than you'd be losing them. Either way I don't think this can be the case with Unity due to how niche their product is with many alternatives (including free ones).

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#42

Post by duped » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 7:14 PM UTC

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…

Reminds me of something I once heard a VP say at a very old, established company. Something along the lines of, "Our brand is trust. It took 90 years to build it, but it would take just one day to destroy it."

The point he was making was that this old, established company's biggest asset was its brand, and its brand identity was just "trust" (they made professional products, and others could undercut them, but pros would always return to buy from them because they knew they would get what they paid for).

It's the kind of attitude I think every toolmaker (software or otherwise) should keep in mind. Professionals value trust more than they do dollars in their pocket, and the companies with the best reputation and longevity understand that.

But also that company was privately owned by a family, and their name is still over the front door. I think that when the execs answer to people whose name is synonymous with the products and culture of the organization, avoiding short term profit motivated garbage strategy is part of your MO.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#43

Post by nottorp » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 7:15 PM UTC

linkdd wrote: post #33

nottorp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

However that doesn't matter when you have an existing game title already in the market. You just maintain your title, which you need to do anyway.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#44

Post by azemetre » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 7:15 PM UTC

thorncorona wrote: post #37

codetrotter wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wouldn't using an AGPL license be better for this than just GPL?

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#45

Post by Willish42 » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 7:15 PM UTC

I wish I had a large enough Twitter following to make a public claim about this before Unity "went back" on the first version of the recently-announced pricing changes, but I was nearly certain this was an intentional move to make the "Update on our update" second version more palatable.

There's probably a wiki link somewhere to the Proper Noun PR phenomenon in business school for this strategy, but the "terrible plan then less terrible plan but still worse than before the initial terrible plan" strategy seems like essentially a confirmation Unity is not to be trusted for small developers. It's sad to lose a great dev community but it sounds like BUG is making the right call here.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#46

Post by kevingadd » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 7:15 PM UTC

gs17 wrote: post #35

generalizations wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah their new pricing model is quite literally more expensive than Unreal for many of their customers (mostly the ones who make less money - for massive studios it's cheaper) and it's ALSO more complex to comply with. A simple "we're doing revshare now, and the per-seat fee is going away" would have been viewed more favorably I think.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#47

Post by TylerE » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 7:16 PM UTC

MrDrMcCoy wrote: post #39

TylerE wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorico

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#48

Post by amrocha » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 7:16 PM UTC

linkdd wrote: post #33

nottorp wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

The idea is that the community decides on a fork and maintainers move over.

Are those really the exception? Do we have examples of large projects that made a monetization TOS change and didn't immediately get forked?

The only one I can think of is Docker maybe?

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#49

Post by brookst » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 7:17 PM UTC

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…

But isn’t that as it should be?

Just like you never step in the same river twice, you never do business with the same company twice. Staff and executives change over time, and companies shift for better or worse.

Should we hold grudges against brands for things totally different people did 10? 20? 50? years ago? That seems weird to me.

Unity specifically deserves loss of trust and all the pain they get. But in 5 years, or 10 years or whatever, should we assume they are less trustworthy than other companies because of what this group of managers did?

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#50

Post by amrocha » Mon, Sep 25, 2023, 7:17 PM UTC

jameshart wrote: post #36

miohtama wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Are open source tools banned on playstation and switch?