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Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

farewell.bostonunitygroup.com

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Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#71

Post by xmprt »

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…

I think it's a self regulating system. If the product was so important and so many people relied on it (eg. Unity) where a cash grab by the Unity development team results in the entire community considering switching to a completely different product (eg. Godot), then I'm sure the community would rather fork the existing product and make it better. On the other hand, if the product wasn't that important or the cash grab wasn't that bad, then fewer people will be likely to fork and the current product will continue to be the mainline. Open source gives users more options which is always better.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#72

Post by shmatt »

malfist wrote: post #6

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

I think we need to decide on its meaning first. Most people these days use it as a death mark. Except the original op-ed often quoted used Meta, Uber, TikTok and Google - companies who make billions of clean profit per quarter, and more profits than they ever have, as examples

Enshitification = more profits is unfortunately correct in my mind, but most people use it with a much different meaning. I don't think Unity is going to break all profit records soon

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#73

Post by TylerE »

dylan604 wrote: post #65
TylerE wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

man, i was hoping this was going to be a serious discussion on NLEs. instead, we get some niche product of a niche field. i'm not really sure this counts. that's like the team that works for lighting within Unity left to build a new tool that exports settings to JSON.

You're being overly dismissive. There are thousands of people working in such software every day - from serious composers, professional music engravers, orchestra libraians, down to church choirmasters and the like.

It's a several hundred dollar product that supports a dev team in the low double digits. It's niche, but it's not THAT niche.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#74

Post by bastardoperator »

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…

Why would I even want to build a game if I'm going to have to give between 4-8% of everything I make to steam and unity? I completely understand why nearly every AAA studio builds their own client and game engine, it's cheaper in the long run.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#75

Post by ditonal »

dylan604 wrote: post #32
raytopia wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

That’s the opposite of what would be better. We need more engineer solidarity not more divisiveness. Give me a list of your past employers and I can guarantee I can find some sketchball business practice you indirectly contributed to and make some tenuous argument for you to be blackballed.

95% of shitty tech industry practices can be root caused to people identify more strongly with their employer than with their profession. We desperately need a professional organization / union with teeth and the main thing that should be shunned is rhetoric that divides rather than unites it .

Engineers can hang together or hang separately.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#76

Post by malfist »

Buttons840 wrote: post #57
malfist wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All it is is a fun sounding word for "rent-seeking"

It's supposed to refer to a company's priorities shifting away from the customer's, "rent seeking" is instead about profiting from owning limited resources. They are different things.

Fair point. There is more nuance than just rent seeking.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#77

Post by neilv »

brookst wrote: post #49
yoyohello13 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 year…

Does it depend on the company culture, which can persist awhile?

For example, the first company that comes to mind has seemed to have shameless underhandedness deep in its DNA, and to exhibit its malevolent side each new chance it gets, as much as it can. This has repeated over the course of decades, and over multiple top leadership changes.

If it's true that certain kinds of underhandedness are in that company's DNA, to a degree unlike most other companies, I wonder how deep they'd have to decapitate the org chart, to cut out the roots of that culture. Including SVPs? VPs? Further? It's in the board, too?

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#78

Post by harpiaharpyja »

dbingham wrote: post #4
ethbr1 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^H^Hby going public without a business model.

I feel like we've seen a bunch of businesses show what happens when you take private capital and scale on a community based product with out a clear business model that doesn't involve retroactively screwing the community in some way. I mean, Unity's just the latest example. Before it came Hashicorp and Docker. I'm sure we could think of many more examples if we tried. And what's really frustrating is that if these b…

Exactly. I think what we are seeing is the result of decision makers at these businesses now having to report to investors who are essentially outsiders to the community. Their only stake or interest in the operation comes from having dumped a bunch of money into it. But now they get to call the shots or if not, exert a ton of pressure.

I think the takeaway is that businesses built around a community really should not go public.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#79

Post by dickersnoodle »

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…

u/spez from Reddit would like a word...

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#80

Post by red_hare »

Aditya_Garg wrote: post #40
yoyohello13 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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 ?

Etsy. Ever since the 2017 activist investor event, it feels like they've been trading good will with sellers for profits.
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