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Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

farewell.bostonunitygroup.com

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Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#111

Post by hightrix »

TylerE wrote: post #13
asynchronous wrote: post #2

Unity really showing the world how to tank a business by letting a few MBA’s at the top make a decision for profit.

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.

I would argue that Unity is about 10x the size it needs to be. They could shed a significant portion of their employees and still produce a good product.

They are in the perpetual growth trap that so many of these companies fall into when they get bigger than a niche audience

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#112

Post by hartator »

I remember at a game trade show, there was an Unity stand. I was really excited by Unity at the time, was in line to ask the representation random questions, and was trying to get my friend excited as well. The representant (I think some head of Sales) took my excitement talking to my friend as impatience and was rude about us "he is busy and us having to wait our time" when we weren't trying to talk to him. We left and never got excited by Unity again. I guess that was a premise of things to come.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#113

Post by InitialLastName »

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.

Avid also just did a deal to go private under a private equity group; I wouldn't say the prognosis is looking good.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#114

Post by prerok »

nwiswell wrote: post #97
JohnFen wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you drink from a river and get cholera, would you drink from that river again in the future? No. Further, I'd stop drinking untreated water from all rivers. (Just answering your hypothetical. I spend a lot of time in the wilderness and wouldn't drink untreated water from a river or lake to begin with.) This effect, though, has happened with software for me years ago. Enough bad actors exist that I've reached the…

I was going to observe that another totally-understandable reaction to getting fucked in a business transaction (or getting cholera from untreated water) is to begin researching everyone you do business with (or testing/treating all the water you drink). I may be stretching the limits of the analogy here, but either way that "verify, then trust" approach is more work than "adaptive blissful ignorance", and a lot of p…

The thing is, I think no amount of research would have pointed to this possibility. At least it would not a couple of years back. The mere fact that this group in OP exists/existed would have pointed to their trustworthiness.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#115

Post by Gansejunge »

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.

I was wondering why the name Avid was familiar but also had a negative connotation in my head, then I remembered it was from a YouTube video [1] about how horrible its interface is.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dKx1wnXClcI

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#116

Post by prerok »

infamia wrote: post #105
brookst wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

People change but cultures endure. The larger the organization becomes, the more this is true.

Except when they let go a few key personnel and mandate culture change from above. It's not as enduring, unfortunately, even if most of us would like it so.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#117

Post by squeaky-clean »

maccard wrote: post #83
SolarNet wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unity isn't close to profitable, and never has been This isn't really true though, their core business is and was profitable if you exclude all the of acquisitions junk, stock shenanigans, and loans to pay for it they have been doing. It just didn't have the margins expected of a public company and so they did all that other junk to pump those numbers.

> This isn't really true though, their core business is and was profitable if you exclude all the of acquisitions junk, stock shenanigans, and loans to pay for it they have been doing. "We're profitable if you ignore all the things we're spending money on"

> if you ignore all the things

Not all the things, just their unprofitable side business attempts. It's like knowing a guy with a well paying job who always complains he is broke. But he conveniently never mentions that he's spending $4500 per month on a Lamborghini lease.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#118

Post by Mystery-Machine »

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…

Have you ever heard of Twitter and Reddit?

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#119

Post by wilburTheDog »

robocat wrote: post #95
malfist wrote: post #6

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

Cory Doctorow coined it to mean something different from how it is now used: Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die. I call this enshittification. It now means something like "the process where products or servic…

I don't see that much of a difference between those two definitions. Cory's explanation was more specific, but it still referred to a service taking steps to be more profitable and in the process making the experience shittier for users and business customers.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#120

Post by squeaky-clean »

bastardoperator wrote: post #74
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.

> it's cheaper in the long run.

It depends on how much you're actually selling. Consider how much would it cost to hire devs to build your own custom engine? (Don't forget console support). Your game needs to pull in 20x higher than that in revenue for it to be worth the choice over a 5% rev share.

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