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Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

farewell.bostonunitygroup.com

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Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#331

Post by chillfox »

linkdd wrote: post #276
danparsonson wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it's quite common for game dev studios to make custom mods to engines (source code to Unreal engine available here for example: https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/ue-on-github ). The idea with forking an open source engine as a game dev would not necessarily be to maintain it for the community, but to bring it in house and ensure continuity for your own projects.

That's fair, but if we consider the amount of game dev studio that have the resources (time and money) to do that, versus the amount of indie game devs and small studio who do not, I'm not sure that it's fair to say "you can just fork it". The examples of successful forks are anecdotal, they are the exceptions not the rule. This is survivor's bias.

I can't think of a single example of an unsuccessful fork of a large project caused by a monetization change. So I am not convinced that success is the exception for that case.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#332

Post by nextaccountic »

taikahessu wrote: post #134

I have a hard time coming up with a worse decision in the history of game industry. Why did it come to this? Just more profits? I mean the landscape is highly competitive with free tools getting better and Unreal Engine eating all the highlights. Unity's stock price was even before this decision a third of it's all time high. I mean there must've been a dramatic cultural twist quite some time ago. That would've lead…

> Why did it come to this? Just more profits?

It seemed to be specifically aimed at free to play mobile games - and if studios really had to pay per install, it would basically kill this entire genre on Unity (because it would count every install of f2p games, even though people aren't buying them - so the economics don't work out, and the more popular the game, the harder is to pay the install fees).

Except that.. they later announced that they would waive the install fees if mobile devs migrated to their ad solution. So they didn't want anyone to actually pay the install fee; the idea is that game devs would need to choose between shutting down their game, or using Unity's ad tech.

So in the end this was all a ploy to get ad revenue, which is analogous to revenue share, but for f2p games.

Here are some sources for this (I just found at Google, but I saw this discussed in many places)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/16j6cip/ironsource...

https://mobilegamer.biz/unity-is-offering-a-runtime-fee-waiv...

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#333

Post by tapoxi »

jameshart wrote: post #174
follower wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That would be an issue with e.g. GPL-licensed game engine but not an Open Source licensed one (e.g. MIT). Obligatory relevant Godot-related links: * https://docs.godotengine.org/en/4.1/tutorials/platform/conso... * https://godotengine.org/article/godot-consoles-all-you-need-... * https://w4games.com/2023/08/06/w4-games-unveils-w4-consoles-... Couple of Godot-based games available on console: * https://en.wikipedia.or…

Providing these links without context, after claiming that MIT licensed engines won’t have any issues, sort of implies that open source engines can be used fine to target consoles. The fact developers have been able to ship Godot games on console doesn’t help much unless those developers are willing to share whatever proprietary engine-to-console-SDK-interface code they wrote. Unity and Unreal, in contrast, will happ…

W4Games, owned by one of the core developers of Godot, will happily license a plugin module that allows you to do console export. So there's no difference here, it's just a plugin instead of part of the engine itself.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#334

Post by [deleted] »

015a wrote: post #241
taikahessu wrote: post #134

I have a hard time coming up with a worse decision in the history of game industry. Why did it come to this? Just more profits? I mean the landscape is highly competitive with free tools getting better and Unreal Engine eating all the highlights. Unity's stock price was even before this decision a third of it's all time high. I mean there must've been a dramatic cultural twist quite some time ago. That would've lead…

One could argue that Microsoft's "no game sharing" decision at the beginning of Xbox One, right off the heals of a generation that experienced both high success, but also extremely high costs (RROD recalls, estimates say it cost them over $1.1B), was a bigger one. It seems unnaturally likely to me that single decision by Mattrick's Xbox leadership is the largest component to Xbox One's relatively lower success (58M s…

[deleted]

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#335

Post by Andrew_nenakhov »

raincole wrote: post #250
Mystery-Machine wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever heard of Twitter and Reddit?

Since when Twitter has "good will"? I'm sure even before Musk, most people considered Twitter the equivalent of soap opera. It was bad. It was tasteless. It was a time waster. But people just need to have something to scroll. Unity, on the other hand, was actually loved by some devs. Of course it was buggy from time to time, but it was huge time-saver especially for mobile games.

In 2010..2012 Twitter was always in the news because of how they screwed the developers again. So no, Musk's policies are nothing new for Twitter.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#336

Post by mcv »

spl757 wrote: post #279
Willish42 wrote: post #45

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 pla…

If that was the plan, it was pretty stupid. I prefer the simpler theory that this was just plain old greed and hubris.

It could be both: a stupid anchoring idea driven by greed and hubris.

But the fact that they tried to hide the original terms suggests to me they thought they could get away with the original plan, despite its obvious illegality.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#337

Post by olodus »

LoganDark wrote: post #322
MattRix wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way this was intentional. First you’d have to argue that only the top execs were aware of this, because a bunch of Unity employees quit due to this. Secondly, if it was a form of anchoring, they did it in the worst possible way. The problem wasn’t really the numbers, it was the base idea of using installs and having it apply retroactively. If they had just wanted to anchor they could have come out with a…

They can't ever introduce any revenue sharing because they promised not to do that and would be immensely vulnerable to lawsuits if they ever went back on that promise. This was their attempt to do something that doesn't technically count as revenue sharing.

Yeah I agree with you on this. This might have been the CEO too proud to not go back on his strong words against revenue share. That said the alternative they presented is a really stupid alternative. I don't think anyone has argued that Unity shouldn't be able to make money or increase their fees if necessary, but they should have followed their word on "stay on the terms you signed up to" and not do such a crazy version of fee increase as they did (install fee is a really stupid metric and that the install fee didn't have a roof was really bad).

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#338

Post by makeitdouble »

spookie wrote: post #281
duped wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

Your last point is very much true. If the family no longer controls their company, or even, just their founding members, it sets off a huge red flag for me. Sometimes, it's for the better. But, if I had trust in that company, it most likely stemmed from their work. There are some nice examples of founding members going above and beyond to maintain their control, which may not look like it from the get go. Ubisoft com…

On the other hand, founders stepping down as the company gets bigger or is faced with completely different challenges is usually for the better.

I can't imagine Daimler-Benz as it is now being led by the 3rd grandson of the original founder for instance. It would be a miracle if that person was well suited for directing a multi-national car manufacturer. Same way Microsoft wouldn't be the same if Bill Gates' son was at the helm.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#339

Post by oddly »

musicale wrote: post #81
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 never seen a company so quickly and completely just throw away all of their public good will. Over the past year Docker and D&D/Wizards of the Coast come to mind...

And Twitter. Albeit in a slightly different way.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#340

Post by hoseja »

theptip wrote: post #312
MattRix wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way this was intentional. First you’d have to argue that only the top execs were aware of this, because a bunch of Unity employees quit due to this. Secondly, if it was a form of anchoring, they did it in the worst possible way. The problem wasn’t really the numbers, it was the base idea of using installs and having it apply retroactively. If they had just wanted to anchor they could have come out with a…

Agreed; Hanlon’s Razor applies here.

I am willing to extend the Razor to clueless individuals at most. It does NOT apply to corporations.
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