Unity: We Have Heard You • Hacker News Board

Re: Unity: We Have Heard You

#11

Post by joe_the_user » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 11:46 PM UTC

When Hasbro, publisher of D&D, engaged in shady license shenanigans, they were able to - sort of, partially - regain trust of the community by more aggressively open sourcing the D&D license (releasing them as creative commons, I think).

But it seems like since Unity probably can't open source their product and stay in business, Unity has put their customers in a position where they can't trust the company but need to trust the company to use the product.

I'm totally outside the gaming industry but jeesh, how could anyone use that product if they had any choice about it?

Re: Unity: We Have Heard You

#12

Post by readthenotes1 » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 11:47 PM UTC

anotherhue wrote: post #3

If only there was some way to talk to their customers ahead of time. Corporate infantilism at its finest.

"This is not who we are"

Re: Unity: We Have Heard You

#13

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 11:47 PM UTC

liquidpele wrote: post #4

How about you fire the CEO that allowed such a boneheaded decision? With them in charge, how could one ever trust your company to not make such moves again?

[deleted]

Re: Unity: We Have Heard You

#14

Post by VHRanger » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 11:48 PM UTC

liquidpele wrote: post #4

How about you fire the CEO that allowed such a boneheaded decision? With them in charge, how could one ever trust your company to not make such moves again?

The problem is not really the CEO, though he's the one getting the attention here.

It's the new board that got 3 new heads from IronSource and Sequoia VC (who pushed for the IronSource merger).

Re: Unity: We Have Heard You

#15

Post by clnq » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 11:51 PM UTC

dylan604 wrote: post #8

liquidpele wrote: post #4

How about you fire the CEO that allowed such a boneheaded decision? With them in charge, how could one ever trust your company to not make such moves again?

Even Apple did similar with their proposed CSAM scanning, and after the uproar, walked that decision back. So at least Unity is at least giving a head nod towards decency. It could definitely be worse. Imagine if Musk was in charge.

“The good news is that I’ve seen worse, the bad news is that not a lot”.

I’m sure some executive did even worse. But a scorched Earth cash grab is very bad business. No need to spin it positively.

Re: Unity: We Have Heard You

#16

Post by clnq » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 11:52 PM UTC

readthenotes1 wrote: post #12

anotherhue wrote: post #3

If only there was some way to talk to their customers ahead of time. Corporate infantilism at its finest.

"This is not who we are"

“A severe and continuous lapse in judgement”

Re: Unity: We Have Heard You

#17

Post by ClimaxGravely » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 11:52 PM UTC

joe_the_user wrote: post #11

When Hasbro, publisher of D&D, engaged in shady license shenanigans, they were able to - sort of, partially - regain trust of the community by more aggressively open sourcing the D&D license (releasing them as creative commons, I think). But it seems like since Unity probably can't open source their product and stay in business, Unity has put their customers in a position where they can't trust the company but need t…

After I finish my current unity project I think I'm done with unity. It's a small non-monetized project so I'm not too worried.

Haxe + heaps.io are open source/free/MIT and can publish to webGL which was generally my unity use case so I'm looking forward to moving over to that environment.

Re: Unity: We Have Heard You

#18

Post by Twirrim » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 11:53 PM UTC

They haven't said they're reverting it. Just changing it. Could be a change for the worst.

Re: Unity: We Have Heard You

#19

Post by indymike » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 11:54 PM UTC

There are a few things Unity needs to address (I'm about to go write a couple of games because I've spent a career writing boring business software) before I will consider using Unity:

* One of Unity's spokespersons actually said that Unity could add fees at any time, and customers could not do anything about it. Aside probably being illegal in most jurisdictions, this mentality shows a complete lack of integrity and an abundance of power-drunkenness. What is being done to ensure that you can actually do a contract with Unity and trust them to live up to their obligations? (spirit of the agreement, not letter of the agreement)

* What is going to be done to make sure that Unity's executive team does not make a future mistake like this?

Finally, we'll all have to wait. The tweet said "we heard you and we're going to do something different". Not exactly a decisive move.

Re: Unity: We Have Heard You

#20

Post by marcodiego » Sun, Sep 17, 2023, 11:54 PM UTC

>> We have heard you. We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused. We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of days. Thank you for your honest and critical feedback.

I have no involvement and I'm not a game developer (except for small weekend projects). Please do not make any change "to the policy" you have announced! Your decision seemed to be the straw that was lacking for many people to support Godot and I'm rooting for them. Please don't let us down now.