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Collective letter to unity from game development companies

homagames.com

11–13 of 13 posts

Re: Collective letter to unity from game development companies

#11
post #5

> We are the collective voice of the game development industry—developers, game designers, artists, and business minds. What gives you the right to claim that you speak for me?

You guys really need a union.

Certainly but totally not leaded by theses companies, whose practices are the reason union should exist, a lot more than Unity. You think a 20cent fee per install is revenu cannibalization ? read one of their publisher contract.

Re: Collective letter to unity from game development companies

#12
These all seem to be mobile devs.

And I see a lot of Connect 4, Farmville Idle type games on their websites with lots of suspicious marketing and premium features. Homa Games even has a rather blatant Donut County clone.

...I get it, mobile devs gotta develop for the market, and maybe I'm missing some of their gems. But when they say things like:

> ...we’ve invested years in shaping an industry that touches the lives of millions worldwide...

> ...it has inspired us to create new immersive worlds...

It feels a bit disingenuous, like they are trying to come of as struggling indie masterpiece devs. I would feel much more sympathetic if I saw, say, Mobius Digital in there.

Unity does this too, and it bothers me even more.

Re: Collective letter to unity from game development companies

#13
post #5

> We are the collective voice of the game development industry—developers, game designers, artists, and business minds. What gives you the right to claim that you speak for me?

You guys really need a union.

I'd bet that most workers would benefit from more unionisation (including those who think they're above the need for that sort of thing — think software engineers), and most small businesses would benefit from more cooperation to protect them collectively from the giants.

But organising people is _hard_ and so we tend to give up a lot of control for a little convenience. Unity can pull the rug at any time, and there's not a damn thing you can do about it. However, if 1000s of independent game developers had a share in a similar company whose constitution dictated that it was for the benefit of those independent game developers, and they could vote out directors that allowed it to deviate from that purpose, then this scenario we're seeing today would be a lot less likely.

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