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Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

farewell.bostonunitygroup.com

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Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#161

Post by jmkd »

the-dude wrote: post #110
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…

Trust arrives on foot and leaves on horseback Dutch : Vertrouwen komt te voet en gaat te paard ( Thorbecke ) https://thalein.medium.com/trust-arrives-on-foot-and-leaves-...

Wonderful saying (a new one to me) and appreciate the explanatory article, thanks.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#162

Post by wolverine876 »

transcriptase wrote: post #94
red_hare wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I used to be able to buy amazing handmade items for reasonable prices and reasonable shipping from actual people running small storefronts on Etsy. Now it’s just another e-commerce site that’s been completely and utterly overrun with marked up Aliexpress junk and low quality copies of anything novel that gains the slightest bit of popularity. The few remaining authentic sellers now charge so much it’s laughable unles…

Where do you find authentic sellers?

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#163

Post by PrimeDirective »

wolverine876 wrote: post #158

> Over the past few years, Unity has unfortunately shifted its focus away from the games industry and away from supporting developer communities. Following the IPO, the company has seemingly put profit over all else, with several acquisitions and layoffs of core personnel. Many key systems that developers need are still left in a confusing and often incomplete state, with the messaging that advertising and revenue ma…

enshittification? No papers as far as I'm aware

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#164

Post by withinboredom »

wolverine876 wrote: post #158

> Over the past few years, Unity has unfortunately shifted its focus away from the games industry and away from supporting developer communities. Following the IPO, the company has seemingly put profit over all else, with several acquisitions and layoffs of core personnel. Many key systems that developers need are still left in a confusing and often incomplete state, with the messaging that advertising and revenue ma…

A common strategy taught in MBA school in the US, is to “hire a bunch of assholes to push non-dedicated people out of the org; then fire the assholes and hire actually good people.” This was nearly 15 years ago since I learned about it in class, I don’t remember if there is a name for it. I just remember thinking “this can’t be real.”

I wonder if people are idiotically applying the same thing to the marketplace.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#165

Post by mschuster91 »

wolverine876 wrote: post #158

> Over the past few years, Unity has unfortunately shifted its focus away from the games industry and away from supporting developer communities. Following the IPO, the company has seemingly put profit over all else, with several acquisitions and layoffs of core personnel. Many key systems that developers need are still left in a confusing and often incomplete state, with the messaging that advertising and revenue ma…

> Does anyone know the story behind this phenomenon?

People on the left wing generally call it "late stage capitalism" or "the end game of rent seeking": dumping competitors on price, subsidized by seemingly infinite amounts of VC money (domestic, foreign and dark/blood - i.e. Saudi oil money) until you achieve total and utter dominance, and then jack up prices while letting the product itself rot. After all why invest into a product's maintenance or development when your users don't have any other choice left?

> Is there a name for it?

Cory Doctorow coined the term "enshittification" [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#166

Post by _a_a_a_ »

wolverine876 wrote: post #158

> Over the past few years, Unity has unfortunately shifted its focus away from the games industry and away from supporting developer communities. Following the IPO, the company has seemingly put profit over all else, with several acquisitions and layoffs of core personnel. Many key systems that developers need are still left in a confusing and often incomplete state, with the messaging that advertising and revenue ma…

A name for it is Gouging. The motivation behind it is called Greed.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#167

Post by tetha »

kevingadd wrote: post #46
gs17 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This strategy is still pretty awful. If 2.5% revenue share after $1,000,000 would be enough to survive on, they probably could have opened with matching Unreal's 5% instead of all the bullshit and won people over.

Yeah their new pricing model is quite literally more expensive than Unreal for many of their customers (mostly the ones who make less money - for massive studios it's cheaper) and it's ALSO more complex to comply with. A simple "we're doing revshare now, and the per-seat fee is going away" would have been viewed more favorably I think.

I mean in my naive world, you'd slap some minimum revenue onto the rev-share and you'd have a clear separation between hobbyists, unsuccessful indies, indies, and huge successes. It'd be muddled in the middle, sure, but if some companies hits jackpot with a unity project, you'll know and could act on it.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#168

Post by wolverine876 »

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…

> Maintaining a fork, keeping the quality and innovation alive, and the community involved is hard.

It's hard, but the FOSS model has a long, successful history at this point.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#169

Post by CountVonGuetzli »

wolverine876 wrote: post #158

> Over the past few years, Unity has unfortunately shifted its focus away from the games industry and away from supporting developer communities. Following the IPO, the company has seemingly put profit over all else, with several acquisitions and layoffs of core personnel. Many key systems that developers need are still left in a confusing and often incomplete state, with the messaging that advertising and revenue ma…

Yes, Milton Friedman, 1970, New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/1970/09/13/archives/a-friedman-doctr...

Wikipedia has a summary on the idea behind the essay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedman_doctrine

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#170

Post by troymc »

rmbyrro wrote: post #124
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.

Expect MBAs to show up here condemning the derogatory use of MBA

Main-belt asteroids don't have a very cohesive lobby group.
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