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An open letter to our community

blog.unity.com

171–180 of 223 posts

Re: An open letter to our community

#171
post #38

While a good portion of developers will still be switching engines and staying there, as an AR developer, there isn't really anywhere else for me to go aside from developing with WebXR. Because of this, I am glad to see these changes.

What prevents you from using Unreal Engine? It has AR, and it seems fairly mature, though I've never tried it. Is it technical limitation/pricing?

Apple's Vision Pro support as well as Niantic's Lightship ARDK are currently only available via Unity. In general, many of the tools for new AR platforms and devices are developed for Unity first. With all of this backlash that might change in the future, but for the time being the overwhelming majority of AR support goes into Unity.

Re: An open letter to our community

#172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a horse in the Unity issue, though I've been following it loosely. I can speak to my own response to another organisation. I'd written off Reddit personally around five-six years ago. This despite having a fairly long-lived bloggy subreddit (and a small smattering of others) on the site, which I still use as a reference (despite having taken it private). It wasn't specifically on account of the specific…

> moving products or services right to the pain or tolerance threshold When did we start talking about the airline industry? But seriously, the reason it works for the airline industry is because there is literally no other alternative, unlike in this case.

Commercial office real estate is another example that comes to mind.

TINA. Until suddenly, with COVID-19, there was an alternative.

And the real estate market is now (slowly) imploding.

Re: An open letter to our community

#173
post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing to me how very smart people in corporations can convince themselves (and I mean, like really believe it) that the shit sandwich they are serving up is actually filet mignon. It's the whole "it's very hard for someone to understand something when their paycheck depends on not understanding it" issue. I've seen it a few times in person, where I'm like "How the f are we convincing ourselves of this?" 2 reco…

I haven't seen any evidence that anyone smart was involved in this decision. There's been some hints that the actual smart people (devs, customer support folks) were screaming bloody murder that it was a terrible idea, but the execs pushed it through anyway. This is yet another entry in the enormous list of evidence that becoming the head of a company does not require any intelligence. Quite the opposite, apparently.

Don't mean to defend the execs that made this decision too much, but I think saying "they're all just idiots" is probably not what really happened.

Basically, execs (especially public company execs) have the responsibility for growing revenue and earnings. Ideally they do that by just making better products, but some times you do need to "thread the needle" by charging more for your products while not pissing off customers too much.

I'm sure the devs and customer support folks were screaming bloody murder, but they are also not responsible for satisfying public markets, so it's easier to say those things without having to worry about revenue growth.

So point being, I'm sure execs thought there would be some blowback, but they probably felt it would be "manageable", and like others have said, they overestimated the irreplaceability of Unity. So its important at the exec level to have someone who can whisper in your ear, someone who does understand the requirement for growing revenue, that can honestly say "you've managed to convince yourself of this bullshit."

Re: An open letter to our community

#175
post #4

I think it might be too little too late. I do wonder if this was always the plan with classic door-in-the-face technique, but I can't imagine they would have anticipated the absolute magnitude of backlash. Their product certainly isn't as special as they clearly think it is, and the fact that they attempted to unilaterally change the contract in as egregious as way as they did is unacceptable and not behaviour I woul…

This is it, in a nutshell. People don't want the apology. They want to know that a decision like this doesn't have a chance of happening because the people in charge know it's a bad idea before it leaves the door. No one wants to be stuck in a cycle of getting fucked and then boycotting to get what they want, especially for something that their livelihood depends on. They want a product made by people they trust who…

Is Unity's CEO a product guy? It appears that the CEO does not give a shit to the product, or details of pricing policy in this particular case. If so, I could never understand how a tech company would get someone who wouldn't pay attention to such details.

Re: An open letter to our community

#178
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does this help anything when they have already demonstrated their willingness to alter terms and retrospectively add fees or alter licensing conditions. They already walked back changes once before saying “Okay you can keep the terms you agreed on your version” and went back on that promise for this clusterfuck. They burned the trust bridge and nothing they _ever_ do or can say will bring that trust back.

Compared to how other companies behave, Reddit for example, it's a good signal to their customers that they've come to their senses and reached a reasonable compromise. Also, a second mistake like this would be devastating, so hopefully Unity will handle changes better from now on.

I'm not so sure. Although the opportunity hasn't really even come up, one thing that Reddit has never done is make an agreement along the lines of, "You can use X version of this software under this license forever," in their own ToS, and then suddenly go back on it and declare that, actually, everyone they had that agreement with is now subject to arbitrary new rules. While Reddit has done some sketchy and user-hostile things in the past, it's an entirely different category.

It's a can of worms that cannot be closed. Even the apology-promises they're making right now are subject to random change, because they've made clear that they don't see their own ToS as binding for them. The article says, "We will make sure that you can stay on the terms applicable for the version of Unity editor you are using – as long as you keep using that version," and we're supposed to be reassured by that, but they've already said that exact thing before and shown that it was meaningless. What's to stop them from deciding next week that they changed their minds on their commitments again? They may have learned that they can't make such grand changes all at once without a boycott, but they could think that they can still roll out the same types of changes piecemeal over the next few years (and they might be right). What's to stop them from finding new ways to skirt around these commitments in the future (for example: adding some sort of planned obsolescence to future LTS versions to ensure that, even though you are technically allowed to use them under an old ToS, actually doing so would be completely untenable)?

Personally, I wouldn't trust anything this company says unless I have a legally binding contract with them, with clear damages defined if they break it (this may be the case for some larger studios, and that's fine for them). They can say anything they want in a PR release.

Re: An open letter to our community

#179
YouTube Unity dev channel CodeMonkey just did an excellent summary of the revised TOS changes.

https://youtu.be/m4OzqgTa_hk?si=xiuNmYNVEgNoZ-Dj&t=455

I have linked to his interactive exploration of their fee calculator, which should set many "what if" scenarios to rest.

Nobody can really say anything educated about the long-term impact on trust, but I suspect that if they can Riccitello things will return to something of a baseline and nobody will be talking about it in a year.

I trully cannot fathom Riccitello's tenure remaining viable on the other side of this. He is a dead man walking, corporately speaking.

I'm reminded of a favorite allegory which seems perfect for today:

New CEO walks into her office just as the old CEO is leaving. Old CEO says congrats and good luck; I left you three sealed envelopes which you should open in times of crisis.

Things go well until they don't. First letter says "blame your predecessor".

This fixes things until the next crisis. Second letter says "blame the technology".

Nothing could go wrong, until it does. Third letter says "write three letters".

Re: An open letter to our community

#180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That the CEO didn't write this is a major indicator that he has or will be fired.

What are they doing? Biding their time?

Maybe they are begging Acton and Ante to come back from "sabbatical" (or whatever their official statuses are).
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