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Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

farewell.bostonunitygroup.com

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Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#271

Post by willis936 »

andrewflnr wrote: post #247
harpiaharpyja wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This "for profit" thing seems like the wrong framing. Customer goodwill and community are extremely valuable. It seems like what we are looking at is more about short-termism and the distortive effects of suddenly (post-IPO) having to report to investors who are essentially outsiders to the business and have no knowledge or stake in the operation-as-an-entity-in-a-larger-ecosystem other than having dumped a bunch of…

Yep, it's not profit motive that's the problem, but short term profit above all else, including long term profit. Because in the long term, whoever is making the decision will already be gone.

I wonder how the investors are feeling about their decisions.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#272

Post by pests »

BoorishBears wrote: post #142
deely3 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think one of the reason of the group existing is because members trusted Unity. Now this trust is throwed out in trash. They can't force Unity to be good to users and they don't want to support Untity anymore. Thats all.

Given the meetup group has 2,000+ members, and they haven't had an event since the announcement, I have a hard time believing all, or even a majority, (since it's so rare for the majority to even speak) had much input on this decision. The wording sounds like a few key members felt a certain way and decided to take the ball home with them instead of stepping down and leaving whoever didn't feel as strongly hurt to co…

This is a repeat of the reddit API backlash and protest. Moderators deciding to close down subs or to change the rules to hurt reddit at the expense of their users and community.

Many of which have already backpedaled or opened up. It was important to look involved during the important parts of the protest but now that its blown over subreddits are silently reopening and back to business as usual.

Some subreddits have taken to outright lying to their community in order to continue with the reddit-bashing or as an excuse for bad moderation or other issues.

I forget the subreddit but AutoModerator comments on every post making sure to mention how the API limits don't allow them to use the tools they need to moderate properly, blah blah, etc.

Except Reddit confirmed that only ~8 bots total on the entire site were going above the free usage limits and were willing to help or work with them.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#273

Post by sobkas »

BHSPitMonkey wrote: post #259
nitwit005 wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A history of doing the right thing doesn't matter in the slightest, unless you can somehow guarantee their leadership won't change (or is unlikely to, at least).

> A history of doing the right thing doesn't matter in the slightest If we all thought this way, certainly there'd be no incentive for anyone to do the right thing at all? A good track record should be rewarded, up until the point when it stops. You shouldn't trust any company indefinitely, but there are a few that you can trust "for now".

> > A history of doing the right thing doesn't matter in the slightest

> If we all thought this way, certainly there'd be no incentive for anyone to do the right thing at all? A good track record should be rewarded, up until the point when it stops. You shouldn't trust any company indefinitely, but there are a few that you can trust "for now".

They are doing "right thing" now so later when they dominate market they will be able to squeeze you like a lemon. Scorpion and a frog situation. It's just in their nature.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#274

Post by danparsonson »

linkdd wrote: post #268
OkayPhysicist wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to innovate on the foundation of your product. It's a game engine: If it fulfilled your needs when you started, it's fulfilling your needs now. With open-source solutions A) you can't have the rug pulled from under you, as you have a perpetual license, and B) you can fix/modify/add things yourself if the business needs arise. With a proprietary solution, you might get A, but you have zero hope of B. It…

If my business is making games, I don't want to fix/modify/add things to a game engine. You do need to innovate on the foundation if you plan to maintain your game long term: new consoles support, new hardware support, obsolescence of old platforms, etc... You do not need to innovate if you plan to let your game rot and become unplayable 10-20 years later. Yes having a FOSS solution for the foundation would be ideal.…

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.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#275

Post by two_in_one »

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

Ever heard about reddit?

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#276

Post by linkdd »

danparsonson wrote: post #274
linkdd wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If my business is making games, I don't want to fix/modify/add things to a game engine. You do need to innovate on the foundation if you plan to maintain your game long term: new consoles support, new hardware support, obsolescence of old platforms, etc... You do not need to innovate if you plan to let your game rot and become unplayable 10-20 years later. Yes having a FOSS solution for the foundation would be ideal.…

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.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#277

Post by wetpaws »

golergka wrote: post #242
jconley wrote: post #179

Unity's just outgrowing the early adopters. The starving indies will move on to the next up and coming engine. Professionals will continue using Unity (and UE, which also charges royalties) because of the breadth and depth of the toolsets. I first used Unity when their WebGL system was in private beta. IIRC they tried charging royalties early on but then reverted that for marketshare, but I don't have time to look it…

I've worked in game development for a long time, including a couple of games with over 100 million installs. Professional game studios making mobile free2play games, which is Unity's main moat, are VERY uneasy right now. For many games, the install tax would push them into unprofitability. Especially in hypercasual, where an average user may have LTV of a few cents total. These are billion dollar companies, and they…

[dead]

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#278

Post by hprotagonist »

mtreis86 wrote: post #264
nitwit005 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sadly, I just assume that no company can be trusted these days. It wasn't too long ago that the leadership of companies was often fairly stable. Now you see people rotating through every couple of years, rarely having to face the fallout of their bad decisions.

Darn Tough has made some fairly consistently awesome socks up in VT for a couple decades now.

don’t jinx it!

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#279

Post by spl757 »

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.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#280

Post by flakes »

pests wrote: post #272
BoorishBears wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Given the meetup group has 2,000+ members, and they haven't had an event since the announcement, I have a hard time believing all, or even a majority, (since it's so rare for the majority to even speak) had much input on this decision. The wording sounds like a few key members felt a certain way and decided to take the ball home with them instead of stepping down and leaving whoever didn't feel as strongly hurt to co…

This is a repeat of the reddit API backlash and protest. Moderators deciding to close down subs or to change the rules to hurt reddit at the expense of their users and community. Many of which have already backpedaled or opened up. It was important to look involved during the important parts of the protest but now that its blown over subreddits are silently reopening and back to business as usual. Some subreddits hav…

My issue had nothing to do with morals. If I cant use Apollo, then I wont use reddit. All of the other clients are awful, and I dont miss the content enough to justify using the official app, or finding other ways to circumvent the restrictions.
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