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Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

farewell.bostonunitygroup.com

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Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#361

Post by justinclift »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #351
sokoloff wrote: post #255

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait. Someone returned a drill bit (a wear item) for replacement? Crap like that is why companies have walked away from consumer-biased warranty policies. LLBean had to change theirs as well: https://www.businessinsider.com/why-ll-bean-changed-its-retu...

What else is a lifetime warranty supposed to mean on a drill bit? It's not something vague like the "100% satisfaction" you linked. If they offer the warranty on drill bits, then there's nothing wrong with using the warranty on drill bits. It's not being a bad customer.

It's kind of like returning sandpaper that you've worn out though. :/

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#362

Post by wly_cdgr »

The idea that Unity was ever to be trusted is incredibly naive. They were obviously corporate tools from the very earliest get go. The fact is, indies used it because it was the best way to make money, something to which they are no way entitled, and now they are big mad that the devil they themselves signed a contract with has decided to collect. Boo fckin hoo. The Unity dev community has always been the most soulless corpocreep indie gamedev community out there, good riddance, I hope most of them go out of business

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#363

Post by [deleted] »

wly_cdgr wrote: post #362

The idea that Unity was ever to be trusted is incredibly naive. They were obviously corporate tools from the very earliest get go. The fact is, indies used it because it was the best way to make money, something to which they are no way entitled, and now they are big mad that the devil they themselves signed a contract with has decided to collect. Boo fckin hoo. The Unity dev community has always been the most soulle…

[deleted]

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#364

Post by nikanj »

015a wrote: post #241
taikahessu wrote: post #134

I have a hard time coming up with a worse decision in the history of game industry. Why did it come to this? Just more profits? I mean the landscape is highly competitive with free tools getting better and Unreal Engine eating all the highlights. Unity's stock price was even before this decision a third of it's all time high. I mean there must've been a dramatic cultural twist quite some time ago. That would've lead…

One could argue that Microsoft's "no game sharing" decision at the beginning of Xbox One, right off the heals of a generation that experienced both high success, but also extremely high costs (RROD recalls, estimates say it cost them over $1.1B), was a bigger one. It seems unnaturally likely to me that single decision by Mattrick's Xbox leadership is the largest component to Xbox One's relatively lower success (58M s…

For the first 2-3 years, both Microsoft and Sony sold every single unit they could produce. Not sure if that generation of consoles is valid market data.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#365

Post by atoav »

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…

I don't think the potential gains from the rolled back stunt will even remotely outweigh the damage done to their reputation. Maybe if they are lucky they manage to extract some short time win out of the game developers they fucked over, but in the long term they will have a hard time finding paying customers.

For me the whole thing reeks of a decision by the classical manegerial narcissist, that thinks they (and by extension their company) are important because it is them and not because of a value they deliver to those using their product.

Never make that mistake. Unless you sell commodity goods like toilet paper your relationship with your customer is to be treated as a valuable asset. You totally are allowed to increase prices, but if the existence of your customer depends on it, maybe consider doing so in a predictable manner (e.g. "in one year the price will increase to X amount"). This way customers don't feel betrayed and can decide whether they will stay with you on a rational basis.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#366

Post by jgilias »

makeitdouble wrote: post #311
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…

I remember a game developer on a podcast saying that business relations in the field where not just about the money, and commitment and proof of perseverance was the strongest currency. Basically each game developer is gambling their time and livelyhood, and no one would start a game studio just to make money (that would be crazy given the odds). In this respect, a platform has to also show they're commited and will…

Man, your last paragraph cracked me up! Great comparison

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#367

Post by LoganDark »

ffgjgf1 wrote: post #360
LoganDark wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They can't ever introduce any revenue sharing because they promised not to do that and would be immensely vulnerable to lawsuits if they ever went back on that promise. This was their attempt to do something that doesn't technically count as revenue sharing.

Now they kind of did though. Since you can pick between 2.5% and paying the install fee. Also I’m not sure how are “promises” legally binding unless they are part of a contract?

> Also I’m not sure how are “promises” legally binding unless they are part of a contract?

You'd be surprised. Claims that are made as part of any marketing material or promotion can absolutely result in lawsuits if someone built their business on that claim and then Unity screwed them over. In that way at least, Unity is liable for the things that they say in a public capacity.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#369

Post by szundi »

MattRix wrote: post #295
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…

There is no way this was intentional. First you’d have to argue that only the top execs were aware of this, because a bunch of Unity employees quit due to this. Secondly, if it was a form of anchoring, they did it in the worst possible way. The problem wasn’t really the numbers, it was the base idea of using installs and having it apply retroactively. If they had just wanted to anchor they could have come out with a…

If they are stupid, it is even worse. Search for stupidity theories, kind of fun.

Re: Unity's oldest community announces dissolution

#370

Post by flurdy »

musicale wrote: post #212
all2 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What happened with Docker? (WotC have been killing goodwill for years at this point, but I guess the MtG folks have a bad case of Stockholm Syndrome.)

"Docker is sunsetting Free Team organizations" https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35154025

More likely the Docker Hub rate limit https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24262757 and the following exodus and confusion
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