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An open letter to our community

blog.unity.com

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Re: An open letter to our community

#51

Post by jstarfish »

risingsubmarine wrote: post #15

A definite improvement but the CEO needs to go. It's the only way to begin restoring long term trust. Developers & publishers are extremely wary of unstable business partners.

Yeah. An apology isn't enough in this case-- words clearly mean nothing to them.

We were always told C-level compensation is as absurd as it is because they're expected to fall on their sword for fucking up. Keeping your position after defrauding customers is not a sign of good faith, it's just another [social] contract broken.

Re: An open letter to our community

#52

Post by Macha »

PaulKeeble wrote: post #47
sangnoir wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Even if Unity walks this back 100%, why would a dev trust them not to pull this again in the future? This is why I stopped paying JetBrains, despite them 100% walking back their idiotic licensing change proposal many years ago. I love(d) the products, but could no longer trust the decision-makers.

They went back to the monthly billing with no option for buying a version permenantly. I think you can still fix your version for a while without upgrades but they will force an upgrade at some point now. The original issue I complained about has returned.

Jetbrains?

Seems the same model it was when they moved to subscriptions:

https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/206544479-Subs...

https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What...

Re: An open letter to our community

#53

Post by njovin »

endisneigh wrote: post #33

It’s interesting how some complain companies don’t listen to them, and others say that it doesn’t matter if changes are made after (rightful) complaints. I have absolutely no stake in this and I’m sure these aren’t the same people, but it is interesting. From reading the original proposal and this new one, they should’ve gone first with this one. I’m sure unity developers will hesitatingly continue their work.

> It’s interesting how some complain companies don’t listen to them, and others say that it doesn’t matter if changes are made after (rightful) complaints

In this case I think those can (rightfully and reasonably) be the same people. If a company rolls out a pricing/licensing change that is so detrimental to the developers that it seems like no reasonable developer would have thought it was a good idea, then it looks like the company rolled it out either without talking to their developers or without taking their feedback into account, both of which are equally bad.

In cases like this where the business acted so egregiously, the damage is done and trust might not be restorable long-term without C-level heads rolling.

Re: An open letter to our community

#54

Post by [deleted] »

endisneigh wrote: post #33

It’s interesting how some complain companies don’t listen to them, and others say that it doesn’t matter if changes are made after (rightful) complaints. I have absolutely no stake in this and I’m sure these aren’t the same people, but it is interesting. From reading the original proposal and this new one, they should’ve gone first with this one. I’m sure unity developers will hesitatingly continue their work.

[deleted]

Re: An open letter to our community

#55

Post by drpossum »

gmjosack wrote: post #7

This is basically everything policy wise they needed to do to quell the storm. This is honestly what should have just been announced originally. So much reputational damage just to arrive at a reasonable model weeks later. I'm happy for all the Unity developers out there that are breathing a sigh of relief. Hopefully they can ship their ongoing projects but I'd be hesitant about a continued long term relationship wit…

Anyone breathing a sigh of relief on this isn't paying attention

Re: An open letter to our community

#56

Post by PaulKeeble »

endisneigh wrote: post #33

It’s interesting how some complain companies don’t listen to them, and others say that it doesn’t matter if changes are made after (rightful) complaints. I have absolutely no stake in this and I’m sure these aren’t the same people, but it is interesting. From reading the original proposal and this new one, they should’ve gone first with this one. I’m sure unity developers will hesitatingly continue their work.

If they had gone with this one to begin with they would have lost some customers but no where near as many. What they did makes them clearly an unstable business partner that is willing to break the law to rip you off. Walking it back changes the deal but it doesn't change the type of business they are.

Re: An open letter to our community

#57

Post by the_snooze »

dpkonofa wrote: post #23
cmcaleer wrote: 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…

Exactly. If your project or organization is dependent on some external product or platform, that thing had better be boring and predictable. Busy people don't have the time or the patience to be jerked around by external surprises.

Walk-back or not, Unity is demonstrably not boring and predictable anymore. That's done.

Re: An open letter to our community

#59

Post by _v7gu »

gmjosack wrote: post #7

This is basically everything policy wise they needed to do to quell the storm. This is honestly what should have just been announced originally. So much reputational damage just to arrive at a reasonable model weeks later. I'm happy for all the Unity developers out there that are breathing a sigh of relief. Hopefully they can ship their ongoing projects but I'd be hesitant about a continued long term relationship wit…

Just gotta pray they don't alter the deal any further, or use another option.
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