Somehow I get the feeling that this may not just be some unhinged internet troll throwing out online drivel from his mom’s basement. Unity’s pricing changes are posing an existential threat to smaller studios that meet the minimum income threshold and are placing the livelihoods of countless thousands of smaller game studio workers at stake. This is one of those changes that is going to impact whether you can continue to put food on the table.
John Riccitello has pissed off a lot of people with his disgusting levels of corporate greed, to the point where even the fourth circle of Hell may not be enough to punish his avarice once he pops his clogs. This move may even be worse than the crap Martin Shkreli pulled as a big pharma executive.
his real goal is to invent new drugs for rare diseases. Turing recently announced discounts of Daraprim for hospitals, and Shkreli says that for people without insurance it will cost only $1 a pill. For everyone else, insurance, which he argues is paid for by corporate America’s profits, will cover the cost.
I’m surprised, it does seem that this is true. I read a lot of articles where he announced that people could apply for medication, or medicaid would pay $0.01 per pill. I couldn’t find anything about where to apply or one people who have applied and been able to get this medication, but there is already a generic alternative, so this program might be dead in the water.
As for smear campaign, I’m not so sure. Everytime I read quotes from him, it seems he just really likes to play the “bad boy”. Maybe he just wants people to think pharmaceutical companies are scumbags, so when he ran one he purposefully made himself look bad. Shkreli definitely didn’t seem to care that people got a bad impression of him.
Video game development is some of the worst paid tech sector jobs. Most developers will be able to move on to other work with relatively little interruption. It’s not ideal by any stretch but it’s not nearly on the same level as price gouging life saving pharmaceuticals
I don’t think devs that work for corporations really care about this change, if their group used Unity for some reason, they will just move on to their next job (and they’re the ones who are worst paid). Every indie dev or otherwise small dev company that has used Unity ever in it’s last ten years are now open to serious bad actors. A single person running a script can cost a dev hundreds of thousands of dollars on their own, whether a troll, just same guy pissed off for some reason or another, or even a competing dev. Hell, the one idiot living in his mother’s basement who sent death threats to Unity could also do it.
There is no “relatively little interruption”, as not only have people lost a lot of work on something they already paid for, they also have to remove all previous work they’ve made or published with the engine. It’s all susceptible to attack.
I agree it’s not on the same level as pharma scum, but saying “it’s just a video games” is much too far off the other end of the spectrum. At least Shkreli never managed to bankrupt people who had purchased anything (from him) in the past, or made them ‘regurgitate’ any benefits they had seen. Though I’m sure he’d have loved to.
You are correct but in the opposite way, it seems it was a single employee at their company instead which the boss took and decided to say we’re getting death threats we’re going to close for the day, basically so he could go home early and people would feel bad for him and maybe not give him the flak that he deserves for such an awful decision that’s going to ruin the lives of smaller legitimate game developers who use unity.
Dude…Just stop using the software and let the business fail. That’s all you’ve got to do. Unreal engine, Godot, Gamemaker Studio, Source 2, QBASIC, use something else.
Depending on how much money you expect to lose, that may be the more prudent option for some.
At the very least you’d have something to work with - it’s not truly “from scratch”.
I work in the AAA industry and I’ve ported code from one engine to another - it’s not fast by any means, but at the very least you can assume the code that’s there is largely correct. The killers are materials/shaders, porting over design work, and fixing timing issues. If you have netcode that can be tricky as well.
But at the very least you can have the core of your game running again reasonably. It’s how things like Stanley Parable: Ultra Deluxe went from Source to Unity, and how Pokemon BDSP went from the proprietary Pokemon engine to Unity.
Indies and AAs can hire some extra hands to work temporarily with their existing engineers to port and they’d probably lose less money than Unity is charging.
There is seriously a mental health pandemic going on and it’s scary. Everyone here who has messages or upvotes messages about bringing out the guillotine or killing billionaires really needs to seek help.
Well then, do what you tell people who condemn rapists and pedophiles to do: learn some empathy.
People who hold different opinions and worldviews than you aren’t fucking mentally ill. You are by insinuating such. You are not the center of the universe and your opinions are not automatically facts just because you hold them.
Americans actually do still have a constitutional right to advocate overthrowing their government if they want; the whole fucking point of the first and second amendments is to enable the people to do just that.
I’m tired of people like you and your vile bullshit. Don’t like it, get out of the thread. But don’t come in here with your holier-than-thou act thinking you’re going to bully or guilt trip or emotionally blackmail anybody into sitting down or submitting to your opinion like you’ve been doing to the American people for decades now.
I’m sorry I don’t condone the murder and enslavement of millions around the world by a small dominant group of people who have no one’s best interests at heart but their own.
I’m sorry I don’t condone the perpetuation of a broken system that purposefully subjugates billions of people.
I’m sorry you’re butthurt I and a bunch of other people on the internet won’t validate your massively unjustified sense of superiority and self-importance.
You grow the fuck up.
Grow. Up. And stop protecting and defending evil people. Stop hurting society and stop hurting us.
“I don’t condone the killing of people simply because they make more than I do.”
to
“[condoning] the murder and enslavement of millions around the world by a small dominant group of people who have no one’s best interests at heart but their own.”?
What I found out is the outcomes of events like the French Revolution and the rule of the Khmer Rouge i.e. vastly different dependent on the circumstances of the place and time.
Well, what the rest of us found out is the outcome of almost every other revolution in modern history including the American Revolution, which kickstarted modern democracy and led to the liberation of 60 other countries from enslavement, colonization and oppression.
In other words, you are just biased and here with an agenda just like you shitlords were when you inundated the Danny Masterson thread and the other news threads where you hounded on anybody who dared oppose your vile little sacred cow.
Take your political agenda out of our lives and respect our right to make up our own fucking minds. You are hurting us by acting this way: you enable and defend evil, you help the ruling class continue to subjugate the working class, and you do it all because you yourself benefit from the status quo and don’t want to miss out on McDonald’s and 7-11 because of the workers getting riled up.
you enable and defend evil, you help the ruling class continue to subjugate the working class, and you do it all because you yourself benefit from the status quo and don’t want to miss out on McDonald’s and 7-11 because of the workers getting riled up.
Seems to me like you’re far more butthurt judging by this comment thread lol.
You’ve put a lot of words in my mouth that I’ve never said.
I almost guarantee you and I have more in common than you may realize unfortunately you’re so blinded by hate you’re unable to think clearly.
Mark my words we are working towards WW3 and it scares the living hell out of me because people like you are so built up in your echo chambers and you’re frothing at the mouth. There’s no difference between your attitude and those of an average Trump supporter. It’s blind rage. Looking for simple solutions to a complex world.
I seriously worry for my children. The anger is so unfocused or focused on the wrong area.
We can change the system but we have to want to. The problem is people increasingly on the left and right just want to burn it down.
Strawmanning and attacking #EatTheRich memebros actually is equivalent to enabling actual violence by condemning anyone who opposes nonviolence, actually, and it’s why you all are finally, finally being downvoted and rejected by everyone else. Ackshually
And it couldn’t possibly be that you’re just wrong.
Wanna know how I know? Because I actually think and don’t resort to blatant bandwagon fallacies like you do. Actually recent polls have even shown the number of Americans who agree with sentiments like #EatTheRich or who accept political violence is rising, and it’s more Democrats doing it than Republicans, so you’re doubly wrong.
Take your status-quo-or-die bullshit elsewhere. We’ve had enough of it. No one has to agree with you on the issue. No one has to agree with you on nonviolence or political violence or any sort of -ence. People have the right to feel the way they want to feel and as someone with a vested stake in a liberal democracy that pretends to care about such things, by extension you have to respect that.
Thanks for the link. Some of those results were interesting. Question. Your link says that 84% disagree with the statement that “political violence against those I disagree with is acceptable”. How have you concluded this is “rising”? What is your base of comparrison?
I’m assuming you read this elsewhere because your source does not have a comparrison number. So at present, there is nothing to indicate the number is rising. For all we know the number of people who agree with that type of violence could have been sitting at 16% for many years.
It isn’t realistic to expect the number to be zero. There will always be radicals. Always. Even if we somehow create a perfect utopia, there will always be a handful of malcontents.
You literally could have just Googled it instead of trying to bad-faith your way to the position you want to believe, but whatever, I Googled it for you, there you go. The one poll I posted is not the only one that shows the trend. Civil war’s a-brewing, fren.
I also didn’t say zero, I said close to zero. Jesus Christ, if you’re going to speak in bad faith you could at least try to be subtle about it. At least the assholes in the other threads would have the decency to use a motte-and-bailey. You’re just lazily throwing out strawmen and obvious garbage.
Wow. You’re an angry person. I had no ill intent. Just curiosity. Hope your day goes better.
Edit: also, your provided sources are in conflict. You say it’s on the rise, but your second link is from Jan 2021 which states 33% - 36% of people “feel somewhat justified in using varying levels of violence to achieve their political goals”. However, your first link is from Sept 2022 states only 17% feel using political violence against those they disagree with is acceptable. By your own sources, it would seem to be decreasing.
I do feel sorry for them. Death threats are not ok in this scenario, boycotts and protests are. Death threats makes them a victim, and this shifts away the discussion from the victims they’ve created. The people making death threats as well as those who do not condemn them are helping support Unity indirectly.
When you call for violent threats you give ammo to the very groups that you wish to inflict harm upon for the masses to side with them
Accountability for CEO actions needs to be done financially. It needs to first and foremost affect shareholders - because that’s the only point for a public company to exist - and then after that it needs to personally penalize CEOs.
If you just target the figurehead of a company the owners won’t really be affected. You need to get them where it REALLY hurts - in the wallet. Only then will the dynamic change.
We can see clearly that that’s not happening. No one has any actual sympathy for Unity and even the most highly upvoted comments in this thread are of people justifying it.
No one in the masses sides with them. People are not that stupid.
You only have a fuckload of sympathy for them because you either have a political agenda or they’re lining your pocketbook. Either way, your opinion is irrelevant.
You’re acting insane. And vile, and despicable. The proper response to people saying #EatTheRich is to leave them the hell alone. If people agree with the dumb death threats and stupidity, that’s their right. Not everyone has to think like you to be good or valid people. You’re deeply problematic for thinking otherwise.
I’d say being dead really hurts them. Seriously though I get what you’re saying but it isn’t the reality and we know it. The rich take advantage of us, write the laws and just win overall.
I don’t see it as wrong for us to be violent toward these people
The overreaction to online death threats is so stupid. An anonymous 0 follower Twitter account allows organizations and people to instantly turn the PR situation around and become the victims and act like they are personally being hunted down by Mossad.
Big corporations need service contracts. If something in the engine is broken where it impacts the game in development, engineers are flown in to fix it at the customer’s site (if that’s necessary). That’s not something available with most open source tools.
Man, I wish people put this kind of effort into more important shit. Shitty wages, inhospitable environment incoming, and useless CEO fucks causing it all, BUT DAMN YOU UNITY!
So, the leadership of Unity is a complete piece of shit, but death threats (or really, any other threat of violence) are just straight up idiotic. It’s a game engine company. There are much more fun and interesting (and, you know, legal) ways to kill the company in a commercial sense.
I feel bad for the regular workers there who can’t choose the direction of the company and need that job to live.
But frankly if they were all directed just to the CEO, I couldn’t be less bothered. Wealthy assholes don’t have empathy, don’t listen to reasons, aren’t bound by rules. Even lawsuits today are decided more by who has the most money than who is in the right. Maybe it’s not so bad if folks put some fear in him, specifically.
Sure, there are more worthy causes to direct that sort of outrage to. Then again there’s the livelihood of a large number of smaller creators to consider. This isn’t just about a fictional thing not being the way someone wanted.
Mm, I’m curious as to what the threats actually were. I’ve seen people claim they got death threats because someone tweeted “kys” at them in response to their homophobic bullshit.
Shitty Executive: “Oh shit, our terrible idea turned out to be wildly unpopular and we’re getting massive negative feedback! Quick, play the death threats card to make us look like the victim!”
Perhaps they could pay a small fee to not receive them.
Or purchase the Happy Customer Times Season Pass, where for 12 months they only receive feedback telling them how awesome they’re doing. Only $39.99 per employee!
*fees are liable to change at any time without notice, new prices may be applied retroactively
20 cents for every death threat not sent? Sure! Whos counting? Dont worry, our propiertary system counts every unsent message, you only need to pay up ^(works every previously unsent message, but only if you got more than 200 000 the past year, we got you)
Bit seriously, why do some people always so eager to send death threats? It almost never achieves anything, gets you on the moral low ground and doesn’t even get to the right persons the first place.
I’m sure there’s a PR playbook somewhere with a flowchart that says, did you screw up really badly and you look like the villain? - yes - There’s public outrage? - yes - say there’s death threats
nobody who makes public death threats is gonna do shit. why would you announce and make a public record of a crime you are about to commit? hashtag #bankrobbery? another joke of a corporate move, unless it’s a lie to get sympathy. Way overblown reaction for somebody just angry and probably talking shit.
feel like a beefed up law enforcement presence for a couple weeks enough to stop that if it’s just one person dumb enough to stroll in the front door with a facetiming iPhone and a .45, this seems like an extreme reaction for something that was probably not even a literal death threat to begin with.
I strongly recommend looking in to how this has gone down for a lot of Influencers and the like (since coders and journalists tend to be a lot more quiet about it). For all his flaws, moistcritikal did a really good video on this a few years (?) back regarding one of the bigger female streamers. He, of course, ruined it by treating it like a cool ass event when the stalker got arrested but…
The reality is that cops don’t give a shit. You can provide the details of the death threats against you and they will just say to call them if something happens. And even then, they will do their best to not get involved even while someone is standing outside your door. This is why, every so often, you hear about something like Gavin Free and Meg Turney having their stalker break into their home with a loaded weapon and either dying by suicide or cop. They had reported it countless times before but it wasn’t until the guy was forcibly breaking into their home that the cops gave a shit.
And there are plenty more situations like that which don’t involve two of the most public people on the internet who work for a company that will farm clout out of anything.
Like, back during the height of Gamergate, a very good friend of mine literally had to go into hiding because he was targeted by the mob for the crime of… writing a few articles. He, his wife, and their newborn had reported the death and rape threats to the cops repeatedly and even had a different friend help track down the sources of some of the more credible ones (let’s not go into details on how…) and provide a paper trail. Nothing. He was literally on the phone with 911 begging for help when one of the stalkers was standing outside his home with an assault rifle. Dispatch only even sent a cop AFTER they heard the gunshots on the call as the monster unloaded on their home. And guess what? Cops didn’t give a shit after the fact either and it was up to him to take his family and go into hiding for a few months before taking a new, much lower profile, job writing press releases.
For what its worth? His former employers wanted to go public with that. He threatened to sue them to hell and back if they did because all he cared about was keeping his family alive. And that is not an isolated incident.
sorry tbh I’m sure this may have been a legit point but this was too long of a rant for me to fully read. can someone tldr this for me?
I dunno this feels like some truths were stretched, if you call the cops with a man standing outside your house with an assault rifle they would definitely dispatch someone in any state but maybe texas
People are indeed stupid. There’s a reason the Mafia’s #1 rule was “keep your fuckin’ mouth shut.” If you’re going to commit a crime, don’t talk about it just do it.
Discuss, yes, but only verbally. And even then obliquely. “Take him to that spot, you know the one, over by where Leon used to work.” Stuff should never be written down because you’re just asking for it to turn up as evidence somewhere.
Starting on January 1, developers will be charged a fee every time someone installs a game built in Unity after they reach certain revenue or install thresholds.
Obviously death threats are not ok, but for fucks sake, that change is insane. People may install games many times for many reasons, like switching drives, computer, OS or debugging, or corruption, or because they go back to it after not playing for a while.
How is it a good model to charge for repeated installs?
The decision sparked an astonishing backlash against Unity from across the gaming industry,
I bet, this will threaten some people on their livelihood, and if you are 90% finished on a project, it’s an insane change that will force you to switch to another engine, and could kill several projects.
Also as a user, this increases the need and amount of DRM mechanics, which we need less not more of.
I hope Unity will see a massive dive in customers on these policies. This is the kind of decision a company deserves bankruptcy for. And the CEO John Riccitiello deserves to be fired without benefits, and never hired as CEO again.
Edit PS:
The fee is up to $0.20, that’s steep and would mean the end of sub $10 games. This would hurt single and indie developers very much.
Luckily there are other engines, but Unity used to be among the good ones, now they’ve become an untrustworthy player, and that decreases competition for the entire field.
Unreal is much more entrenched than Unity is. At the AAA level, more places hire Unreal devs than Unity devs.
Unity is popular with indies because it’s dead simple (Unreal is a complex monster of an engine). But even Unreal doesn’t have a monopoly, between things like Source, Lumberyard (which is now FOSS and run by the Linux Foundation), etc. Not to mention you can always roll your own engine, which many places already have.
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