okay the pricing changes were stupid as fuck and should be discussed and criticised, but death threats are on a completely other level and not acceptable. So calm the fuck down whoever is posting them and I really hope those dipshits will get caught and be dealt with in a proper way…
Not even, it was a single employee (probably for reasons not even related to this change) and CEO used that as an excuse to close for the day and probably to make people feel pity for him and therefore more likely to give him a pass for these awful decisions.
I’m not one of the maniacs making threats of any kind, but honestly it really seems like death threats are the only thing that gets any attention anymore, so I can understand why it’s done…
Is “eat the rich” not a death threat in its own right?
There is no meaningful difference between a threat and a warning. I’ve never understood why we see that retort so often when someone asks “is that a threat?!”. It’s the same damn thing.
It is, and here’s the thing: All of society, laws, and legal recourses ultimately just boil down to “might makes right, but with extra steps.” We all love to act like this isn’t the case in a civilized society, but it is. That might usually rests with the police, the military, some governmental organization, or some megacorporation. Violence both literal and metaphorical is inflicted on the common person continually by those at the top. Who are the police after all? Just guys with guns. Who are judges and politicians? Just guys with access to the police. Who are megacorporations? Just guys with access to judges and politicians, and so on down the line. So when someone says they have the law on their side, and you don’t, what they’re really implying is that they can call the guys with guns, who if you don’t do what they say (no matter how ridiculous) can literally kill you. And we treat this as normal and proper and reasonable, because we’re stupid.
These motherfuckers want to act like their only their violence or threat of violence is justified, and that’s it’s a one way street.
Well, it ain’t. Nobody’s invulnerable.
Maybe it’s “just” video games. (Or “just” a cell phone app, or “just” a predatory subscription, or “just” an apartment with exorbitant rent, or whatever.) But big corporations are fucking with people’s livelihoods, here. There’s a reason we colloquially call such a thing “a living.” These are assholes taking food off of someone’s table, just for greed, just because they can, because they think they’ve above reproach. Because the whole teetering facade is lopsided. It doesn’t matter who the fuck they are at that point.
Call me whatever you want but Im happy the people who make these bad decisions from their insulated lots in life have to face at least some kind of consequences now, because the law is explicitly set up so that they typically never have to. Sucks that it comes to this but its behavior analysis 101, if you dont introduce consequences for undesirable behaviors, you’d be an idiot to expect change.
I don’t love that it’s probably caught up a lot of people who have nothing or little to do with it though, but the guys at the top need consequences or nothing will change, and beggars cant be choosers.
Frankly that doesn’t sound honest. Especially when picture of guillotines are sent by the same crowd. Even more considering that wealthy people are not going to volunteer their wealth through reasonable debate.
Apparently this might have been created recently, even though the phrase goes back at least a few hundred years. Here’s a transcription of the one I was talking about though:
“We are starving. There is no more bread, and we have nothing to eat.”
The rich man said,
“Not my problem you don’t work for your bread,”
as if he did not snatch away the grain by his own greedy hands and create filling bread for his own overflowing mouth.
The poor cried,
“We are dying. There is no more medicine, and we’re all ill.”
The rich man said,
“Not my problem you don’t take care of yourselves,”
as if he did not buy all the medicine and raise prices so high
Yeah, it’s not like voicing disagreement and concerns amicably is listened to. It’s not like these executives negotiate with the users before making decisions that can ruin their livelihoods. As the avenues for civilized protest close, as people are left powerless towards the decisions of the wealthy, what else can they be expected to do?
It might seem much when it comes to games, but it’s also a matter of worker’s rights. Sometimes it seems like people today are a bit too passive and overly concerned with civility as their rights are undermined. Comes to mind the other news about the Australian CEO saying that he thinks more people should be unemployed and feel pain to be reminded who they work for. What is the appropriate response to that?
Death threats are not OK, but this can destroy years of work for people, and it can threaten their livelihood. I’m guessing this has pushed some people into a sense of desperation. And these threats are acts of desperation, not threats that have a huge chance of being carried out.
John Riccitiello needs to be fired, if he isn’t Unity deserves bankruptcy for this move.
Ever been in a game forum where the players pretty much worship the developers as if they were gods? It’s way too common. Those people can get crazy protective when they make it part of their identity.
Despite that, I doubt gamers are very involved in payment methods of game engines, or even know which game engine their games are running on.
So unless some VERY popular game developers have been out saying expansions for their favorite games will not be released because of this, I don’t see the mechanics for what you claim working at this point.
Actually, they are talking about canceling silk song, and expansion for hollow Knight that has been in development for ages now, simply because they are looking at the possibility that the game will have to be delisted in order to avoid bankrupting the developer
Depending how it’s implemented, gamers are absolutely impacted by it.
Some of the chatter is that even already-released games would be subject to this change, meaning a lot of devs might pull their backlog to avoid going broke on a game they put out years ago and is now free (or heavily reduced). Or games that have always been free, now the dev has to choose if they want to charge for a historically free game or pull it completely.
This is dev hostile, but it’s also consumer hostile.
Maybe you know, but what happens if a dev pulls a game and someone still has the installer and installs the game? Are they going to charge for that still? It makes not sense to me.
Unity clearly didn’t think this part through- probably because they never intended it to do anything but rake in money as the company dies. They never had a real way of precisely tracking downloads, but they want all the info so they can decide how much to charge. So would they charge on a local installer? Almost certainly if they could find out it was used.
There already Indie devs that are talking about delisting their games in order to avoid paying Unity fees they can’t afford.
This contract changes criminal, especially since it punishes the developer for no fault of its own. Sometimes I have to reinstall a game multiple times in order to figure out why it suddenly doesn’t work. I’m not the only one, that’s going to rack up fast.
And if you think review bombing is bad now? I imagine people buying the game not to leave a negative review, but you run a script that continuously reinstalls and uninstall the game.
They could bankrupt any developer they wanted to. Hell, it might not even be the gamers, if a company with a game on Unity doesn’t want to make it epic exclusive, Tim Sweeney has the choice to just continuously reinstall that game in order to sink any company that doesn’t play ball
See my other comments, it was neither. It was a single employee at their company. Not sure how long that’ll stay true though, especially when it comes out that he made it seem like there were death threats being sent to him when it was a single employee making threats. Probably just so he could close the office.
Oh I’m willing to bet that Disney and Nintendo are getting their most expensive lawyers. Keep in mind, there are a lot of Marvel and Star Wars games out there, the mouse doesn’t like to share his cheese.
Unity is actually quite a popular engine for a lot of games both 3D and 2D and on multiple different platforms. It’s very popular among indie developers, though there are actually quite a few games from Big publishers that are released under unity as well.
Which is why he probably used it as an excuse to close the office, when the only known death threat to occur was from one of his employees.
I don’t know who that employee is and I don’t really care point is he’s using that basically to get pity from other people and distract from the bad things that his company is doing right now.
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
I imagine this policy will quietly be pulled with a statement about how due to “not expecting how unpopular the decision was”
As soon as they get a subpoena from… every AAA developer.
This would include Warner bros, as they own a video game Studio, in fact I believe Mortal Kombat 1 uses unity, and it’s supposed to be what gets their Christmas bonus this year. They would be fools to not already have their people on the case.
It’s a reddit link, ik… here’s a copy of the post:
The truth behind the Unity “Death Threats”
Unity has temporarily closed its offices in San Francisco and Austin, Texas and canceled a town hall meeting after receiving death threats, according to Bloomberg.
Multiple news outlets are reporting on this story, yet Polygon seems to be the only one that actually bothered to investigate the claims.
Checking with both Police and FBI, they have only acknowledged 1 single threat, from a Unity employee, to their boss over social media. Despite this their CEO decided to use it as an excuse to close edit:all 2 of their offices and cancel planned town hall meetings. Here is the article update from Polygon:
Update: San Francisco police told Polygon that officers responded to Unity’s San Francisco office “regarding a threats incident.” A “reporting party” told police that “an employee made a threat towards his employer using social media.” The employee that made the threat works in an office outside of California, according to the police statement.
Yeah if I were the CEO I would be avoiding a town hall like the plague.
He essentially just called a bomb threat on his highschool before a final he was going to fail. Then came home to his family crying about how scary it all was.
Yep, a lot of companies will make shit up to make people feel bad for them, and to try to make themselves seem like the victims in all of this while hiding the real victims when they are the abusers.
It’s honestly fucking disgusting behaviour, it makes me sick.
Yep it doesn’t surprise me, I’ve seen many people claim “death threats” to get out of responsibility for doing or saying something that was not respectable, or that was flat out evil.
They do this because it works very well, death threats are so serious and so scary that if somebody said they got them you would immediately give that person a pass (unless they’re a Nazi then they deserve it, you don’t give Nazis a pass for anything) no proof required, though it also would be incredibly easy to forge proof of such an event for anyone skeptical and it would be enough for 99% of people, the remaining 1% of dissent would then be written off as crazy people.
I’m willing to bet that this will continue to happen and people will continue to go along with it because there are enough cases of people making real death threats to innocence cover up the false ones and make them seem more real than they actually are.
Don’t underestimate that shit. I’ve personally got death threats before. People are dumb as fuck. I’ve seen people actually follow through. Life is fucked up. Everyone’s batshit these days.
Yeah, not only will people send death threats, but they'll send them to random people they see on LinkedIn who happen to have the company in their bio.
Instead of, like, to the CEO's house.
Because too many people are both angry reactionaries, and also cowards.
I will absolutely take that bet. Given both how unpopular the decision is combined with it being even tangentially related to the gaming community I would be astonished if they didn’t receive death threats.
Knowing how despicable the worst of the gaming community can be, I have no doubts that death threats were real.
I also have no doubts that the despicable CEO, like others of his ilk who receive entirely justified negativity for their stupidity, will milk it as an excuse to dilute the negative feedback and shift to victimization.
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.
Talk about blowing shit out of proportion. People need to realize that making death threats is a good way to make the bad guys look like the good guys.
Which is probably why the CEO made it up using the single death threat from an employee as an excuse to close the company for the day and probably also get pity from people for it (see here for more details).
I bet it probably won’t stay that way though, he’ll probably realize people are onto his lies and make some death threats from sock-puppet accounts and claim “No 4 reAl pEopLe arE sENdiNg m3 deAth tHreAts” I wouldn’t put it past him if people don’t keep falling for the current one, and if people keep the heat on him for his current bad decisions.
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.
Hey! Don’t threaten people! Don’t hurt anyone! Just move to Godot. That’s it. Abandon ship, peacefully. These people care more about money than employee lives anyway.
Yes, retroactively changing ToSes to impose tyrannical taxes and fees that will bankrupt most users is, in fact, kind of a rare thing. The ruling class is usually a lot more subtle. And what they do is usually not so in-your-face that it is arguably illegal.
Have you actually looked at what they’re charging? Nobody is gonna be bankrupted. The pricing structure they announced guarantees the cut Unity takes is a tiny sliver of any developer’s revenue unless they’re literally only charging like $1 for their product in developing countries.
There are no victims in this story, and even if there were, what I said would not be victim blaming. Seriously, point to where I said developers were asking for it. You can’t because I didn’t, but you’re so high on your own farts you can’t read a single sentence without wildly misinterpreting it.
I find this and other comments like this hilarious because you’re 100% correct and yet at the same time lemmy is a cesspool of people on every post about an owner, or landlord, or millionaire/billionaire about killing them, or beating them, or bringing out the guillotine, or eating them, etc etc.
Again, you’re right. It’s amazing how tone deaf people are here though to not be aware their behavior reeks of the same extremism.
It’s why I’m very much on the fence about continuing here outside of the memes. The people here are disgustingly naive and not healthy quite frankly.
Idk why the downvotes. It’s seriously off putting to be surrounded by people that clearly have no idea how the world works. It was funny before Trump. Now I take these meme waves with a grain of salt. Idiots in large numbers are dangerous. At least reddit was easy enough to use that the cesspool was diluted with less intense morons.
I’m a landlord. Never evicted anyone. It’s a super high risk position to be in. My mortgage isn’t free. The upkeep to my property isn’t free. Time spent vetting renters so my neighbors don’t have to live next to crackheads isn’t free. You pay rent so you don’t have to think about maintenence costs, mortgage, risking allowing others to live in property you spent money you worked for on. All of that and any other subtly is lost on here. Going to work and enjoying it is possible. The world isn’t black and white. Communism doesn’t work on a large scale. Etc.
Where do I find one of those? Most communities with any traffic feel like they’re full of the same people with the same axes to grind, just talking about slightly different subjects.
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
I hate humanity sometimes, why would they send death threats? Just don’t use their engine; this is the way you actually make a change – switch to something else, threatening people does not help you prove your point. I hate their new pricing changes too, but death threats are never warranted
I absolutely agree. I’d want to say those threats are people outside of the industry. People in the industry have received death threats themselves so they understand that it’s real shitty, right? I hope so.
While I’m not defending those who sent these death threats or justifying these actions, I’m sure a lot work and progress will be lost for many companies because of these outrageous changes. It should be no surprise that many if not all of their clients are gonna be angry. Switching to another engine isn’t like switching from reddit to the fediverse.
They’re changing pennies per install, and only after the publisher is receiving over $200,000 per year, and they don’t count the first 100,000 installs. The price goes down dramatically for customers at the higher subscription tiers. I don’t understand why people are so pissed about them wanting such a tiny cut for providing the software that does so much heavy lifting for game developers.
Their new pricing is not horrible, but it’s pretty wonky at best
After the first wave of outrage they had to clarify that it wouldn’t take reinstalls into account, which should have been clear from the beginning
Also the fact that they take money on a game install wether or not that install generated any money is just dumb, most people would rather pay more as long as they have the guarantee that they only pay AFTER having made some profits
Even with the qualifiers, it makes it super hard to make any financial projections as your profits are totally uncorrelated to the fees you’ll have to pay
First of all if you’re a poor (and possibly solo) developer who could only spring for the lowest tier you’re being charged the highest rate per install. That rate is 20 cents… per install… not per purchase… per install. If I buy the game once and install it on my desktop machine, my laptop, and my steam deck, the developer has to pay 60 cents. one of those computers breaks down and I need to reinstall the game, that’s an additional 20 cents every time. I have a young nephew who thinks nothing of installing a game to play for a day or two then uninstalling it to make room for another only to reinstall that first game again later. He does this with a lot of games… almost all of which are Unity games (I know, because he wants me to play these games with him quite often, so I see that logo pop up). Come January 1st, every time he installs that game, BOOM, developer owes 20 cents. My nephew isn’t special and, if he’s uninstalling and reinstalling games like that you can bet there’s 1000s of other kids doing the same! Hell, you don’t even have to be a kid. I might play a game for a few months, uninstall it, then reinstall it years later. That’s another thing… this 20 cents is perpetual! As a developer, what happens when you’re done with your game? You do have the time or energy to maintain the game anymore? This pricing model doesn’t care. You abandoned your game 5 years ago? Don’t care, 100 people installed your game, you owe us $20!
I didn’t realize they never “per install” quite so literally. That does make a big difference and it’s a really weird way for them to charge.
Edit: Ok so according to another commenter your interpretation is common but wrong, and Unity clarified they mean the first install per customer only. So my position that this isn’t a big deal stands.
Do installs of the same game by the same user across multiple devices count as different installs? We treat different devices as different installs. We don’t want to track identity across different devices.
So, again, if I install the game on 3 different devices, Unity considers that 3 installs. If I build a new computer later, then reinstall the game there, it’ll count as a new install. The scary thing is… what if someone hates you as a developer? They now only need to buy your game once, then setup a script to roll VMs and install your game on VMs (each VM counts as a seperate device), and you, as the developer, will be hit with the new install cost each time.
Additionally…
Does the Unity Runtime Fee apply to pirated copies of games? We are happy to work with any developer who has been the victim of piracy so that they are not unfairly hurt by unwanted installs.
The issue here is… the developer would already have been charged the fee for a “pirated” install, because, how is a developer supposed to even know their game was pirated in the first place. Here, the developer may already be financially hit for a pirated game and now has to spend time and resources with Unity to convince them that some percentage of installs are pirated installs. Earlier in their FAQ, Unity claims they do not have a “phone home” when a Unity game is run, so, how are they determining installs in the first place? “Aggregate data”… or, another words, “trust us”.
Im some cases I could see how this could destroy someone’s livelihood and people have killed over that sort of thing before. But my guess is that the people sending the death threats probably aren’t even developers.
What’s more curious to me is what kind of people are those that resort to such lows?
I mean they might have mental issues,yes,but it’s scary to see that people seemingly intelligent and able to create games (asset flipping not included) can have such low morals and problem solving capabilities.
One of the issue here, and I am in absolutely no way defending Unity, is that legally an executive team works for the shareholders. They must ensure shareholder return no matter what as they are in the hook for it.
Unity’s biggest issue is that they like many successful companies stopped innovating and have moved from a company run by technical people to one run by sales and marketing. Sales and marketing only know how to extract more out of the product they already have and not how to improve the product to make more in honest ways. I would (have) gladly given Unity more money if they offered tools that truly helped me get to market faster as then my win would be their win. Instead their product has become stagnant, slower not faster since 2019 and more expensive. I am getting less for more and it is unacceptable. Unity is a horrible business partner. But I can see why as they are a sales and marketing company now. Steve Jobs says it best in this 2 minute video. He got it. Why are so many other not getting this?
That doesn’t mean making decisions that can ultimately hurt the business or their partners though. You can be greedy while not alienating the developers who drive the company’s profits. Decisions like these could make them lose millions or even go out of business.
You could swap unity with any company really and it would be the same. once a business goes for an IPO, whatever mission/vision it had turns into making shareholders happy and fast. Profits go directly to shareholders by stock buybacks instead of R&D/salaries, so they have to squeeze consumers more and more with the same products to keep it up. it’s tragically comic that you mention Steve Jobs kinda talking about it when Apple turned into the GOAT of this stuff.
is that legally an executive team works for the shareholders. They must ensure shareholder return no matter what as they are in the hook for it.
Not an excuse for just blatantly fucking over the customers. By implementing this hostile pricing model, company is alienating their customers. Big game studios may or may not cough up the money (or just delay that payments and take Unity to court if threatened). Small companies will just not pay up and either kill their projects or redesign from the ground up using a diff engine. Indie devs will likely just use another engine all together.
It’s a clear money grab that will backfire on them (losing trust of an already small community, and thus money will slowly stop rolling in). Fucked by the loss of sales. Fucking over the shareholders and creating new bag holders. Only winners here are the insiders that dumped their shares before announcement.
I agree. I think the issue is though that Unity (like many successful companies) have become their own worse enemies. Steve Jobs in this 2 mins video really explains it well. It will resonate what is going on at Unity and why they pulled such a stupid move. Wrong people are in charge and they have no means to make money honestly. Intellectually and creatively bankrupt. youtu.be/tGKsbt5wii0?si=v8_A2jW5uLewhbVS
This, like cancel culture, is a direct result of a justice system that pretty much never delivers justice to the victims of the rich and the powerful. Fixing that is the only thing that can stop this escalating cultural phenomenon.
They already do that in most jurisdictions. Solve the root problem, and the surface problem will be fixed. Only fix the surface, and…well, it’s like weeding dandelions.
Add comment