Unity: We Have Heard You

There are a few things Unity needs to address (I&#x27;m about to go write a couple of games because I&#x27;ve spent a career writing boring business software) before I will consider using Unity:<p>* One of Unity&#x27;s spokespersons actually said that Unity could add fees at any time, and customers could not do anything about it. Aside probably being illegal in most jurisdictions, this mentality shows a complete lack of integrity and an abundance of power-drunkenness. What is being done to ensure that you can actually do a contract with Unity and trust them to live up to their obligations? (spirit of the agreement, not letter of the agreement)<p>* What is going to be done to make sure that Unity&#x27;s executive team does not make a future mistake like this?<p>Finally, we&#x27;ll all have to wait. The tweet said &quot;we heard you and we&#x27;re going to do something different&quot;. Not exactly a decisive move.

When Hasbro, publisher of D&amp;D, engaged in shady license shenanigans, they were able to - sort of, partially - regain trust of the community by more aggressively open sourcing the D&amp;D license (releasing them as creative commons, I think).<p>But it seems like since Unity probably can&#x27;t open source their product and stay in business, Unity has put their customers in a position where they can&#x27;t trust the company but need to trust the company to use the product.<p>I&#x27;m totally outside the gaming industry but jeesh, how could anyone use that product if they had any choice about it?

How about you fire the CEO that allowed such a boneheaded decision? With them in charge, how could one ever trust your company to not make such moves again?

According to Freya Holmer (who I trust since she has some insight into what&#x27;s going on within Unity), their own employees were actively trying to warn them about the public response to the proposed change, long before and leading up to the release.<p>Trust takes a lifetime to earn and a moment to destroy. I think this could actually kill Unity.<p>It&#x27;s easy to opine from the armchair, but what I think they should have done is gone down Unreal Engine&#x27;s path - buy up valuable properties like Quixel and give yourselves a unique selling point. Then they could have at least said they&#x27;re adding new functionality to justify the price hike.

&quot;Hear&quot; is a slippery word.<p>Hearing is not listening. First you hear, but you do not listen. Then you <i>want</i> to listen. Then you <i>can</i> listen. Finally, with effort, you listen. In addition to intent there must be theory of mind, and inter-subjectivity, some <i>one</i> to listen to. Then, say back what you really think you heard - acknowledge the reality not your own lens;<p>&quot;We hear that you feel we were greedy, took our users for granted and treated you with disrespect.&quot;<p>Is different from;<p>&quot;We are frightened and reacting to your signals of disengagement&quot; (expect more manipulative acting-out as we try to &quot;fix you&quot;)

&gt; We apologize for the confusion<p>Ah, I guess it was just a big misunderstanding!

This is a water sandwich. As far as I&#x27;m concerned, Unity is pivoting to a door-in-the-face[0] strategy. Since it works on anchoring, the only counter to door-in-the-face is to treat the substitute offer more harshly than you would have otherwise. In other words, punish companies for being untrustworthy business partners.<p>I really hope game developers start demanding the following:<p>- Unity abandons all attempts to adopt a revenue share of any kind and funds itself solely on subscriptions to Unity[1].<p>- Unity poison-pills themselves such that if they attempt any additional significant change in business model, then all developers who have developed games on Unity are entitled to GPL source access to those versions of the Unity runtime. They can hold source code in escrow to be released should this poison pill trigger.<p>- Unity specifically fire John Riccitiello.<p>Choosing a game engine is a matter of trust in a particular development team. Unity has broken that trust, and as far as I can tell, that is specifically due to John&#x27;s &quot;gotcha&quot; business tactics. Remember that quote from a decade ago about charging players a buck to reload? That&#x27;s revealing of the mentality behind this business model change.<p>[0] Door-in-the-face refers to making a ridiculous offer intended to be rejected in order to make another offer seem less onerous in comparison.<p>[1] Yes I am aware this implies cancelling features. Given what people have said of Unity&#x27;s development pipeline over the last half-decade, it sounds like most of those features weren&#x27;t actually things Unity&#x27;s customers wanted.

&gt; We apologize for the confusion<p>Confusion? Nope pretty sure everyone was 100% clear that this was a money grab &amp; giant f you to the devs.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;unity&#x2F;status&#x2F;1703547752205218265?s=46&amp;t=7KCNnmJt82xcCKEkZnoUTQ" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;nitter.net&#x2F;unity&#x2F;status&#x2F;1703547752205218265?s=46&amp;t=7...</a>

Part of me believes this was just a bad faith bargaining tactic. The execs knew this would never fly as-is and would generate a huge outrage, so that they can then say &quot;We heard you&quot; and look charitable in walking back to the actual fees they planned to introduce. It&#x27;s either that, or sheer stupidity and incompetence.

I really have grown a strong dislike for these non-apologies where they claim some of problem is with you&#x2F;us instead of purely their own actions. There is no confusion, there is no misunderstanding and the only reason you are changing anything is because you could see your business loosing customers so fast you got scared it was all over not because you have some culture of listening to feedback.<p>I really hate these apologies that blame their customers, they are ridiculously narcissistic.

Changing the policy is not a complete u-turn on the policy. The trust is gone.

&quot;Don&#x27;t get us wrong: We&#x27;re not changing a thing. But we heard you!&quot;

If only there was some way to talk to their customers ahead of time. Corporate infantilism at its finest.

I wonder if this is a real walk-back, or just one of those where they do the same thing anyways in a few months once the scandal dies down. It would not be below Unity, I think that has been communicated clearly.

There was no confusion. Stop gaslighting people.

They haven&#x27;t said they&#x27;re reverting it. Just changing it. Could be a change for the worst.

This is a great example of the power of spending all your money. Notice how many developers are saying they&#x27;d accept a revenue share on top of the existing per seat fee. If Unity had not overspent their revenue no one would be showing them pity.<p>Regular people see a profit or loss as an inevitable and uncontrollable result of fate. Anyone who has run a business knows costs are things you decide on. Contracts do not sign themselves. Employees do not show up at the door by themselves demanding payment.<p>Unity spent more money than it earns. Leadership decided to do that. Now devs and employees are treating that decision as a fact of nature and pleading to charge more.

Until the actions are corrected, changes prevented, and someone takes accountability, this is just asking to stop criticizing them

I love watching capitalists crash and burn their companies.

&gt;&gt; We have heard you. We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused. We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of days. Thank you for your honest and critical feedback.<p>I have no involvement and I&#x27;m not a game developer (except for small weekend projects). Please do not make any change &quot;to the policy&quot; you have announced! Your decision seemed to be the straw that was lacking for many people to support Godot and I&#x27;m rooting for them. Please don&#x27;t let us down now.