Unity? More Like Pootitty! (The Jimquisition)
Вставка
- Опубліковано 13 січ 2025
- / jimquisition
/ jimsterling
www.thejimporiu...
Unity's "Runtime Fee," a rather grotesque scheme where it plans to charge fees for game installations, has been met with a rather predictable backlash. Let's join in!
#Unity #Controversy #GameDev #Software #Money #Greed #PC #Xbox #PS5 #Switch #JohnRiccitiello #JimSterling #JamesStephanieSterling #StephanieSterling #Games #Gaming #Videogames
Saying "only a small amount of developers will get hit by this so it doesn't matter" is like saying "that serial killer only killed less than 1% of the population so why are they even in jail?"
Tbf if there's a serial killer that specialize in killing the top 1% of society, they shouldn't be in jail either.
@@RamoneKemonoAs my mother would say, the rich are the only one that are OK to discriminate against
Serial killers usually target people so low on the social hierarchy that almost nobody cares. That is how they are able to go undetected for so long.
It's also statistically inaccurate. That 90% that "won't be affected" is made up of students, hobbyists, and people who downloaded Unity on a whim to mess around with it for half an hour. The remaining 10% are the professionals who do this for a living.
Or, "Oh, less than 1% of the U.S. population has been infected with COVID and 99% of cases aren't fatal. Why're we making a big deal out of it?"
This isn't even greed, this is bare naked avarice. Years of goodwill flushed in an instant.
avarice and stupidity, did they ever studied as a little child the cycle of water? can they even do basic math? it feel like we are in a simulation of those IDL phonegame were you amase ton of money and the only thing you get is beeing the guy that get the more fake money ...
I mean what do you expect from a CEO that was too greedy for even EA
I commented on how EA must be happy someone else is the most hated - then I found out its an EA exec. Of course it is.
Its the money version of a tapeworm. No matters how many money they ghoulishly engulf, it's never enough
had to look up what avarice means lol. its like super duper greed ig
Riccitello is the kind of person you hope goes on a maiden voyage of an experimental submarine to explore the ocean floor
or decides to take a one way trip to mars with that moron Musk.
That's a creative way of saying someone needs to unsubscribe in life.
Yes, with xbox controller in hand.
@@waltherstolzing9719 Logitech F710
What do you call 100 CEOs chained together at the bottom of the ocean?
I know EA isn't technically to blame for all this just because the guy who used to run the place is now running unity into the ground, but fuck it, I blame this on EA
No, no. Absolutely blame EA for this. If it wasn't for EA giving Riccitiello his career and promotions and godless amounts of money, and then allowing him to leave and take over Unity, this would have never happened in the first place.
You can never go wrong with blaming EA, honestly
@@Technomagus EA isnt some alive entity buddy, EA is a company and companies are amde by people. Riccitiello isnt part of EA for more than 10 years already.
More appropriately, We can blame Riggatoni for some of the worst depths of depravity that EA sank to bank in his day, because he was clearly driving those choices as well. It's like the graduate of a Well Poisoning school spent a few years running it, improving their curriculum, and THEN left and started poisoning a famous well
Not sure if EA started Riccitello's apparent lifestyle of failing profitably over and over, but they damn sure have a hand in it. The guy seems to go from company to company being an asshole, then getting paid handsomely to go elsewhere and do the same thing and repeat.
Now just imagine how many executives there are like this who manage to stay out of the news.
The goal of all businesses is to become landlords.
you can take off "these days". that's always been capitalism's goals
Much like how everything evolves into crabs all businesses evolve into landlords and slave owners
Which is why we need to maintain a "Great Filter" that destroys any business that attempts to become landlords.
Even Adam Smith complained about that in 1776
@@TalysAlankil we're just in the endgame now
When i lived in South Korea, i didn't have a computer and would go to a gaming cafe and download my games to play for a few hours a few times a week. It's wild to think someone in that situation could cost the developers more money than they spent on it by having to dowload it a ton of times
That's another reason this is a terrible idea! If you have a Unity game and someone decided they really hated you, they could rip a big fat hole in your bank account by simply writing a bit to download and re-download your game forever!
And modern internet speeds today means a 1 GB installation may only take minutes to complete.
@@useraccount333 Oh, but Unity promises that they'll exempt you from the fees in that case if you tell them about it! Which... assumes you have some way to know it's happening. And assumes you can prove it. And assumes they'll accept that proof. And assumes they feel like it. But hey, isn't that reassuring?
@@useraccount333 Yikes, didn't even think of that one
Always important to remember that anyone below the executive level should not be harassed for executive decisions. Managers are iffy - but even their bad decisions are often limited to harassing the workers. The workers have almost no say in anything, and are often punished for any public comments against anyone above them.
I'm not sure how credible this is, but one of the Unity studios was closed down due to death threats, but later it was allegedly revealed that the threats where coming from inside of the studio. It's far more likely this closure was planned months in advance, but regardless, I wouldn't be surprised if the employees were just as pissed as we are.
I can't say much but we are pissed off, and there has been furious internal comments flying everywhere. Thank you for saying this, it's been a horrible week.
I imagine many of the workers are more angry with the situation than any of us are. There are definitely people working at Unity who are furious about the changes.
This! It's mind boggling that this isn't (more) common sense.
Wealth Gatekeeping. That's basically what it is. A way they can make even more money while simultaneously preventing otherwise successful people from being as successful as them, they're literally creating a gate and saying you can't pass, and if you approach, we'll charge you into poverty.
That word is so overused it's comical.
@@TheOneGreatthis person perfectly explained what they meant
Literally private taxation. And if you weren't already unhappy about how the states spend your taxpayer money before, and how billionaires are balls deep in tax cuts and fraud, you weren't even promised anything this time. You just know your money won't be used for jack shit.
technofeudalism is the term youre looking for
They're really saying the quiet part out loud these days...
You gotta love how Unity's social media accounts tried to clear up the "confusion" surrounding Unity's decision, when no one was confused about it; everyone knew and understood what Unity was doing and thought it was shit. I honestly feel bad for the social media managers, though, who basically have no choice but to regurgitate this corporate dribble.
they've got a chance to do something extremely funny with it right now and I hope at least one of them is in a comfortable enough position to take it
"No no. You see, you don't hate what we are doing and think that it is wrong. You are simply confused. Let me explain again how you are going to give us all of your money and how you're going to love it."
They could just leave the job tho
I want to say "they have the choice to refuse" but it's not easy to just find another job if you get fired for not regurgitating the company lies. And sadly most people are too compassionate (or simply rightly worried for their own future) to defenestrate even a massive piece of shit like the CEOs who make these "business decisions" to leech off of already-struggling developers. Still, we can do a few things: Stop indulging them. Speak out. Protest. Vote with our wallets. Refuse them service if we ever see 'em IRL.
@@kielmeakin4901Just starve in the streets bro
When Unity said they'll just know the difference between how a game was installed, my first thought was "What, so Unity is spyware?"
Apparently at some point, Unity pivoted and tried to say that instead of developers, platforms were going to have to pay the fees instead. Because of course the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Epic and Valve are just going to dole out millions of dollars without protest instead of simply banning any Unity-engine game from their platforms.
They wouldn't even need to do that. All they need to do is to ask "Do you want to have a lawsuit with Apple, Google, MS, Epic, Valve, Sony, Amazon, Nintendo and everyone else with app store of any size that sells Unity games as an opposing party?"
as it is their attempt to make a retroactive change to a contract with some very large game developers and publishers has probably given a pants-change to every lawyer in the continental US, Unity's going to drown in its own attempted fees before long.
Another Trump Wall Scam, eh?
XD
Apparently the dude who came up with the runtime fee is a former EA executive. Wow, he never learnt any morality after getting the push from his last job, did he?
Edit: And now I've just seen that 'The European Games Developer Federation is calling for the EU to step in to the Unity fiasco and implement new regulatory frameworks'. Imagine being such of a fuck up that they have to come up with new laws to stop it?
It would seem the hand of EA is moving legislation forward still, somehow? You’d think they’d have learned from the failure of Operation Get The Kids Addicted To Gambling
I look forward to the "Ricitello vs EU" amendment* 😂
*not a lawyer, not sure what it's called
@@ctographerm3285 ha! The EU is rethinking about games too. But it needs not to mess up further than that.
Among other similar situation, this reminds me of what happened with Wizards of the Coast in January. An unfinished idea to squeeze more money out of customers and developers get squirted out causing outrage at all levels. And much like then, even if these ideas for changes get fully backtracked on, the damage has been done. Devs and customers will have jumped ship to a more respectable alternative because the company has painfully reminded everyone that at ANY point in time, they will attempt to screw you over so long as they can get away with it.
Today they had the sheer fucking gall to put out a "sorry you were confused" Sorry, not sorry 'apology' on Twitter. The sheer lack of self-awareness is bloody staggering.
Oh, they're aware. The insult is entirely intentional. They're just complaining how inconvenient it is that people are revolting.
Oh gawd, not the "solemn JPEG" ™️®️ again?!
@@0LoneTech To be fair, this is the kind of behavior you see throughout the upper classes throughout human history. What's more is that your "brand" depends on not making yourself look humble or even honest. Your "brand" depends on you making the best snake oil salesman out there.
Actually as much as these corporate nonapologies are bs, we should try to understand that legally speaking, they cannot apologize for any misdoing because if they do they can get sued and lose by default, as an apology is an admission of guilt.
@@MrFlarespeed Why should anyone try that? It only matters if they're intentionally being scummy in the first place - doing something so wrong they need the appearance of the apology, but not intend to make a sincere one, i.e. make things right. That behaviour isn't worthy of respect either way.
The thing that really got me was the announcement where they said that to be "eligible" for this fee they would have to cross a certain threshold. If you're paying the fee, you're not "eligible" for it, you're "liable" for it. That choice of language highlights just how aware they were that this was a fuck up, and the extent they went to to sugar coat it.
I was given a chance to learn Unity a couple years ago and turned my boss down. Never have I been so glad my laziness kicked in.
Honestly in most situations you should never turn down the chance to acquire additional skills. Even if you never used Unity again, there is the knowledge and experience gained from the process that can be applied in other ventures. Always keep learning. ❤
@@starbreaker_zed Oh wow, the world's been kind to you. Please protect that optimism.
Mmmmk.
That's deeply depressing. I hate that we've reached this stage of capitalism, dear lord.
Laziness always pays benefits.
And it's gotten even better: Apparently THEY (Unity) will decide what is considered a charity vs. a "political group" and included a freakin' children's hospital as a "political group" the devs from Orgynizer on Steam have noted. Doesn't matter whether it's federally registered as a charity or what. THEY will decide whether a charity is a charity, thus choosing whether they are exempt from the fees or not.
I SAW! that absolute AUDACITY of it all right????
In other words, they will force their right-wing politics on developers.
Because the children hospital offered gender affirming care, mind you. They also don't allow Planned Parenthood. It's very clear where their priorities lie.
@@NomadSoul76You could say the same for left-wing politics as well dude.
@@stevenschramm6640 They have a history of right wing politics, so no you can't say the same in this situation
Just like the OGL Wizard's of the Coast debacle, companies want the benefits of an open, passive, collaborative ecosystem, while having the control, 'recurrent revenue', and slice of the pie of a proprietary system. Just like how most of the internet ran on a little thing called Angular, one decision eradicated its use. Even if Unity gets its act together, it's over, the trust has been cashed out for a pittance.
Being told that you're smarter than a game executive is the kind of reassurance perhaps best appreciated on a Monday. Deep down, you know it's true, but it feels good to hear at the start of a long week. Cheers.
I feel it's damning me with faint praise.
My DOG is smarter than a game exec, especially that POS Riccatello
I think the worst part is that the suits absolutely knew this was going down bad because the CEO sold several shares before it went down
The bastards absolutely knew this was going to kill the company
Burning down a house so you can sell the ashes.
Capitalism™ is a Good System That Works!
This kind of insider trading is why CEOs also spent the better part of the last century weakening the IRS and SEC and getting Congress in bed
I'm a bit surprised that wasn't mentioned in the video, because that stunt is so sketchy I don't know how you could not frame it as intentional sabotage personal gain.
Not only the CEO sold millions in shares, but so did most of the board.
Devs if you are reading this: if you're not almost done your project, ditch Unity. If you're almost done and Unity walks this back, then press on...but plan on ditching Unity for your next projects.
Good coverage JS, as always.
I wonder if it is worth porting already complete games off of Unity at this point: given that the fees are being retroactively applied.
@@jamesphillips2285It isn't feasible for everyone but I have already seen a few developers considering it.
@@jamesphillips2285 that part doesn't even seem legal and it wasn't even part of the TOS at the time.
@@jamesphillips2285 Pretty sure that attempting to make your changes to your contracts retroactive is illegal.
When anyone changes a contract, they HAVE to get the agreement from BOTH parties, or it's not actually a completed contract, and unenforceable.
They will standardize it so it's no longer a professional option like they did with drafting Software
I'm inclined to give Wacky Raceland a pass because the Flintstones comic that was part of the same line is genuinely one of the best comics I've ever read.
"We participated in a genocide, Barn" coming From Fred Flintstone's mouth is both hilarious and sets up one of the realest looks at state violence I've ever seen.
10000% agree. Also, read “Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chrinicles”. Tying the plot to the Red Scare was genius.
The Dastardly and Muttley and their Flying Machines comic was great too.
...I don't comic. But I need to find these immediately. Is there anywhere to read them online?
Im picking up both now
Robot chicken already did it better.
Unity hasn't "stepped into it". Rather, it rented a backhoe, dug a big trench, and all their execs shit in it, then built an olympic diving board for a quarter billion dollars and then, finally, said executive took very artistic dives into their own shit.
Correct up until the last line. It's more like they shoved everyone ELSE into their own shit and told them they were confused, because "It's actually a mineral bath, not poop!"
8:20
YIKES
XD
Since Steph didn't bring it up, I feel like it's important to note that Riccitello and several other execs at Unity all sold large portions of their stock in Unity before this happened. This may well be another case of rich assholes planning to throw a company down the toilet and knowing well how bad of an idea the install fees would be.
I don't think it's so much planning to throw it in the toilet and more a hail mary to get it out of the toilet. Unity (the company, obviously) reported nearly 900 million dollars in operational losses despite an increase in revenue in 2022. Unity is shit-up creek and I'd wager that was their last attempt to try to save the sinking ship.
As utterly awful as Riccitello and ilk are, the amounts of stock they sold were in the tens of thousands out of their millions of shares. They're bastards, but not like "blatantly aspiring to be white collar criminals" level
This is a myth. Afaik the stock sales were tiny and consistent with their prior pattern of regular stock sales.
To elaborate a bit - he owns several million shares, and he sold 50k in the last year. As fun as it'd be for it to be something clearly illegal, it's really not significant in the context of how many shares he still owns.
Union organiser here: we call this the "startup cycle" but it might as well be the "tech industry cycle." It was popularised by amazon.
- a service is created thats genuinely good or free . it seeks VC funding or other investment and gets some because its genuinely useful.
- the funding it got is used to hire on many new staff, especially many managers and executives who are friends of the boss.
- the ceo and some of their mates jump ship with huge payouts... Leaving the investors or new bosses to realise "wait... This was never making infinite money. It was all just going to those guys."
-they furiously lay off many staff and try to impose new monetisation to make the service profitable and shit. This burns goodwill and will either kill the company or if theyre too big to fail leave them a shambling and evil husk.
In a union campaign, the best time to begin organising is BEFORE the founders jump ship, so that you can prevent them from playing you and the other staff for fools, or if they do leave you can oppose the new managements decisions. This setup creates a lot of short notice 'hot shop' situations which make workers angry but can be hard to organise into a robust long term structure.
The Unity executives also sold off a ton of shares in the company in the months leading up to this. They should go to jail for insider trading. And I hope they're sued into bankruptcy for trying to retroactively apply this to existing business contracts.
You say that like insider trading is even still punished in the US. The number of politicians that bought stock in pharmaceuticals companies that were involved in the covid vaccines before it was openly talked about and then made ridiculous returns when their stock prices skyrocketed is absolutely disgusting.
People keep repeating this blatant misinformation. He sold less than 0.5% of stocks like he does every year. Don't get distracted by irrelevant stuff, focus on the actual issue.
@@leetri Riccatello AND the board members all sold of many millions in stock right before this announcement.
It's hardly irrelevant when they are killing the company off knowingly, while making themselves bank. It's typical executive bullshit that SHOULD be punished!
I'm curious as to how the hell the Unity license agreement is written in the first place such that they thought a "We're going to retroactively make you give us more money because fuck you" clause tacked on afterwards is even enforceable.
This right here.
What are they going to do when developers just flat out tell them to kick rocks, they ain't getting a dime?
It's not legal to change a contract and then claim that the other person now owes you money.
Imagine just how bad these big shitty companies would be if that were legal!
@@dahn57you can update a licensing agreement yes, you can’t retroactively do it but unity didn’t do that.
@@tonycampbell1424stop licensing the engine to them ? It isn’t really that complicated.
@@MeesyIce and when they use it anyway?
Sterling certainly called their shot, like a Babe Ruth of game journalism. And they’re all the more wonderful for it.
Let's not forget that John Riccitiello was forced out of EA for being fucking horrible at his job. The company's stock price tanked and they were literally the most hated company in the US two years in a row.
If we truly lived in a meritocracy, Riccitiello wouldn't be trusted to be the night manager of a chain gas station. But nope, we can't hold wealthy white men accountable for nearly running a company into the ground. Let him slink off with a golden
parachute and get hired into another company as CEO so he can completely destroy the organization's reputation and run the stock price into the ground... again
@@LawrenceJohnYoung Maybe we just don't know the full plan and the genius of it yet. Like you can't stage insider trading and re-buying stock dirt-cheap as a night manager of a chain gas station as effectively...
@LawrenceJohnYoung people literally invest in the WeWork CEO's even after everything he did. The top 1% are sociopaths, thats what they are
A THEYTY in the making!
Unity is like that one kid in your group for a school project that did absolutely none of the work but still think they deserve to get the good grade that everybody else busted their butts for.
This is Unity basically saying they're somehow entitled to the creativity in developer's own heads simply for using the technology. Imagine if canvas and paint companies started charging artists for every art project they work on just cause the artists didn't make the paint and canvas themselves.
Well they made a very expensive but versatile engine, it's like someone charging money for a camera they built so that you can shoot a movie... except it's not that at all because this current blunder is the camera manufacturer charging you every time someone watches your movie, which is fucking insane. Unity already charges a subscription for it's developer tools and also charges developers above a certain sale amount, but instead of working within those relatively accepted business structures they decided to do... this. All so that they can pressure free to play games into running their proprietary ad bullshit. And if they limited it to simply free games with in-game monetization, I'd even be somewhat amused by the ghoul infighting. However Unity decided to spread the love to other developers and is instead trying to fuck everyone over and fuck them retroactively at that.
To be absolutely fair here, there are other engines with similar license fees on revenue, like Unreal with a flat 5% fee. The primary differences are that they're not stupid enough to try and tie it to individual installs, not brazen enough to try and apply it retroactively to already-finished products, and not controlling enough to say they're going to track the numbers themselves and at their sole discretion, instead asking companies to self-report to them, so there haven't been any major complaints about them.
It's not necessarily WHAT Unity is doing that's the biggest problem, they've just chosen the absolute worst possible way of doing it.
Pretty much what we expect from executives. Pure rot
Why do they even exist? I can't remember ever hearing about an executive ever making a good decision, ever.
gotta say: it's been fun to see people make tutorials going from unity to godot (an open source software). in the past week.
I've been looking forward to this since the very minute the news dropped, never been so excited for Monday in my life
Until capitalism is destroyed, none of that mental health can recover fully. I feel for the indie devs, too.
Down With Capitalism!!! ✊
As flawed a system as capitalism is, it's not even really capitalism any more. There's no competition, no free market - just a little group of huge monopolies that own entire industries, carving up the map of the US and elsewhere between them so neither will end up having to reasonably price their services / products, nor compete with actual quality. They just buy, own, collect rent and fees and percentages. These people do not deserve to exist, not in their present form. We need to abolish them and their privilege.
Agreed all around.
This is actually more Technofeudalism
ua-cam.com/video/xDPPig9JR5Y/v-deo.htmlsi=d1D_gwBzk45Ybran
- sent from my iPhone
I just...its so easy to just...not be greedy. Just make your normal profits like anyone else, it worked for years, there is literally ZERO reason for these companies to do this crap time and time again, only greed and delusion :/
Not to defend people like Riccitello, but it kinda is hard to not be greedy when your entire job is to be greedy and you "earned" it and the compensation that comes along with it by being greedy. We have a system that cultivates and selects for shitty people to put in charge of everything, and then constantly incentivizes them to be even shittier. As long as the job description of CEO remains "Make the line always and forever go up at any cost," then good people aren't going to end up in those roles, and if one somehow accidentally did they wouldn't last very long without selling their soul.
@@ravageduckmanguy Yeah I guess that is a point :/
It’s literally capitalism’s fault. Publicly traded companies are legally obligated by their shareholders to see positive growth in-perpetuity. And after a certain point it becomes mathematically impossible to naturally grow any more and they have to find new ways of wringing infinite growth out of a finite system. That’s why they do incomprehensibly stupid stuff like this. They’re desperate for growth at any and all costs. Either that or it’s an insider trading and/or tax write off scheme.
Sadly, Capitalism is a system that rewards the few at the expense of the many. It's a system that encourages and maintains greed. Greed, by definition cannot be satisfied and is why it's such a deadly system, because it caters to a human sin. Ever since businesses bought the US government, they have been rapidly conditioning the public through lies, insider meetings, and even getting actual experts to kiss the ring to make the public think that stealing from the masses and voting against their interests to make those people richer is a moral and ethical thing. They know what they're doing.
It's got so bad that wealth very much equates to power. The US is a plutocratic oligarchy.
Its the idea of "potential growth" investors want to see in a company. They want to see the company make more profit yearly even if they conceivably can't. So the company resort to layoffs, and screwing their customers over to make it seem their companies are more profitable then they really are. But honestly I can see Untiy going bankrupt seeing all of the executives sold their stock before this shit storm started. This is just speculation but the execs probably saw their sinking ship losing money and were like "fu@# it instead of patching it up lets burn the whole ship down and then claim the insurance money."
As soon as a company says they need to "clarify" a policy because there's some "confusion" about it... you know that
1) they dun goofed
2) they know they dun goofed
and
3) they're going to carry on dungoofing
yours is my favorite among these here Comments
You know, as someone who doesn't follow executive movement news, I actually had no idea John Riccitiello had moved from EA to Unity, and knowing that now, this move makes SO much more sense.
Don't forget that we can't trust Unity anymore, but that former EA CEO no matter where he goes after this if he eventually is forced to leave. Whatever company or industry he goes to, if they are willing to hire him, stay away from that company
This is what we need more news about. When a terrible CEO goes to ANOTHER company, the public needs to know that this company just became as terrible as the previous one.
6 months of unity development and im now having to scrape everything and move to unreal and im one of the lucky ones
I'm in the exact same situation... i'm moving to Godot. It's really demoralizing.
Good luck with your project.
Almost 3yrs for me and STILL one of the lucky ones with the only investment being time. I still haven't the heart to open up Unity & look at my project since the announcements.
@@matthewrushmer238 I'm sorry for you.
6 years here 😂😂 I'm doomed.
It's so aggravating because I became very comfortable with Unity. I look at Unreal and I just don't know what the hell's going on. Why tf is Z up?
It never ceases to baffle me that these """people""" (read: corporate scum) get to where they are. Gives new meaning to "failing upward"
The developer of Cult of the Lamb tweeted and said if this goes into effect they’re going to delete the game completely in response.
So one of the best and most creative indie games of last year will be straight up gone because of Unity’s greed :/
This was apparently a joke, thankfully.
@@Parker8752 thank goodness but honestly I wouldn’t have even blamed them had they been serious. This whole situation is dogshit.
Thankfully it was a joke.
In their latest Steam update they addressed it saying, "Our post on X got sensationalized by the media...like, a lot!"
Back when I was at the New York Film Academy's one year game design program we were taught to design in Unity. Yet another reason I'm still grateful that I never pursued a carrier in Game Design because if my portfolio of work was going to be used by Parasites like John Riccitiello to squeeze a single penny out of me I'd hunt them down like the animals they are and..well I'll leave the to your imaginations. Speaking of John I feel that Goichi Suda went too easy on him by making him the main villain of No More Heroes 3 and having Travis beating the tar out of him in Travis Strike Again.
So you were going to make him feel permanently like an anime fan on prom night? I'll help throw your bail if you do it anyway 😂
lol I forgot about that, well done Suda
@@tcpratt1660 The whole "anime fan on prom night" meme is really funny to me, after my dad told me about how in high school, instead of going to prom, he watched anime with his girlfriend and friends.
Something about this reminds me of the extremely low income and asset limits placed on folks receiving government benefits in the U.S. There's a built-in tipping point where being too successful will send you right back into poverty because you'll make or (temporarily) have enough money to get your benefits cut off but not enough to afford the cost of living without those benefits.
I'm a previous dev in an AA studio that used Unity (left to do freelance), between that and school I've been using the engine for 7 years. This announcement made me learn UE5. Even IF they decided to fully retract, I will not use Unity going forward because they have proven to be untrustworthy. That's on top of them continuously refusing to fix bugs, not adding anything of substance compared to the competition, and regularly introducing half-baked "features" that they never finish while the already existing ones are left in a legacy state and may or may not break with any update.
How insane has the world become that so many people are switching to Unreal - and engine owned by Tim Fucking Sweeney - as the more reliable and trustworthy option over Unity. How insane do you have to be to put your company in the position of being worse than Tim Fucking Sweeney.
@@fudgeweaselI mean, considering Unity is being run into the ground by someone actually worse than Tim Sweeney, things are understandably pretty bad.
All the regular Unity employees I've ever met have been nice people genuinely excited about helping people use the tools they've made. I wish they had any power over how the company they work for does business :/
if only there was some way workers could organise to challenge top down authority via collective action!
@@paultapping9510 Unity being multinational probably makes that more difficult. While many of the European locations are presumably organised, many of its other locations probably aren't and organising people across ~17 countries is a tall task.
I feel like charging retro-actively has to be illegal. How can I sell you a sandwich for $10 and then a month later charge you 20c for each slice of bread?
It is illegal
To amend Aladdin, you're only in trouble if you get caught AND someone can hold you to account. Sure, this is illegal, but if no one has the means or the will to enforce the law, they get away with it, and that's what matters.
It's super DUPER illegal
one of the absolute core elements of contract law is an element called "consideration" which basically means both parties must understand and agree to a contract and it's terms before it's viable, it's why you can't say...issue a loan to a child, or a dog, or somebody who is drunk, etc. This also means that you can't randomly change the terms without express approval from both parties, something that clearly hasn't been given here. Changing the terms essentially makes it a new contract, meaning consideration must be fulfilled anew, and if the devs don't agree to those retroactive fees, the new contract, the new terms, ARE NOT VALID OR ENFORCEABLE. This is also why, if challenged in court, EULA's and TOS agreements for software etc are generally not enforceable, at least in the US, because it's a giant wall of legalese text the customer almost certainly didn't read, and didn't understand, and the company who asked them to agree to it knows that. Both parties did agree, but both parties did NOT understand the terms of the contract.
@@thomasakagi7545 true, but...i'd imagine at least some of these devs do have enough money to sue over this, and might actually force the law to take some action. As much as unity is known as the indie engine of choice, there are a lot of bigger devs that use them too, especially on switch.
I wonder if we'll see developers throwing their game in a bundle for the same price when it gets near 200K and then raise their regular game price to something ridiculously high to stop regular installs before they hit the mark. . ..
or make it you can Only get it in bundles
I could see devs "accidentally" leaving in the marker that says the game was bought in a bundle, no matter where it was bought!
Just think, all devs would have to have different builds of their games for each method that they sell it for...
How utterly moronic would that be. Definitely sounds like an EA action, no surprise who is pushing it.
Shitty Unity Game: 99$
Sound Track: $1
Package permanently 95% off on Steam
Unity: "so, we're going to charge Microsoft for every single download of a game they put on Gamepass that uses Unity."
Microsoft: "Really? Do you REALLY think that's going to happen? Do you REALLY think we're going to let you do that?" 🤣
Has real, "we'll make Mexico pay for the wall!" energy, including the part where the Mexican government told Donnie to go **** himself in response.
....four asterisks automatically change to two...weird
I did think that a company could implode in a worse way than Wizards of the Coast did, but color me suprised
Ummm...
Huh? What? My dad works at WOTC, and they're doing fine. They had light layoffs a few months ago, but are still quite profitable. And if you're in my dad's department, and didn't get laid off, it's a good place to work too. Although he's a Magic developer, not a D&D developer.
@@henryfleischer404 Yeah, I thought it was a bizarre thing to say, too... you can kind of tell which UA-cam content creators broke this guy's brain, though.
@@henryfleischer404 I think he's referring to the burning of all goodwill and policy change that caused them to lose the trust of a massive community of developers licensing their "engine". What WoTC did with the OGL is eerily similar to what Unity just did with its ToS changes. Completely destroyed the companies credibility and had to be walked back, yet has likely permanently harmed their brand as nobody trusts them not to try it again.
@@ASpaceOstrich It's such a bad comparison: Unity is charging TWICE (as covered in this very video), and WotC were charging ONCE (again, probably why Sterling avoided that nonsense like the plague).
You frigging weirdos poisoning the well is precisely WHY this stuff keeps happening.
If you truly care about this stuff, you'd not make those comparisons, or even pay attention to idiot content creators manipulating weak-minded and angry virgins for clout.
if John Riccidildo is the CEO of course he gets the totality of the blame for this. There's no way Unity could do thgis without the approval of the CEO
Don't forget the board, who is a bunch of equity firm freaks.
How would retroactively charging studios even be legal? They're changing the contract after it's already been signed and just expecting that it's binding.
it most definitely is not legal, it's sort of alarming that they would even try something so brazen, their legal team must have had a coronary when they saw that
I also found it amusing that a lot of people didn't know John Riccotello's (I don't respect him enough to look up how to spell his name) history. Some of these people are old enough to have known about him before. This is why the mutant power of remembering things is a power I wish more people had. We might be able to squash these things from happening in the future if people could remember the past. People that have the terrible mindset of infinite greed like Rickodicko should be watched and boycotted by the consumer base.
Kinda was expecting the episode title to be "United We Fall" but this episode title checks out too hahaha.
To be fair; "Unity Falls" would probably be not as punny, compared to needing a title as deserving of the hatred as "Oh, Ubisoft..."
Wait. Does Ubisoft still use Unity? If so, imagine how f###ed Ubisoft is right now, over this fiasco?
@@masterbasher9542 I think Unity is the one who's fucked if they ever try to enforce a claim based on "trust me bro" figures against a major publisher.
Thank you for covering this. I've been watching the news unfold in real time as this week's gone on, and it's been such a frustrating situation all round.
What's also concerning is that, if Unity were to do this successfully, other companies would follow it out of greed. Alternatively, even if Unity 100% backpedalled and cancelled the new fee idea, what might they try to pull in the future? Trust has been broken.
REMEMBER: Wealthy People talk about taking Personal Responsibility and being Thrifty, how Handouts are BAD! Yet they LIVE spending more than they can afford, and making Innocents pay for THEIR mistakes. Along with LOTS of Bailouts!!
"We're adding a fee, and MICROSOFT'S GONNA PAY FOR IT!"
So, did Unity execs and lawyers sit down with the execs and lawyers of these other companies to discuss all this? Or were they going to spring it on them like they did with everyone else? I'm also wondering about their special "proprietary software" they can't talk about because REASONS. It's going to be some sort of cute little malware package disguised as "essential software" that fucks both the developer and the customer, isn't it?
Wonderful video! Thanks for covering this one!
My friend that's an artist asked me why I was using Godot instead of Unity for the game idea we're collaborating on, and this is a big part of it. I knew for profit companies will only ever alter the deal in their favor.
Can the SEC please charge these monsters with insider trading already?! They literally sold their stock before announcing this change. This is clearly stock manipulation.
Excellent...... i was so worried after a week of absolute fervor on all platforms about the ex EA president doing the most EA thing ever. Though i'm still indecisive cause i remember all those asset flipping con merchants you dealt with........... like *The Romaine Brothers*
Also, Jim, you're eyeshadow game is fucking amazing
Here's my (probably crackpot) theory:
Genshin Impact runs on Unity (or so I've read) and has been making frankly embarrassing amounts of dosh since it released back in 2020 and someone high up in Unity's dev team wanted a piece of that particular pie.
Again, this is just a theory. A _GAME_ theo- _(gets shot)_
That's almost certainly half the reason they did this. The other half is the other super profitable mobile gacha games made in the engine.
@@AegixDrakan I agree. This all reminds me how much ActiBliz was pissed for missing an opportunity to profit off DoTA and since have been more and more anti-consumer. They have been wanting to control EVERYTHING in their products, even games you made through Warcraft 3's Map Editor - which lead to us getting...WC3: Refunded.
Yeah, as soon as I saw this story I knew exactly what this week's Jimquisition would be.
It should also be noted that a number of the executives at Unity recently sold off their shares right before the announcement. Definitely not suspicious timing at all.
Also Wacky Raceland was part of a whole series of DC/Hannah-Barbera collaborations that 'updated' their old properties with new visions. Some were good (The Flintstones one is surprisingly well written). Others were Wacky Raceland.
The flintstones one is genuinely superb writing. Most of the others are misses, but that one is a grand slam.
"Its just economics. You cant criticize economics. There are no moral implications of economics. Economics is the sacred cow. You cant criticize the sacred cow because we did a ritual of saying it has no moral implications" -morality deniers
Unity just came out that the charity exception doesn't count for "political" charities.
The only thing I don't agree with, insofar as developers reacting, is their promise to cut ties "unless" things improve. Given the current state of this industry, you absolutely need to have PERMANENT consequences to shit like this, otherwise the ONLY lesson execs are going to learn is to boil the frog more slowly next time.
Now I want to see a Wacky Races movie done by the same people who did Mad Max Fury Road
Only to see Penelope 'Pink Latex' Pitstop dropping the hammer on wasteland mutants. In Pink Latex.
@@LoveProWrestling I think that's the plot of "Priscilla: Queen of the Desert".
Unity has been gradually chipping away at their good will for the past several years, but this just chucked whatever scraps of good will were left off a cliff
Rest in peace, Horrid Spider 3d asset. You were too beautiful for this world.
When we are rid of CEOs, entitled investors and corrupt politicians the world over. The better off we will be. I say this as a disabled person facing homelessness because of the current UK government.
As an indie dev who's team can't pivot away from unity at this point in development, I hope we win and they excrutiatingly lose.
Even if Unity's claim about '10% of developers' is true, that 10% includes basically every noteworthy indie game you've heard of.
They didn’t learn from Wizards of the Coast’s blunder? They’ve permanently damaged their reputation. 3rd party creators will never trust them again. A very similar situation with similar reactions.
That Megacrit quote is deeeelisius, wow.
I was looking forward to what you had to say about this clusterfuck, Steph, and you did not disappoint. It really smacks of Wizards of the Coast, doesn't it?
Imagine your studio going bankrupt, not because your game was bad, but because you game was too good. Fucking hell.
I'm not a game developer, but I am a developer, a good one to say without false humility. I "played" with game engines for like 20 years. Unity is... usable, for sure, but it is a clusterfuck code-wise. It doesn't know what it wants to be. I looked into Godot4 lately as it also has C# support and from what I saw it's pretty much Unity with seemingly clearer ideas. And it's truly free.
Also, the void in the market will be filled. Expect many new engines popping up or gaining popularity as people look for new outlets for their creativity.
I wrote a game in XNA that Microsoft sadly killed (sidenote: Stardew Valley was written with it!), I wrote games in just pure C++, Unity can go suck a malformed one.
The History of a Man (Riccitello, that is, if he is even worthy of the title any more, not in a toxic macho way, but more in the fashion of whether such actions still afford someone Human status) that never learned that gamers, developers, and the public at large don't want to be drained of their every last penny, much less to "enjoy" an escape from the pressures of the world. Although, more and more each day, we see that those who make the pressures of reality inescapable will make retaliation and organised action inevitable.
As I write this, it's been a few days since Marvel VFX workers announced the decision to unionise. This is pertinent, as it shows that those who make our entertainment are demanding to be seen as human, and they are now organising to demand their humanity.
And actually, I don't think that Riccitello and his ilk are going to continue to fail upwards, especially if they continue to ignore the mood music, ruin company after company, until their very names become toxic in not just Videogames, not just entertainment, but somewhere that their utter failure style would cause influential investors serious consequences, and/or actual pain, leading to a very satisfying moment for the rest of us. Or even if they try to force a union to blink, and end up out on their asses, possibly with a very costly lawsuit, or even class action, to worry about.
Oh yes, one way or another, things are going to change, and the Koticks and Riccitellos of this world are going to feel the effects of it. And SOON.
Thank Lonelygirl15 for Stephy Sterling, and all Avarice shall Burn!
There's also the fact there have been suspicious stock trading activity in the leadup to the announcement.
Anyone else think this will not survive professional scrutiny, or is that just me?
Seriously...I suspect one charge of embezzlement from a lawyer who knows what he/she/whatever is doing, and Unity will CRUMBLE.
Knowing how many major developers/publishers/companies with infamously rabid lawyers that either have used or are currently using the engine for their products... yeah, I think it's safe to say that Unity's done for.
I'll tell you this, there is no universe where retroactively changing the terms of service to apply to previously developed games and charge money based on the new terms is remotely legal. That, at the very least, will not stand the second a lawyer gets their hands on it.
The silver lining to this is that this decision is so UNIVERSALLY terrible that it will likely bury Unity under a mountain of lawsuits
@@HolographicMeatloaf We can only hope...
its fuckin over lads. I legit haven't seen the entire industry collectively unite (hehe geddit) against a single issue like this.
I think its something like "a crime with a fine is only a crime if you are poor"
This feels very reminiscent of the OGL debacle with Hasbro and a very similar overreach by the company.
I do wonder, by install... does that mean every time I install it on the same system? Like, if I get the game, download it, don't play it, delete it to free space, then reinstall it later, does the dev get charged twice?
Steph serving us some good realness today
Let's not forget that Suda51 made Riccitiello into a villain in No More Heroes Travis Strikes again and NMH3. I WONDER WHY.
EA never cease to impress
Yup ea also should get hit for sustaining that wallet vampire in the past.
Did you guys see the UFC 5 trailer? Absolute disappointment and they dare try to charge for a FOMO-Edition with tons of pre-order bonus and cool costumes, can’t wait for more micro-transactions in my MMA game! And to think the comments section of the trailer still have blind supporters!
I am over 30 years old. And I say this with absolutely no shame whatsoever. The cornflake creature is legitimately terrifying.
Again, Im just stunned by the amounts of crazy editing and clip usage. Well done!
Unity studying at the Wizards of the Coast school of management. Also, I so do NOT live in a cage. Ahem.
I feel bad for the workers on the ground floor, because it's really only the people at the top who believe this kind of scheme was going to work. They destroyed their company's trust and disrespected their user base, as if that was ever going to be any different. These kinds of actions destroy a company because once you lose trust, winning it back is nearly impossible.
This is exactly why monopolies are the most despicable shit to happen to any industry. Imagine Unity was the only viable engine for game development, it would literally collapse thousands of studios
I've been looking forward to this video since this shit cropped up. Riccitiello is so out of touch he could have been in a Hall and Oates music video. Love you Steph!
Wizards of the coasts corpse isn't even cold yet and Unity execs really went and "I'll have a bit of what they are having"
The DC/LooneyTunes/HannaBarbara cartoon crossovers were actually pretty good as a whole. The Flintstones and ElmerFudd was really good
1:52 to skip the preambling
Stephanie, you can't get me flustered with all that Mommy Dommy talk like that while I'm on lunch.
Anyway, yeah, this has been a great laugh. Glad to see the Official Takedown from the Sterling themselves. Thank God for You 🤘
I really don't see how they can legally enforce retroactively charging runtime installs, surely they could only do this if it was an update to an existing game. There can't be terms and conditions that state at any time in the future we can charge anything for games that have already been installed. Like just think about that for a second, imagine an EULA that states we can charge you for this game you've already installed at any time.
Unreal should come up with an engine migration tool.
Some stuff can be migrated easily between engines. The rest... Would be nice, but with Unity to Unreal probably about as technically possible as turning a cot into a cat. With something like Godot, well, it would be more like breeding a coyote that looks just like a cat, and everything else somewhere in between. With all kinds of legal issues to navigate around. So, as difficult as that is going to be, most of the migration away from Unity would probably be done by hand. :(
yeah as @nebufabu said; it's impossible. The way you structure your data and logic is entirely different so you have to rip apart your code and configuration files and slowly start over again to assemble it on the other end. I'm going from Unity to Godot and everything is different; nothing can come across easily (with many things altogether missing). I've got many months of work ahead of me just to get close to a similar point I was at in Unity; definitely will be easier for someone who is early in their project though. Unreal is probably what I would advise people to use (for 3d projects); for 2d there's a bunch of options.
I think the best that can be done at the moment is a guiding/linting tool that could flag unity-specific code and give valid alternatives in other engines. E.g. if it finds unity physics code it will mark it and have an attached message explaining whatever ways you can transfer that to unreal/godot/etc physics code. Even that would take a bit of time to develop, tho, and would still need a lot of manual input.
I suppose a tool that would re-arrange the file structure of a project to fit another engine would be easier to make, but even then it would be basically impossible to make one that doesn't break stuff for any project of non-trivial complexity, it would just give you a potentially better starting point and then you would need to look around manually for stuff that needs fixing.
AppLovin apparently tries to create generative AI that would rewrite games to Unreal/Godot/Cocos, but from my (limited) experience with AI-generated code and AI doing coding-related stuff, even if they manage to write a perfect prompt (looks like what they do is pure prompt engineering, no custom training) it would be in that annoying "it almost works, but you need a ton of experience to get it actually working as expected" state.
And, as far as getting AI to actually do stuff like that without absolutely needing a review from experienced dev for the target platform goes, it's like burning tons of cots, then growing plants on their ashes and watered with water vapour distilled from the smoke, then feeding those plants to fish, then feeding that fish to several generations of cats, until you get a cat that's 99.9% made from cot atoms...
No mention of the LevelPlay "use our unity owned ad service or pay us money" backdoor?
Personal note: Hope you are being ans feeling better since your transition. You are a smart caring and honest person when it come to a topic you care and knows about. Thank You :)
Thank you for covering this! I know there are tons of videos out on this since Unity dropped it on our heads, but I prefer your humor and tone with issues.
I feel bad for many of the Unity employees; many of them were actually trying to argue the change, and some have even quit over it.
I was not expecting Steph to compliment me today.
Even if being better than an executive in any way isn't a terribly high bar.
Still got the warm fuzzies to carry me through Monday. Awww.
Thank god for you!
Just another "big brain" idea from John Riccotello. I worked for EA in the late 90's as a customer support and game tester. We had an away day event for the Redwood City office, which involved going up to the hills and playing paintball. It was fun on it's own, but my favourite moment was shooting Riccotello several times with my paintball gun. (He was the CFO at the time). One of my proudest moments.