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Unity issue an apology on Twitter for "confusion and angst" over the runtime fee policy. (nitter.net)

submitted 8 months ago by helloharu@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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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.

Direct Twitter link

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[-] Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world 194 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Big "I'm sorry you were offended by the correct things I said and did" energy

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[-] Deestan@lemmy.world 158 points 8 months ago

While we were very reasonable, we understand that you just didn't get it, which made you sad. We understand it feels bad to be sad. To remedy this, we will try again using different words.

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[-] TheSpookiestUser@lemmy.world 103 points 8 months ago

Any PR statement that includes the words "we hear you" can be safely ignored

[-] hitmyspot@aussie.zone 18 points 8 months ago

Also any apology for how it was perceived rather than what was done is worthless.

It's pretty speak for I'm sorry you are stupid and expendable.

[-] assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago

RuneScape 3 recently made an extremely controversial change, and I think they handled the apology perfectly. When they finally made changes and dropped some heavily disliked things, they opened with "we messed up". Unity needs to do the same thing here if they want a chance to rebuild

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[-] SirEDCaLot@lemmy.fmhy.net 102 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

This is bullshit. There is no confusion. Their new policy was very clear and easy to understand. If the word confusion applied at all, it would be to how/why Unity is doing such a brain dead move that alienates their entire user base. This is a weasel word announcement that doesn't say what it should, namely 'we fucked up and we're sorry'.

[-] detalferous@lemm.ee 40 points 8 months ago

"we're sorry for how you reacted"

Appalling

[-] zepheriths@lemmy.world 33 points 8 months ago

My god, they're becoming alien ants

[-] Beemoe@sh.itjust.works 9 points 8 months ago

And just like, the movies, we play out our last scene.

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[-] cjsolx@lemmy.world 12 points 8 months ago

Brain dead is such an understatement too. They lost everyone's trust, and I'm not sure there's anything they can say to regain it. They're gonna try something like this again at some point, and I don't think anyone should give them the opportunity. They deserve to go under.

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[-] AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world 99 points 8 months ago

Too late, they already communicated their greed to every gamedev out there and no one can ignore the potential of Unity fucking them over again anymore. Overall the whole shitshow was good advertisement for Godot.

[-] ech@lemm.ee 48 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It's truly the year of mask-off corporate reveals. WotC, Reddit, Unity, Twitter. Probably more I'm forgetting or unaware of. So many big moves to capitalize on long time stability that, quite predictably, result not in amazing increase in profits but the irrevocable tarnishing of public trust that they relied on. It's kinda wild to watch, honestly.

[-] AlmightySnoo@lemmy.world 36 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

It's IMO a sign that the current financial bubble is about to burst and it's going to do so in a very violent way despite greedy bulls still pushing the "it's different this time, we have AI now" bullshit.

Investors have their money trapped in these companies, and when they see what riskless treasury bills yield, they naturally start losing their minds because their money is instead in companies that fail to make significantly more than that riskless benchmark. So those investors then pressure those companies to do whatever they can to produce a good enough return on investment in a short period of time as they run out of patience and they themselves know that hell is coming in the financial markets so their shares might lose an even more significant amount soon.

The end result of CEOs and executives under pressure by investors, and engineers stressing out because they understand the financial situation and that they have to either be yes-men and agree with whatever changes the executives propose or be laid off (because another way to reach the target set by investors is to reduce costs by firing people), is obviously the enshittification that we witness today.

[-] Ferris@infosec.pub 31 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

microsoft making ux worse, google fighting adblock with drm, not to mention all sorts of non-tech catastrophe

somebody is gonna make a 'we didnt start the fire' about 2023 called 'we started the fire'

[-] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 15 points 8 months ago

That's how it is once the free money dries up. The profits must rise, no matter the long-term damage this causes - so they try to bleed the existing customer base dry to keep things rising for one or two more quarters. What does it matter to them if all the employees who have worked hard for years will lose their jobs due to their mismanagement?

[-] Croquette@sh.itjust.works 10 points 8 months ago

The conventional wisdow is that in time of economic turmoil, companies should lower their profit margins and weather out the storm.

However, in today's capitalism, this is not not acceptable. Shareholders demand ever increasing profits and anything short of that is considered a failure. If you don't keep your margin, you are to be scolded and discarded.

Now, the loans that many of the companies have cost a lot more money than 2 years ago. So the enshittification is used to enable the continued growth to keep the profits growings.

[-] style99@kbin.social 91 points 8 months ago

That was not an apology. That was them calling us stupid.

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[-] amio@kbin.social 61 points 8 months ago

"Angst". Quite a choice of words.

[-] CaptObvious@literature.cafe 25 points 8 months ago

Isn’t it? Like the entire industry is composed of teenagers without enough life experience to see the big picture.

But then, did anyone expect Unity not to be tone deaf?

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[-] lambalicious@lemmy.sdf.org 43 points 8 months ago

So they apologize for being caught, not for wrecking stuff, as usual.

[-] Trihilis@feddit.nl 16 points 8 months ago

It's worse. They're not even apologizing for their actions but the "confusion and angst".

It's kind of like saying "we're sorry you feel that way" and are somehow misunderstanding what they're trying to do. They might as well have said, sorry dumbasses but it's going to happen regardless. Perhaps in some watered down form, perhaps not this/next year, but it will happen.

[-] Shush@reddthat.com 9 points 8 months ago

Remember Blizzard when they released Warcraft 3 Reforged? "We're sorry you didn't get the experienced you thought you deserved". Gold mine, that one. It wasn't phrased like that exactly but that was what they meant.

[-] sirico@feddit.uk 35 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

"confusion" no confusion here chum don't gaslight us enjoy your new shareprices sure your CEO is loving their successful dump

[-] Chailles@lemmy.world 33 points 8 months ago

It took them a week to make a tweet saying basically nothing?

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[-] pfannkuchen_gesicht@lemmy.one 30 points 8 months ago

As expected. And now they'll publish their actual policy which will still be pretty bad but less worse.

[-] JokeDeity@lemm.ee 29 points 8 months ago

They've already sealed their fate. Only a fool would start making a new project in Unity going forward.

[-] ObviouslyNotBanana@lemmy.world 28 points 8 months ago

Now everyone is going to trust them.

[-] CaptObvious@literature.cafe 13 points 8 months ago

Of course. The emergency damage control PR firm said so.

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[-] mycroft@lemmy.world 24 points 8 months ago

It's almost like the CEO of the company (John Riccitiello) supporting the most Indie game developers holds 53 million dollars in EA shares or something....

Even, and most likely especially, if Unity does poorly does EA benefit... I bet ya Riccitiella knows all the features of Frostbite, but couldn't tell you if you can do native reliable UDP networking in Unity...

[-] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 24 points 8 months ago

"We thought you were locked in and realised you may not be. We might have to rethink our evil master plans "

[-] Jaysyn@kbin.social 18 points 8 months ago

they really only have themselves to blame. Part of the task when you are making a major software platform decision as a company is to research your vendor’s financial strategy

This is basically victim blaming & the old Unity license was fine because it allowed you to create console ports. Godot still isn't a valid solution for consoles.

[-] contracode@artemis.camp 8 points 8 months ago

Why isn't Godot a solution for consoles? Is it not implemented yet? Just curious. I'm starting to read about Godot given the debacle that Unity's management caused. It's been great advertising for Godot.

[-] linearchaos@lemmy.world 8 points 8 months ago

https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/platform/consoles.html

They're not licensed, and they don't even have templates for anything but steam deck.

Unity has the cash and manpower to jump through those hoops and keep them up to date.

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[-] arc@lemm.ee 17 points 8 months ago

Unless the CEO walks and takes his yes-men with him, I don't see Unity recovering from this self-inflicted shitshow in the near term. I bet it has motivated a lot of devs to look at the viability of using Godot instead and being free of future shakedowns.

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[-] mojo@lemm.ee 15 points 8 months ago

There was no confusion and this is empty PR until they publicly post the policy changes.

[-] buru5@lemmy.world 15 points 8 months ago

The apology seems insincere, as they always do; however, a company bending to consumer feedback in this manner is a good thing (if they actually make meaningful changes).

[-] LiveLM@lemmy.zip 14 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

*wE hAvE hEArD yOu, wE aRe lIsTEnInG"
Like fuck you are, damn vultures. Outta here with this generic ass PR apology

[-] lorty@lemmygrad.ml 14 points 8 months ago

And what, pray tell, will change?

[-] Not_Alec_Baldwin@lemmy.world 11 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

This was always the plan, by the way. This is the Trump school of negotiation.

Make a horrendous, unrealistic, offensive proposition. Opponent is outraged.

Then, propose the offer you actually want. It now looks better relative to the initial proposition.

I fucking despise this type of action and will never touch unity or suggest it to anyone ever again. It's the only way to root out this type of bullshit from our society. Scorched earth.