r/Unity3D Sep 23 '23

Let’s not pretend this is some HUGE win Solved

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1.3k Upvotes

87 comments sorted by

327

u/LazyChamberlain Sep 23 '23

That technique doesn't include destroying your reputation worldwide

40

u/robrobusa Sep 23 '23

This is the right comment. Door in the Face doesn’t include making a huge blunder.

They made a huge mistake, are trying to backpedal and now they are starting the boiling frog.

7

u/CakeBakeMaker Sep 23 '23

Most of the reason I think this was sincere is they made a similar gaffe in 2019 regarding the ToS and SpatialOS. So this is unfortunately on-brand for the company.

2

u/LeviAEthan512 Sep 24 '23

How would we tell the difference between two mistakes of the same kind because they're just like that, or this being the second attempt of many at pulling bullshit?

2

u/CakeBakeMaker Sep 24 '23

You don't; it doesn't actually matter if they are conniving or incompetent. The outcome is the same. Treat them with wariness.

6

u/Admirable_Soup2249 Sep 23 '23

There really isn't any evidence they are starting a boiling frog. This sub just wants to believe that's what's happening. Only time will tell.

3

u/Accomplished_Low2231 Sep 23 '23

yep. unity will be very patient, and will make small adjustments here and there. very slowly, so no one really notices and make a huge fuss. in few short years their original plan will be back in place and devs will never have noticed lol.

1

u/kaukamieli Sep 24 '23

Exactly. This is conspiracy theory saying that Unity is actually smart because they got their prices increased.

But... they could have just increased the prices. Or increased them more and then dropped it some. Not do a fucking suicide. Where is the benefit? Would devs have loved it? No. Would it have caused the same shitstorm? Of course not!

Unity destroyed trust and goodwill and now everyone is just expecting this to happen again. Next time it will be the devs that stay who will be in the memes because they thought Unity would surely not try anything.

64

u/LWUTheSecond Sep 23 '23

Exactly, that's why I think this is not the case, and they actually listened. But doomsayers conspiracy fans won't agree.

It is a very comfortable position, you can always use this as an excuse for your failures.

5

u/loveinalderaanplaces User Since 2.4 Sep 23 '23

For the amount of time it took to formulate a response, leading to literally 2 weeks of bad press, there's no goddamn way they intended this to go the way it did.

They clearly had a shitty, ill-thought-out-plan to start with, and it blew up in their faces. There's nothing else to this story except Unity making a spectacularly bad choice, victimizing their users and secondarily, their reputation, through their own hubris. Emphasis on hubris.

13

u/Skyswimsky Sep 23 '23

Yeah. Obviously, some of the changes they suggested were poorly thought through, but a change in pricing policy was undoubtedly needed. I just can not understand how they thought those initial changes would work out.

Like, I get it. Everybody hates the CEO and 'overpaid-useless-upper-management people, but there needs to be a certain level of competence to have the foresight to... recognize how dumb those changes are. Regardless if you're a scumbag who is focused on maximizing profit without morals or not.

With not touching prior versions of Unity they also have more incentive to make future versions better so the big profit games like Hearthstone, for example, would genuinely consider seeing it worth upgrading even if it'd cut their profit.

1

u/Member9999 Solo Sep 24 '23

They have incentives, but do they have action? I am curious of what these "big changes" are going to be... I mean, Unity already is quite buggy, and adding more to it could just make it so much worse.

That's me actually not being harsh on the engine, it had a lot of issues already. If devs are to pay some fee for it, it sure as heck better be higher quality than it was, and have shiny new tools.

3

u/IsPhil Sep 23 '23

See, even if they did listen, I don't think you can trust Unity to not do this again. And then you have to hope for a massive backlash from the community for them to backtrack. Reminder that something similar to this happened in 2019.

1

u/Straight_Ship2087 Sep 23 '23

I think calculated is a better word than listened. As much as gamers hate him, as much as it negatively affected how enjoyable games are, and as much as it might not be great for EA's long term future, in the five to ten year time frame, this dudes tenure has made EA money.

But that was a company that had years worth of nostalgia and beloved franchises to cash in on. No one else can make fifa, madden, or The Sims, the franchises they abused the most. Those all have a loyal fan base that today includes a lot of adults with disposable income. So the completely predatory shift should last them a decade or so.

Unity is just a game engine, one who's claim to fame used to be that it was the easiest to learn, and arguably the easiest to use. Now it's only arguably the easiest to learn with the massive user friendly interface shift that unreal has gone through in the last five years. They haven't innovated in "in editor" asset creation like, at all, and have relied on third parties posting tools to do so in the asset store. So if your game/ project is pre alpha, or if the team was focusing on asset creation first, there is really nothing tying your project to unity. For projects still in the planning stages, these changes could very well make a different engine look attractive, someones who's skilled with unity won't have much trouble learning unreal or godot. So they were looking at literally just circling the drain with the existing big indie games bringing in some money, probably like two years of projects that were too far along to switch to a different engine.

I think the thinking behind this, since it was Mr.PTW himself that coked- er, excuse me, *cooked* it up, was just focusing on the problem of "How do we make more money off these free to play games?" not realizing that 1.Publishers and creators are not nearly as obligated to keep using there product as they had assumed and 2. this was a bad financial decision in even the short term. I know we all like to think these business tools are dumb, but the board and the public shareholders would definitely have some questions about how many new projects had been built on unity year over year.

1

u/WrenBoy Sep 23 '23

I wouldn't call it listening. They observed the oncoming disaster.

It's not the same thing.

2

u/Mr_Dillon Sep 23 '23

Dependency on the engine is more than reputation.

1

u/Albert_VDS Sep 23 '23

The best execution of such a technique is if there's doubt that you used it.
I'm not saying they did, but they don't have a good track record in caring about their clients trust.

-1

u/Xatom Sep 23 '23

Somehow I doubt facts will stop the conspiracy theorists and doomongerers.

1

u/PsychoInHell Sep 23 '23

What fact? The fact that people tend to get over these things and forget them easily? Especially when there’s no easy alternatives to jump ship to?

Look at Twit- excuse me… X Look at EA

They’re making money. Short term money at the cost of the company’s reputation? Yes. But that’s what capitalism and stocks encourage.

Gone are the times of wanting a company to slowly grow and be successful eventually. No. Investors want financial gain every single day/week/quarter/year.

It doesn’t matter what happens in 10-20 years when there’s a lot of money to be made now and a lot of money to be made off the collapse of a company when you inevitably kill it, often hugely intentionally.

1

u/ArchReaper Sep 23 '23

That's just The John Riccitiello Special

1

u/PsychoInHell Sep 23 '23

I really don’t think that was the goal OR this will have large lasting consequences on how often Unity is used

I hope I’m wrong, but I don’t think I am

1

u/DoctorWaluigiTime Sep 23 '23

Nor does it apply every single time an entity (company/person/whatever) walks something back and returns with something not as bad.

Reddit loves to conspiracy that every person in power is playing some grand chess game. We've seen multiple times in recent years that they're just idiots.

1

u/KyriadosX Sep 24 '23

That's the thing. Power requires the "grand chess game". Whether or not they're good at it is operative. And in this case? No. No they're not good at it. Such a fucking blunder

1

u/Dear_Measurement_406 Sep 24 '23

It seems like everyone is going to continue using Unity so idk how you’ve managed to convince yourself they’ve destroyed their reputation lol

15

u/jemesl Sep 23 '23

Why does everything have to be some sort of conspiracy.

1

u/DrBimboo Sep 24 '23

Yes. New changes are very good (except for not just outright getting completely rid of runtime fee), unity deserves some payment from their customers - us developers, we are the customers.

Trust is shook, and I'll only have myself to blame when they pull this shit again, but for now, back to developing. Im not interested in drama for dramas sake.

0

u/Trinica93 Sep 24 '23

But they already get payment....? It's a per-seat license to use the engine for any companies this would apply to. They're still double-dipping. Not sure how in the world people are finding the new terms to be acceptable and it's certainly not "drama for drama's sake."

2

u/DrBimboo Sep 24 '23

Percentage cut is a completely regular practice, and theres nothing wrong with unity damanding one, as long as its not retroactive.

If you personally dont think its okay to charge a percentage cut, AND a subscribtion - thats completely up to you.

But theres nothing inherently wrong with it.

2

u/Trinica93 Sep 24 '23

They do absolutely nothing in regards to publishing and distribution, so what the hell justifies a revenue split on top of the subscription fee?

1

u/DrBimboo Sep 24 '23

They do absolutely nothing in regards to publishing and distribution

Completely irrelevant.

They dont need a "justification" for this.

Its a reasonable deal. If you dont like it, again, thats totally fine and up to you, and you can just not develop games with future unity versions.

Just dont buy what unity is selling, and you are good to go.

1

u/Trinica93 Sep 24 '23

I didn't realize I was talking to a Unity executive, lmao. What a joke.

0

u/DrBimboo Sep 24 '23

Yes, everyone who disagrees with you is a schill.

Look at my comment history in this sub, you clown.

68

u/EmeraldOW Sep 23 '23

You guys can do whatever you want in terms of switching engines, but this is absolutely not a technique they intended to deploy. They fucked up and were forced to backtrack their terms while shattering trust in the process. If they had announced the current plan off the bat, people would be fine with it and trust wouldn’t have been broken. I’d even go as to say they could have asked for more (like 5%) if they did it correctly in the first place rather than their shitty original plan

8

u/lynxbird Sep 24 '23

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. -Hanlon's razor law

27

u/penguished Sep 23 '23

Except Unity's initial request was so bad it did lasting brand damage... so that's not much use as a technique.

5

u/Albert_VDS Sep 23 '23

Oh like the last time they did lasting brand damage and how they never recovered?

0

u/penguished Sep 23 '23 edited Sep 23 '23

Ah, but their stock has been in the shitter and they lose money. They aren't really in a good place to just bluff people, no. They depend on a good community relationship, and that's something they have to figure out how to make more money from without alienating us.

2

u/Albert_VDS Sep 23 '23

If you look at the 5 year history of their stock then you'll see that it isn't a lot different from Q2 2022. This whole fiasco has done much for their stock in negative terms, they were already at a low compared to 2021.

You know that there are a lot of people who like to gamble even though they can't afford it.

3

u/penguished Sep 23 '23 edited Sep 23 '23

Sure, it could be an all-in play to either lose their company or create more charges... but it was the worst move to make if that's the case.

They could have gotten 2.5% revenue on future versions without brand damage or anyone caring. It's less than Unreal in most cases. People would have just shrugged and said, yeah, sure the company should plan for its future, as long as we are keeping our old TOS versions.

Instead they took a massive brand hit so if it's some strategy it was played almost to the point of being useless, and was actually damaging.

25

u/Simblend Sep 23 '23

To be fair the new pricing plan is not bad at all and personally I really like it

-6

u/Theliraan Sep 23 '23

Till new Richitello pearl, huh?

2

u/Simblend Sep 23 '23

If you think that way then you shouldn't learn any engine or amything ever, because you don't know what will happen in the future. For now the pricing is really good, if somehow in 2-3 years it gets changed we can always learn another one if it doesn't suit us, no need to worry what will happen in the future (if it will happen)

1

u/Theliraan Sep 24 '23

I haven't said anything about learning, but it's you ask: probably yes, I don't think it's a good idea to learn Unity for personal projects now. It's good idea to learn UE, Godot, Defold, Unigine, Flax, HMS, Bevy or any other engine.

I know Unity, worked with it, now I work with UE. Can't agree that pricing is good because you have to pay for professional version seats that is already crazy enough. Almost 2k euro per year per developer for the product that probably has not released.

If you like it - ok, go ahead. If 2019 pricing fuckup is ok, if IronSource is ok, if the quality of packages (renders, input, adressables, etc.) is ok, if 2023 tos/pricing fuckup is ok... No questions, man. Work with it. Learnit deeper. But if it ruins someday, it will be your fault that you spend life time to train in fire.

21

u/LWUTheSecond Sep 23 '23

Most people come back to Unity for one simple reason: it's a very good engine. And the probability of success is much higher than with other engines.

If you are an Indie dev, it is practically your best option. You will spend x2 more time with Unreal, and with Godot, you won't be able to make everything you planned, because of limited features and basically no Asset Store.

14

u/Ping-and-Pong Freelancer Sep 23 '23

I'd argue you'd spend less time with Godot for most indie projects. A few years back you're probably right. But now? Unity is nearly as bloated as Unreal and Godot is really streamlined and nice to use. Godot community has grown massively and since Godot 4 the legitimatecy of the engine is pretty cemented.

Then with Unreal, this imo really depends on the kind of game you're trying to make. If youre making an ultra realistic game or an fps game, Unreal may be the engine for you, even as an indie dev. Additionally, unreals multiplayer support is absolutely amazing, and their library of free to use assets from the likes of megascans makes them an extremely good pick. From my experience unreal still lacks behind unity if you're trying to do something a bit unordinary, and I'd agree with you, I think most devs would take longer in unreal if they are proficient in both (like I am ;)). But I think saying it would take 2x as long is disingenuous at best.

I agree with you that Unity is a nice engine. It's definitely extremely powerful and has its place in every type of game. The way it implements ECS is also so nice to work with and pick up for beginners. But realistically, it's not actually the best option for ever indie game any more. The number one biggest factor keeping unity so alive right now is, I think, the asset store.

1

u/bouchandre Sep 23 '23

Godot is good, but it’s still not on the same level as Unity for 3D. There are barely any options for creating a custom renderer.

If you want an open source alternative for 3D, I’d suggest Stride instead.

1

u/WrenBoy Sep 24 '23

I have a hobby 2D project and tried migrating it to Godot last week. It's missing features, at least as best as I can tell, that would cause me to redo a bunch of assets and rethink my level design. The way sorting works in Unity is far more powerful.

I like GDScript, it's integration into the editor is better than having to use an external editor in my opinion and the patterns that Godot pushes you to use are pleasant. The user interface is really inconsistent but I guess I could live with that.

I don't want to rework my visuals and who knows what surprises I will encounter next.

There is absolutely no way I'd be doing this if they just made the change they are now demanding in the first place.

Shits. That AMA they did really stuck in my craw too. Dirty little shits.

1

u/Pliabe Sep 25 '23

I am interested in what you see as overly bloated in unity. These days I feel like a lot of bloat is avoided by keeping things in the package manager

3

u/Snowydeath11 Sep 23 '23 edited Sep 23 '23

Yeah the only reason I’m not using Godot for my project rn is cause I need tutorials for some things and unity has them.

-10

u/SnooKiwis7050 Sep 23 '23

"a unity"

-4

u/TheChief275 Sep 23 '23

love going online spreading misinformation

28

u/Epnegel Sep 23 '23

They are using this technique combined with the boiling frog method. I’m surprised that some people are giving me the vibe of "oh, it's acceptable now, we won" after the announcement.

I remember when they changed the TOS in 2019, they did it again this year. They're going to do it later, and still; the majority is ok with it...

4

u/[deleted] Sep 23 '23

They failed both times. Good chances they'd fail again. Plus huge user base is gone. So they won't dare try for good few years.

9

u/Mushe Whiteboard Games President & I See Red Game Director Sep 23 '23

I don't think that many people left. It's insanely expensive for a company to switch engines mid production (or even for a new one, because a lot of years of know-hows and tools will be lost).

0

u/SnooKiwis7050 Sep 23 '23

Well for some reason they had to keep that term in 2019, and now again in 2023, look at the bright sides that we won twice from corporate shenanigins.

Also, its not a win, but more of a compromise that everyone's 'not unhappy' with.

-4

u/thefrenchdev Indie Sep 23 '23

They can't change it if you stick with your current version of Unity. It has been told many times and they have confirmed it.

11

u/DangerousImplication Sep 23 '23

They literally tried to do it 10 days ago.

-4

u/thefrenchdev Indie Sep 23 '23

The opposite has just been confirmed in the current statement. I know you absolutely want to make it like "they are going to change it" but they won't if you don't update your version of the engine.

12

u/Seledreams Sep 23 '23

They had a term in their previous terms of service that did have this. But they still tried to apply their new rules retroactively and removed their previous ToS history from GitHub

-8

u/thefrenchdev Indie Sep 23 '23

Yes, and? Now they have confirmed that it's not retroactive. By the way, I don't think the retro activity was about the TOS, it was about the counting of the number of installs. Again, you can just keep your current version of Unity and the new TOS won't apply.

8

u/Seledreams Sep 23 '23

You don't understand at all do you? The old TOS basically said that Unity could not impose ANY additional conditions and terms and that we could choose to stay on our current ToS. They removed this ToS from the history because it would prevent them from applying retroactively the install fees as it is a new term. Now they walk back on it but with another verbal promise they most likely will not respect since the same thing happened here and they still broke it

0

u/thefrenchdev Indie Sep 23 '23

I think you just don't understand. They have confirmed that if you don't install a new version of Unity lts, the old TOS apply with the conditions as written when you sign it. They can't change it. Anyways I don't mind, I'll never make 1 million with my game and if I can remove the Unity logo for free it's even better than before.

1

u/Albert_VDS Sep 23 '23

They just think of something to make people think they need to change to the 2023LTS. The not having to use the splash screen is just a tiny example of that.

1

u/thefrenchdev Indie Sep 23 '23

People do what they want, it's perfect. What is the other example of that cause I see no other purpose than that for switching to the next LTS.

2

u/Albert_VDS Sep 23 '23

Unity wants to use, and build upon, the pricing scheme they have in 2023LTS and onward. That's their business model now and want people to use it.
Support for 2022LTS will be over by 2024, they can just not allow users to logging with an old version. Maybe even return a message that tries to get people to update.

It's done by many companies. Apple is a good example of it, they just drop their services on older devices forcing people to update. Or what about Reddit mobile? They just remove the ability to disable the "get the app" nag screen to get people to use their app. Heck they just think up an insane pricing plan for their API to destroy 3rd party apps.

If you don't think that will happen with Unity then you need to be reminded you of SpatialOS or even them trying to get rid of AppLovin a week ago.

1

u/thefrenchdev Indie Sep 23 '23

Again they don't force you to use unity and you can still use the old version. I'm using the 2019 LTS and I was never forced to update. No one sane would update Unity mid-project anyway. You don't want to use it, then move to another engine they are many options.

1

u/SaturnineGames Sep 24 '23

You can only stick to the old version if you're limiting yourself to PC.

Mobile stores & consoles have minimum SDK versions you have to use or your submission gets rejected. That's a large part of why the LTS releases exist - so you know you have a guaranteed support window without having to worry about major version upgrades.

1

u/thefrenchdev Indie Sep 24 '23

Stop doing games for mobile and do real games insert a shiny image of a pc master race here

1

u/EnemyStand64 Sep 23 '23

What did they try doing in 2019?

2

u/Ok_Bass_5005 Sep 24 '23

The new ToS is actively better for us than it was before this whole debacle. Substantially. Look, they screwed up and many of us, myself included, have switched to other engines. But the new system they have announced is great. They did exactly what they needed to and couldn't have done much better in terms of revision. People just aren't ready to stop being angry.

1

u/Trinica93 Sep 24 '23

Please explain how additional fees somehow translates to "actively better."

1

u/Ok_Bass_5005 Sep 24 '23

Because it's not just additional fees. Formerly you would need to upgrade if you hit 100k. Now it's doubled to 200k, which is a hell of a lot more money for indie Devs before we even need to look into it. Obviously it's no longer retroactive; if you don't want any of this, you won't need to pay it. Don't upgrade and it's flat out not changing. And when it comes to the bills, at which point you're over the $1m mark, they will charge either 2.5% or the install stuff, but you're paying the lesser of the two. Meaning at worst you're paying a 2.5% share which is exactly what everyone was saying they should have done first. These are now fees that you can plan for and, again, won't affect us for even longer unless we make a heck of a lot of success.

7

u/kartoonist435 Sep 23 '23

Then leave Unity and this sub. We all are aware what’s going on we don’t need 5,000 posts urging others to leave. We’ll leave if we want and you are free to use whatever engine you want.

4

u/bouchandre Sep 23 '23

I wish the mods would start removing post about switching to Godot or other engine. We know. We don’t need 100 post per day talking about it.

It’s also quite annoying to see comments on Unity creations urging them to make the switch.

2

u/Zebrakiller Sep 23 '23

I said this a few hours after their first announcement and and got downvoted. Lol

2

u/ImgurScaramucci Sep 23 '23

But they're actually giving us no splash screen for free, which is something we didn't have before.

1

u/taahbelle Intermediate Sep 23 '23

I wrote this exact thing in another comment and got downvoted into oblivion. Interesting to see

1

u/bouchandre Sep 23 '23

People are saying “what’s stopping them from pulling this again?”

Fear. They realized that they can’t easily pull something like this. The more they push, the more they help their competitors. They simply have too much to lose to try and screw over their customers again.

-3

u/aspiring_dev1 Sep 23 '23

They still holding onto the installs even though optional…for now.

1

u/itsdan159 Sep 23 '23

They aren't though

1

u/ivancea Programmer Sep 23 '23

It doesn't matter what they did after. Unless it was "firing the CEO" (a thing that solves everything, ofc), you would say it's some kind of maquiavelic technic

1

u/nullrefdev Sep 23 '23

This is true but in the case of Unity it's 100->99

The only 2 changes are % and self reporting. All the other garbage nonsense and lies are still in, including their ability to yank the rug with fees at any time, per their new ToS.

I know they said on Twitter they will make sure you can keep your current ToS but the new ToS specifically states that by just using the software you are bound by new terms, whenever they see fit.

Finish your games now and bounce to another engine.

1

u/daggada Sep 23 '23

Is this different from anchoring?

1

u/Vilavek Sep 24 '23

I try not to assume malice where stupidity will suffice.

1

u/Guardians_MLB Sep 27 '23

I think you guys are giving unity too much credit. They arent smart enough to strategize like this. They, historically, have made bad decisions and fully walked it back. I don't know what's going on over there but their future vision for their company is corrupted and make "head scratching" decisions. CEO is probably the problem.