A Potential Earthquake in the Videogame Industry: UNITY Install Fees

[Reynard]

You're assuming that greed and incompetence go hand-in-hand. He could well be extremely competent, Machiavellian, and greedy.

It would seem that competent greed would drive sales and keep customers, in order to inflate his stock price.

 

[Parmandur]

It would seem that competent greed would drive sales and keep customers, in order to inflate his stock price.

Long term competent greed, sure.

 

[eyeheartawk]

A Redditor caught some further shadiness from Unity; apparently a license change tracker was removed, and terms of service "silently" edited by Unity earlier this year. The commenter speculates that Unity is keeping the door open to more abrupt changes to the license in the future.

I have a feeling that this likely wouldn't hold up in court. But if you have deep pockets you wouldn't be using Unity anyway. They're counting on that.

 

[Ryujin]

It would seem that competent greed would drive sales and keep customers, in order to inflate his stock price.

Sure, if said greedy individual actually gave a damn about anyone but himself. This sort of move tends to look very good to potential investors, which drives stock prices up. Then the greedy divest themselves at a huge increased profit, remove themselves from the situation, and watch the world burn.

An example of someone doing this and being stupid, would be a few years back when Patreon announced the change in fee schedules. That was done, specifically, to satisfy investors. It crashed and burned.

 

[Parmandur]

Sure, if said greedy individual actually gave a damn about anyone but himself. This sort of move tends to look very goof to potential investors, which drives stock prices up. Then the greedy divest themselves at a huge increased profit, remove themselves from the situation, and watch the world burn.

An example of someone doing this and being stupid, would be a few years back when Patreon announced the change in fee schedules. That was done, specifically, to satisfy investors. It crashed and burned.

Yeah, Unity relya on developer goodwill yo make any money: if they mess up, developers will move to competing engine or build their own rather than go bankrupt. They don't have any source of income...

 

[billd91]

How do these incompetent, greedy CEOs keep getting hired?

Because what they do works for the shareholders and, more importantly, the Board of Directors, who also tend to hold lots of stock in the company. I mean when you've had American courts that have, historically, said that a corporation's job is to look out for its shareholders, that's kind of the behavior you get - potentially under threat of lawsuit. We may be starting to see some movement toward stakeholders rather than shareholders at the SCOTUS level, but we'll see how that pans out.

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

Jeez, as more details come oit, this makes the "OGL 2.0" look like a good idea in comparison.

I've been reading these comments, and I have been amazed at how composed and level they've been compared to OGL 2.0. Clearly, people aren't aware OR it hasn't clicked in people's heads about the costs

 

[Parmandur]

I've been reading these comments, and I have been amazed at how composed and level they've been compared to OGL 2.0. Clearly, people aren't aware OR it hasn't clicked in people's heads about the costs

Well, this is a TTRPG enthusiast forum: many more here are 3PP for D&D than are game devs. The huge difference here is that WotC difference go after their customers directly: 3PP are not who pay their bills. This is like if WotC tried to charge players for opening their books.

 

[Stalker0]

Update: As of Sept. 10th of this year Riccitiello reportedly owned over 3 million shares of Unity, with an estimated worth of more than $128 million. So this isn't a mass sell-off, but the numbers are somewhat significant.

Unity Software (U) Insider Trading Activity 2024

Which executives are buying and selling shares of Unity Software stock? View the latest U insider trading activity at MarketBeat.

www.marketbeat.com

So he went from:
3,213,394 shares down to
3,211,394

That's basically .06% of his stock. So its really not significant at all to be honest.

 

[fluffybunbunkittens]

“Buy Cult of the Lamb now,” the developers, Massive Monster, write, “’cause we’re deleting it on Jan 1.”

“We made our game about genetics free for schools,” Stray Fawn, creator of Wandering Village, says. “Now we will be charged for each student installing the game.”

Just the kind of hype you want from devs who were previously focused on using just your product, but now have to put their current projects on hold and... go acquire a completely new skillset learning a competitor's toolset? Nailed it.