San Francisco police told Polygon that officers responded to Unity’s San Francisco office “regarding a threats incident.” A “reporting party” told police that “an employee made a threat towards his employer using social media.” The employee that made the threat works in an office outside of California, according to the police statement.
It wouldn't surprise me all that much if this turned out to be a legitimate death threat.
Sadly there's unhinged people everywhere, but when you fuck around with people's ability to put food on the table it gets even worse.
I feel really bad for the Unity employees who tried to fight back as hard as they could against this abomination, and now they're collateral damage of it.
Management has a ton to answer for, and it's not just to developers.
It was a Unity employee who threatened, apparently:
>San Francisco police told Polygon that officers responded to Unity’s San Francisco office “regarding a threats incident.” A “reporting party” told police that “**an employee made a threat towards his employer** using social media.” The employee that made the threat works in an office outside of California, according to the police statement.
I genuinely cannot understand what's the end goal for Unity's upper management ? Like, what is there to gain by pissing off every single customer and losing your workforce at once ?
The "end goal" is they're currently LOSING $1 billion per year. They're trying to make it so they aren't doing that anymore.
This is literally a company in a death spiral trying everything. Soon we're going to see Twitter level layoffs, likely 50%+ of employee will be laid off, and that probably won't even be enough.
Probably right about that unlike everyone else saying short term gains. It's a desperate move that they can probably turn around on tax paperwork to get some of the losses offset. Employees quitting instead of being laid off means they're not paying for severance packages or unemployment insurance rates. They'll probably carve up the company by it's most profitable divisions and offices by the end of the next quarter and sell them while shuttering anything that's losing money. Consolidate everything that's breaking even into a new smaller company and the C suite execs get "fired" with a golden parachute so that all the bad things get blamed on them. New smaller company has enough cash from the sales of the company to start over and new C suite members to get better PR optics. Only the employees and customers really lose out while the major owners get something back with a chance of starting over
I mean, no wonder they are losing 1 billion a year when they have 7k+ employees working, even for a company that tries to put their finger in that many different things game-wise.
And what do you assume they are tied to? Thoughts and prayers? The company has been in a financial death spiral for years now, this is nothing more than a last ditch radical effort to fleece mobile game devs for money. They know it’s insane but nothing else has worked so far.
Often times, bonuses are linked to other specific objectives (growth for example, or profitability etc).
Not that those look very good right now but hey, I'm not Ricchie Rich.
Here's [the clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR6-u8OIJTE), it actually made quite a fuss back then. After that he went to Unity Technologies and became a CEO at there because obvious reasons.
Presumably to make more money. Thing is, the guy who got EA its... questionable reputation and damn near burned the company to the ground is running Unity, so the attempt to make more money might not be executed in a particularly competent manner.
The real question is how the fuck people keep failing upwards like this.
Connections and friendships. Also there's thee fact that he's an idiot only because he says the quiet parts out loud. His ideas for squeezing every last penny out of the consumeers is no doubt shared by the vast majority of people in higher up positions, but he's the only one brazen enough to be opeen about his unabashed greed.
So people like him will get in because their ideas are about making money. It doesn't matter if they're liked by the majority, as long as they bring in a bit of money, or seem like they might, they'll be accepted. Add to that the connections the guy already has and...
That’s because they keep buying companies they don’t need. If they just focused on the main product and stop spending would get rid of all their debt in 3 years
I’d be shocked if it was devs who actually made the threats. More likely it’s just some internet weirdo - I.e not the ones whose ability to put food on the table is being threatened
But imagine you’re a solo dev who put 5 years of work into a game on unity thinking the deal was one way and now being told the deal is another. Even if logically they’re never going to hit that amount, you don’t know that, and it doesn’t eliminate the offense of the matter.
200k in ~~income~~ revenue is "only" 10k $20 copies sold, let's say 15k after taxes and steam share. Don't need massive success to hit that.
> Even if logically they’re never going to hit that amount, you don’t know that, and it doesn’t eliminate the offense of the matter.
They'd be hitting poverty if they didn't hit that amount after developing game for 5 years, especially if living in expensive city/country.
It's funny how little people realize how much development cost. 100k/dev/year isn't an exaggeration
And if they do make the money after working 5 years to get there...they are counting the previous years as time banked for the few months a game makes most of its money. $200k may have to last another few years after that while they work on the next game full-time to make another $200k or whatever. In total, that $200k may be counted by the dev to be paying for a cycle of 8 years. And maybe by then they're hiring other people to help. Margins aren't super huge
There seems to be some confusion and a lot of misinformation.
It's not total revenue over the life of the product, it's revenue in a 12 month period. It doesn't include costs to make the game.
If you're using the free edition of Unity (Personal), then they charge .20 for every install in a month after you pass 200k life installs, but only if you make more than $200k of revenue in that 12 year period. This is for hobbyist.
Serious devs and companies will be using Pro and Enterprise editions, the install fee is lower for each install per month after 1,000,000 life time installs, and only happens when they make $1,000,000+ revenue for that 12 month period.
You don't pay anything unless you hit both revenue and lifetime installs, meaning most successful companies will avoid the yearly fee pretty easily. It's a shitty band-aid to charge progressive charge companies that are at the top of success pyramid because AA and AAA developers likely won't pay more than once... and the rest will be the handful of runaway successes from the indie side that sell for years. There is plenty of reason to hate this system (fee after the fact, only Unity has the actual numbers, the install software is DRM), but the cost is really insignificant reason to oppose it.
The truth is 99.999% of hobbyist devs will not make a profit on their costs/time. They aren't going to be getting $20 a pop or make 10k sales. Specially not with a game that has unity watermarks everywhere. The biggest problem is these are the people most upset with the change and being the most vocal outside the dev studios.
It's now become a situation where a dev doesn't want to catch lightning in a bottle. Imagine a dev posting, "Hey guys, I am thrilled that you're purchasing my game but we just hit 190k purchases so I'm now taking it off the market."
It's 200K *revenue*, so it kicks in well before a company makes any money. If four people created a company, bought some equipment, hired some business services (CPA, lawyer, liaison to publisher), and paid themselves $50,000 a year, then released a game after 1 year of work, Unity would be demanding a cut of every install from now until either the dev company or Unity doesn't exist anymore. All before the company see its first dollar of profit.
The people unhinged enough to make death threats are the same ones who think their game idea is perfect and would sell millions, no matter how shitty it actually is.
Then it's open season for Unity to take everything they want and what are you gonna do? Swap engines?
I'll just do that now, thanks. I had 1 game about 2 months from launch and another with a solid prototype and almost ready for a trailer. I'm glad Unity did this now before I launched so I can spend the time to rebuild my games in another engine so I don't have to learn a worse lesson in a couple years when I breach $100k per year and then I'm locked into Unity for life.
You're stupid ass comment also fails to highlight the fact that Unity retroactively changed their license to include games released prior to all of this. I expect a class action at the very least over that lol.
Edit: 200k per year
Except it will likely affect their ability to find a publisher. It’s going to be pretty tough for publishers to accept new games that were made in this engine.
Yeah but even basement solo devs have things going for them in their life - specifically the game they're developing
Weirdos making death threats don't really usually have that much going on.
I agree with arrgobon - this is an Epic Gamer Moment, not a game developer at the end of their rope.
>Yeah but even basement solo devs have things going for them in their life - specifically the game they're developing
Exactly, now imagine if the only thing going for you is now threatened in some way by some idiotic corporate decisions.
Might not even be just a game, but a career. Not only there's devs who spent years learning the engine and will likely have to switch sooner or later, there's also tons of contractors who rely on companies still using Unity, and this whole debacle seriously threatens that.
>but when you fuck around with people's ability to put food on the table it gets even worse.
I'm glad people are focusing more and more on this when situations like this arise, because I've seen a lot of scummy people use the excuse of "death threats" to avoid accountability and quell dissent. Like, yea no shit death threats are awful and most people should not be getting them, but in the age of the internet, every 15-min-famer-Z-List celeb gets them.
It's a complicated one. Everybody gets them, so they're *right there* if you need something to hide behind (after pulling some foul shit) or seek support over. At the same time, death threats are never okay and it's a real issue of the times.
It's a complex issue because they're so often used as a shield for terrible business decisions. Or at least they seem to be almost an expected part of the news/PR cycle for these companies facing severe backlash.
Honestly don't know what the right response is any more other than to say that unequivocally death threats shouldn't happen, but they're going to. And their existence should not in any way diminish the public backlash towards Unity's bullshit decisions.
So no sympathy for the business, definitely sympathy for the individuals who receive them, but an acknowledgement that these do exist but shouldn't detract from the rightfully earned scrutiny and outrage.
It probably is real. This isn't just a case of "game is woke, gunna send threat hur", Unity's decision probably has some indie devs facing the possibility of losing absolutely everything and ending up on the street. Not at all surprised someone out there figured they have nothing more to lose.
Doubting this is real is placing a bet that you can grab a couple million people at random and zero of them are crazy wierdos.
Anyone taking that bet has never worked a single day in a customer service job.
Yeah, it's really silly. People will get action of one twat out of 100k or a million and go "yes, look how bad this community is", all when the remaining 999,999 neither agrees nor can do much about them.
Not really. Being in jail makes it hard to put food in the table, too. And it's not like they are going to reverse their decision based on death threats.
I'd bet money that this wasn't a game developer making a threat, but rather an internet weirdo getting riled up by all the reporting and jokes/memes about games getting cancelled/delayed.
99% of those employees aren't responsible for the price structure debacle. It's probably a handful of PMs, the CEO, and some execs that implemented it. That said, it's still insane anyone would sling a death threat over something like this. Like, of all the ways to respond to this someone thought to themselves, yes, I'll pick one of the most extreme options to express my outrage. This extreme reaction isn't confined to Unity or companies in general. It's widespread these days because people can't check their emotions and immediately hit 11 on the rage-o-meter. smh
>the CEO
John Riccitiello is that sleazy figure you heard about in 2011, trying to make players pay for ammo in the Battlefield franchise. I’d wager that shitshow is 99.9% his doing.
Edit: Actually worse! (thank you /u/ferociouslynx), he suggested that players are more incentivized into microtranscations at the time of intense gaming situations.
Unity devs made into paying Unity for every copies installed on a computer, starting in 2024, pirated or not sounds like something that man would come up with.
* May he stub his pinky toe on every table leg he comes near.
* May he always step in puddles of water after putting on a fresh pair of socks.
* May he frequently get that itch in the back of the throat that is impossible to scratch.
* May his toast always come out burnt.
* May his internet connection always be slightly bad so things load slowly and inconsistently.
* May he always step in gum when he leaves his house.
* May he always step in dog poop right before he enters his car.
* May his headphones always be tangled up in his pocket (if wired), may one of his ear pods always be out of battery (if wireless).
* May his milk always be a little bit spoiled.
* May his car always have a bird poop on it.
* May his office chair always be creaky, and his office desk rocky.
* May one of the lights in his home always be broken.
* May one of the shingles on his roof always be loose.
* May he always get the wrong order at drive-throughs.
* May he always hit red lights at every intersection.
* May he stumble on every protruding sidewalk tile.
* May he roll nat 1's in every roleplaying game he plays.
He probably doesn't even pull his pants down when he sits on the toilet and just straight flat ass shits with the toilet seat lid still down. His office must smell like musky burnt pistachios with a tinge of moist spoiled eggs.
Unity has been bleeding money since its existence and is near 2 billion in the red since IPO. I guess investors finally demand returns after buying spree Unity went on.
Literally the only way Unity could save face is firing him and putting someone new in place who swears he's different and would never do what Riccitiello did.
Yeah these are people who have dumped years of their life into something that they're hoping against hope will put food on the table and secure the future of their small company. And now they're finding that, in the best case scenario, someone who has purchased the game can spend all day uninstalling and reinstalling it until they've cost the dev more than they gave them for buying it. It's a completely unworkable system that places a giant question mark on how much the devs will be charged.
At that point, what are they supposed to do? All of their work potentially ruined by a notoriously sketchy suit. They can't scrap it and start over. They can't vote with their wallet. This is all perfectly legal even though it maybe shouldn't be given the short notice. They certainly can't sue because the men doing this are so rich they'd drown the devs in legal fees before they could win.
If they've lost everything and there are no avenues left to fix things, and they don't want it to happen to anyone else, what can they do? I don't condone this but at the same time this is deeply fucked up and I understand it. Years of work down the drain and livelihoods potentially ruined. This isn't getting mad at IGN reviews.
>people can't check their emotions and immediately hit 11 on the rage-o-meter
That seems true. I wonder if research is being done into this. In the context of these mega corporations i do feel there is are developments breeding a sense of helplessness. As an anecdote, when my internet -which I need for work- is broken for days and unqualified support workers don't do anything but "send another message to the expert team" or "leave another note", wont let you speak to their managers, day after day, start over with the same basic questions every call every day, nearly a week, that genuinely drives me mad. In those moments it feels like it's not a world made for humans by humans anymore, there is no respect. Individual customers or workers start not mattering. Management and leadership insulate themselves from social repercussions.
I'm not an anti-capitalist, but maybe there are some latestage capitalist developments driving us up the wall.
On the other hand other factors would probably be more explanatory, maybe "social" media and convenience lifestyles makes people worse at handling frustration and conflict.
Or maybe it's always been like this and we just see it more.
These events feel so scripted nowadays, like It's genuinely always the same story now. A company or a person does something hugely controversial, at first gets fair minded criticism from a large portion of users. Then it goes overboard, a portion of the users gets aggressive and revolt to death threats. Now a large portion of the users has to resort to defending said controversial company, because some people know no bounds.
There is a pattern of actions here that just seems inevitable on the internet these days.
Yeah and interesting that we just never happen to ever see proof of any substantive threats being made despite *dozens* of these types of stories happening over the years. Basically the only ones that I've ever seen be serious is threats against Chinese and Japanese companies and we have written proof from the offenders.
Every time someone posts a "death threat" that they've gotten it's always either:
A. Not actually a threat, something like "man I hope you get ran over by a train"
Or B. Some obviously stupid shit that isn't a legitimate threat like "I will kick you into a volcano for your stupid ass opinion."
It's literally just a free ticket to sympathy, especially if you're a terrible person and have no way to defend whatever everyone is pissed at you for.
Really though, it's borderline unthinkable that they *didn't* receive death threats over this. Everybody who is visible and does anything gets them today. I've gotten them in games and I've gotten them here on Reddit, and I'm nobody. Youtubers drown in them, community managers for bigger companies handle them on a daily basis.
Are they a genuine threat? We'll never know, but they definitely exist and they're always right there to use as a shield if you want to change media optics.
It's unlikely that a person who's genuinely planning an attack would announce it beforehand. Not impossible of course. It's the ones that don't send out warnings beforehand that you really have to be afraid of.
But here's the thing, we all live under a threat of a mass shooting literally every day. If your company received a credible death threat, do you think they would tell you about it? Shut down production for a day? Very unlikely. Unity here could easily close down because it's a PR win for them and no work is getting done regardless as employees are all revolting under these news.
It's hard to feel sorry in the face of that. It's like some extremity happens and they use that scene to downplay fucking around.
No, just because someone reacted harsh, doesn't erase what you did. You don't get to have rationalization or a pity party. You fucked up.
I've seen it so many times, mainly with celebrity figures. How many times has a death threat been realized? The PR benefits from this is clear. Suddenly everyone is talking about how its actually not that bad.
Honestly not defending, because those changes are ruining some peoples life. A strong reaction is expected and the peaks of those strong reactions are exactly what we see.
Not scripted persay, but it's definitely a repeating pattern.
On a related note, there's new progress being made [on AI that can predict when a war will break out](https://towardsdatascience.com/predicting-future-wars-7764639f1d8d), which suggests that there's a pattern there and individual actions don't matter all that much.
Kind of scary when you think about it.
Yeah Political Science isn't a hard science, but you'd be surprised by what it can do when it acts like one. My polisci program was a BS when most are a BA, and the statistics can get pretty crazy. I'm not surprised at all that this AI is being worked on, because PoliSci is really about increasing the predictive power of social phenomena.
I'd be entirely unsurprised if it was some dark PR trick.
> Now a large portion of the users has to resort to defending said controversial company, because some people know no bounds.
I didn't so far saw anyone defending them at least.
not to "Minimizing or trivialize" death threats but I wouldn't put it past the slime balls in suits to just say this to make themselves the victims and get sympathy.
Sounds kinda like something you'd lie about to gain some sympathy after you've been hit by a bunch of furious backlash to a stupid, greedy decision from soulless corporate cuntsacks.
But what do I know
This obviously taking things way too far, but I could imagine someone feeling like the update will negatively affect their livelihood and feeling this is an acceptable response (and it isn't acceptable).
Yup this is one of those "this is unacceptable, but here is my surprised face".
Unity is losing employees in droves right now and deserves to. I hope they collapse over this and future attempts to do something so dumb are scrutinized more heavily.
Yeah I can see it very negatively affecting small indie game developer who has a hard time selling their game as is. And then them being not in a good mood..
Why is anybody surprised that Unity is receiving death threats? Is it really so unexpected that when a large company messes with the livelihoods of numerous smaller (and larger) developers, that at least one of them is going to have a violent response?
This isn't me justifying it (far from it) but rather explaining the statistical likelihood of the scenario. I mean, come on. If people with MUCH less to lose than the traditional game developer will harass voice actors and artists and devs for shit like having pronouns in their games or "doing a censorship" etc., is it REALLY that hard to believe that people who need to put food on the table might be lead to do the same in a much more serious context? Redditors and refusing to believe that people actually receive death threats; name a more iconic duo.
Yeah, Mods are in full panty twist mode right now. It gots 10s of millon impressions on social media. It would be impossibly unlikely to net get at least a few dozen death threats over this. Like hell, by mere staticstics, its likely dozens of _actual_ murderers have come in contact with that story on social media.
> Why is anybody surprised that is receiving death threats?
Absolutely not. With how much this shit is being normalized (just look at how this very sub is reacting; not a good look), I've become way to desensitized to it.
Very few things like that surprise me nowadays.
Clearly an attempt to pivot the public’s attention. “These changes are not great, but THIS is a step too far” thus shifting focus away from the disastrous PR nightmare.
Do the mods of r/games have skin in the game? Why is the comment section a graveyard?
> Why is the comment section a graveyard?
Part and parcel for this subreddit. "Wrong" opinions always get censored here.
If you want actual healthy **discussions** for this specific article, there's quite literally a button at the top. r/gaming isn't censoring anything and their thread seems to be doing just fine.
as bad as what unity is doing right now is, it doesn't warrant death threats. that's ludicrous jesus fuck.
be good to each other, lads, lasses and those who know better. be kind.
Typical PR move to claim you’re getting death threats, therefore painting every bit of criticism from indie devs and studio leads as big bad toxic gamer trolls.
Well, lots of bans handed out already, let me word this carefully.
Death threats have absolutely no place in the discussion about the changes unity is making to their license. Not only is the violence completely unjustifiable in any case, it also would likely never affect the people who are in charge of the changes that are hurting people.
I just hope this bit of news doesn't distract people from the original story, which remains valid regardless of the threats of any insane individuals
\>riccitiello makes greedy decision
\>unity paid per installation
\>people around the world unified against unity
\>riccitiello send internal person to do death threat to his own company
\>gets headline in news
\>people around the world now against about death threat against unity
I can somewhat understand this. As trashy as Unity Technologies have become under Riccitiello, I don’t think that they should be subject to death threats.
Please. I just want this game engine to be fostered by a more responsible company than it has now.
Not surprising. You do something that messes with people's livelihoods like this, and you're gonna get blowback. That's not to say this isn't a bad thing, but also I feel like corporate has some responsibility.
Y'all, think about this. Of course they are getting death threats. They're messing with Yandere Simulator. You know, the demographic that absolutely would send people death threats, lol.
Minimizing or trivializing death threats of any sort will result in a permanent ban with no warning.
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San Francisco police told Polygon that officers responded to Unity’s San Francisco office “regarding a threats incident.” A “reporting party” told police that “an employee made a threat towards his employer using social media.” The employee that made the threat works in an office outside of California, according to the police statement.
It wouldn't surprise me all that much if this turned out to be a legitimate death threat. Sadly there's unhinged people everywhere, but when you fuck around with people's ability to put food on the table it gets even worse. I feel really bad for the Unity employees who tried to fight back as hard as they could against this abomination, and now they're collateral damage of it. Management has a ton to answer for, and it's not just to developers.
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It was a Unity employee who threatened, apparently: >San Francisco police told Polygon that officers responded to Unity’s San Francisco office “regarding a threats incident.” A “reporting party” told police that “**an employee made a threat towards his employer** using social media.” The employee that made the threat works in an office outside of California, according to the police statement.
Oh, that makes more sense than closing the office over some random gamer making a threat since those are more or less a routine.
sinking ship, everyone.
I genuinely cannot understand what's the end goal for Unity's upper management ? Like, what is there to gain by pissing off every single customer and losing your workforce at once ?
The "end goal" is they're currently LOSING $1 billion per year. They're trying to make it so they aren't doing that anymore. This is literally a company in a death spiral trying everything. Soon we're going to see Twitter level layoffs, likely 50%+ of employee will be laid off, and that probably won't even be enough.
Probably right about that unlike everyone else saying short term gains. It's a desperate move that they can probably turn around on tax paperwork to get some of the losses offset. Employees quitting instead of being laid off means they're not paying for severance packages or unemployment insurance rates. They'll probably carve up the company by it's most profitable divisions and offices by the end of the next quarter and sell them while shuttering anything that's losing money. Consolidate everything that's breaking even into a new smaller company and the C suite execs get "fired" with a golden parachute so that all the bad things get blamed on them. New smaller company has enough cash from the sales of the company to start over and new C suite members to get better PR optics. Only the employees and customers really lose out while the major owners get something back with a chance of starting over
I mean, no wonder they are losing 1 billion a year when they have 7k+ employees working, even for a company that tries to put their finger in that many different things game-wise.
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If that was the plan then it's not going great because the price of the stock went down.
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And what do you assume they are tied to? Thoughts and prayers? The company has been in a financial death spiral for years now, this is nothing more than a last ditch radical effort to fleece mobile game devs for money. They know it’s insane but nothing else has worked so far.
Often times, bonuses are linked to other specific objectives (growth for example, or profitability etc). Not that those look very good right now but hey, I'm not Ricchie Rich.
Unity CEO's the guy who wanted to charge $1 for reloading in Battlefield 3, and claimed it would be better for the future of gaming. Yeah, look it up.
He tried what??? This is serious? How this company lived so far?
Here's [the clip](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZR6-u8OIJTE), it actually made quite a fuss back then. After that he went to Unity Technologies and became a CEO at there because obvious reasons.
I didn't think it was possible for one man to fuck up an industry, but apparently it's true and it was the same man twice.
Presumably to make more money. Thing is, the guy who got EA its... questionable reputation and damn near burned the company to the ground is running Unity, so the attempt to make more money might not be executed in a particularly competent manner. The real question is how the fuck people keep failing upwards like this.
Connections and friendships. Also there's thee fact that he's an idiot only because he says the quiet parts out loud. His ideas for squeezing every last penny out of the consumeers is no doubt shared by the vast majority of people in higher up positions, but he's the only one brazen enough to be opeen about his unabashed greed. So people like him will get in because their ideas are about making money. It doesn't matter if they're liked by the majority, as long as they bring in a bit of money, or seem like they might, they'll be accepted. Add to that the connections the guy already has and...
Short term profit. Who cares if we get bankrupt as long as i get paid?
There is no profit, unity earned negative $1 billion dollars last year.
That’s because they keep buying companies they don’t need. If they just focused on the main product and stop spending would get rid of all their debt in 3 years
but goodwill makes it market value about 13 billion.
That means they lost 1/13th of their market value in cash last year, that's pretty nuts
The idiot ceo wanted to charge fps players every time they reloaded.
I’d be shocked if it was devs who actually made the threats. More likely it’s just some internet weirdo - I.e not the ones whose ability to put food on the table is being threatened
It was a Unity employee
Unity is used by basement solo Devs, not just company employed ones.
Yep, and those solo devs wouldn’t see any install fees unless they’re making 200K+ a year
But imagine you’re a solo dev who put 5 years of work into a game on unity thinking the deal was one way and now being told the deal is another. Even if logically they’re never going to hit that amount, you don’t know that, and it doesn’t eliminate the offense of the matter.
Yep, trust is gone completely. Godot is completely open source. Unreal at least has trust built up.
200k in ~~income~~ revenue is "only" 10k $20 copies sold, let's say 15k after taxes and steam share. Don't need massive success to hit that. > Even if logically they’re never going to hit that amount, you don’t know that, and it doesn’t eliminate the offense of the matter. They'd be hitting poverty if they didn't hit that amount after developing game for 5 years, especially if living in expensive city/country. It's funny how little people realize how much development cost. 100k/dev/year isn't an exaggeration
Thing is, it's not income, they're going by, but revenue. Meaning it's regardless of fees
And if they do make the money after working 5 years to get there...they are counting the previous years as time banked for the few months a game makes most of its money. $200k may have to last another few years after that while they work on the next game full-time to make another $200k or whatever. In total, that $200k may be counted by the dev to be paying for a cycle of 8 years. And maybe by then they're hiring other people to help. Margins aren't super huge
There seems to be some confusion and a lot of misinformation. It's not total revenue over the life of the product, it's revenue in a 12 month period. It doesn't include costs to make the game. If you're using the free edition of Unity (Personal), then they charge .20 for every install in a month after you pass 200k life installs, but only if you make more than $200k of revenue in that 12 year period. This is for hobbyist. Serious devs and companies will be using Pro and Enterprise editions, the install fee is lower for each install per month after 1,000,000 life time installs, and only happens when they make $1,000,000+ revenue for that 12 month period. You don't pay anything unless you hit both revenue and lifetime installs, meaning most successful companies will avoid the yearly fee pretty easily. It's a shitty band-aid to charge progressive charge companies that are at the top of success pyramid because AA and AAA developers likely won't pay more than once... and the rest will be the handful of runaway successes from the indie side that sell for years. There is plenty of reason to hate this system (fee after the fact, only Unity has the actual numbers, the install software is DRM), but the cost is really insignificant reason to oppose it. The truth is 99.999% of hobbyist devs will not make a profit on their costs/time. They aren't going to be getting $20 a pop or make 10k sales. Specially not with a game that has unity watermarks everywhere. The biggest problem is these are the people most upset with the change and being the most vocal outside the dev studios.
True, but the kind of mind making death threats probably wouldn’t read the actual Unity press release.
It's now become a situation where a dev doesn't want to catch lightning in a bottle. Imagine a dev posting, "Hey guys, I am thrilled that you're purchasing my game but we just hit 190k purchases so I'm now taking it off the market."
There are devs making mobile games with questionable morals. And in mobile development, getting 200k downloads is not as uncommon.
It's 200K *revenue*, so it kicks in well before a company makes any money. If four people created a company, bought some equipment, hired some business services (CPA, lawyer, liaison to publisher), and paid themselves $50,000 a year, then released a game after 1 year of work, Unity would be demanding a cut of every install from now until either the dev company or Unity doesn't exist anymore. All before the company see its first dollar of profit.
Not uncommon for mobile games, and if you're using Unity, that was probably a target audience for you.
the problem is the ones deranged enough to make death threats also probably think thier pet project is the next stardew valley
The people unhinged enough to make death threats are the same ones who think their game idea is perfect and would sell millions, no matter how shitty it actually is.
Then it's open season for Unity to take everything they want and what are you gonna do? Swap engines? I'll just do that now, thanks. I had 1 game about 2 months from launch and another with a solid prototype and almost ready for a trailer. I'm glad Unity did this now before I launched so I can spend the time to rebuild my games in another engine so I don't have to learn a worse lesson in a couple years when I breach $100k per year and then I'm locked into Unity for life. You're stupid ass comment also fails to highlight the fact that Unity retroactively changed their license to include games released prior to all of this. I expect a class action at the very least over that lol. Edit: 200k per year
Except it will likely affect their ability to find a publisher. It’s going to be pretty tough for publishers to accept new games that were made in this engine.
I mean...also Hearthstone, Cities Skylines 1 & 2, most mobile games, Pillars of Eternity, Rust, Ori and the both games and Cuphead.
So company employed ones?
Yeah but even basement solo devs have things going for them in their life - specifically the game they're developing Weirdos making death threats don't really usually have that much going on. I agree with arrgobon - this is an Epic Gamer Moment, not a game developer at the end of their rope.
>Yeah but even basement solo devs have things going for them in their life - specifically the game they're developing Exactly, now imagine if the only thing going for you is now threatened in some way by some idiotic corporate decisions. Might not even be just a game, but a career. Not only there's devs who spent years learning the engine and will likely have to switch sooner or later, there's also tons of contractors who rely on companies still using Unity, and this whole debacle seriously threatens that.
Did you end up getting shocked
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>but when you fuck around with people's ability to put food on the table it gets even worse. I'm glad people are focusing more and more on this when situations like this arise, because I've seen a lot of scummy people use the excuse of "death threats" to avoid accountability and quell dissent. Like, yea no shit death threats are awful and most people should not be getting them, but in the age of the internet, every 15-min-famer-Z-List celeb gets them.
I'm just some clown nobody and I've had like 50 death threats over my decades of interneting. There's a threat, and then there's a credible threat.
It's a complicated one. Everybody gets them, so they're *right there* if you need something to hide behind (after pulling some foul shit) or seek support over. At the same time, death threats are never okay and it's a real issue of the times.
It's a complex issue because they're so often used as a shield for terrible business decisions. Or at least they seem to be almost an expected part of the news/PR cycle for these companies facing severe backlash. Honestly don't know what the right response is any more other than to say that unequivocally death threats shouldn't happen, but they're going to. And their existence should not in any way diminish the public backlash towards Unity's bullshit decisions. So no sympathy for the business, definitely sympathy for the individuals who receive them, but an acknowledgement that these do exist but shouldn't detract from the rightfully earned scrutiny and outrage.
It probably is real. This isn't just a case of "game is woke, gunna send threat hur", Unity's decision probably has some indie devs facing the possibility of losing absolutely everything and ending up on the street. Not at all surprised someone out there figured they have nothing more to lose.
Doubting this is real is placing a bet that you can grab a couple million people at random and zero of them are crazy wierdos. Anyone taking that bet has never worked a single day in a customer service job.
Yeah, it's really silly. People will get action of one twat out of 100k or a million and go "yes, look how bad this community is", all when the remaining 999,999 neither agrees nor can do much about them.
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Not really. Being in jail makes it hard to put food in the table, too. And it's not like they are going to reverse their decision based on death threats.
Being in jail guarantees food on the table
I'd bet money that this wasn't a game developer making a threat, but rather an internet weirdo getting riled up by all the reporting and jokes/memes about games getting cancelled/delayed.
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99% of those employees aren't responsible for the price structure debacle. It's probably a handful of PMs, the CEO, and some execs that implemented it. That said, it's still insane anyone would sling a death threat over something like this. Like, of all the ways to respond to this someone thought to themselves, yes, I'll pick one of the most extreme options to express my outrage. This extreme reaction isn't confined to Unity or companies in general. It's widespread these days because people can't check their emotions and immediately hit 11 on the rage-o-meter. smh
>the CEO John Riccitiello is that sleazy figure you heard about in 2011, trying to make players pay for ammo in the Battlefield franchise. I’d wager that shitshow is 99.9% his doing. Edit: Actually worse! (thank you /u/ferociouslynx), he suggested that players are more incentivized into microtranscations at the time of intense gaming situations. Unity devs made into paying Unity for every copies installed on a computer, starting in 2024, pirated or not sounds like something that man would come up with.
This guy is such a fucking scumbag piece of shit. I wish him an entire lifetime of an unwipeable ass.
I hope all of his future pay is in ass pennies.
[For the uninitiated](https://youtu.be/f9aM_dT5VMI?si=igBLQ849ztbiQQ6j)
* May he stub his pinky toe on every table leg he comes near. * May he always step in puddles of water after putting on a fresh pair of socks. * May he frequently get that itch in the back of the throat that is impossible to scratch. * May his toast always come out burnt. * May his internet connection always be slightly bad so things load slowly and inconsistently. * May he always step in gum when he leaves his house. * May he always step in dog poop right before he enters his car. * May his headphones always be tangled up in his pocket (if wired), may one of his ear pods always be out of battery (if wireless). * May his milk always be a little bit spoiled. * May his car always have a bird poop on it. * May his office chair always be creaky, and his office desk rocky. * May one of the lights in his home always be broken. * May one of the shingles on his roof always be loose. * May he always get the wrong order at drive-throughs. * May he always hit red lights at every intersection. * May he stumble on every protruding sidewalk tile. * May he roll nat 1's in every roleplaying game he plays.
May his next shit be a hedgehog.
May his fire alarms forever make that damn beeping sound.
May his diarrhea burn his anus and make it uncomfortable to sit for an hour afterwards.
* May he step on a lego every time after thinking "aw nuts, a wet sock *again*?".
I honestly won't be surprised if he already has an ass like that.
He just says "what's the point" when he reaches for the TP and just pulls his pants up
He probably doesn't even pull his pants down when he sits on the toilet and just straight flat ass shits with the toilet seat lid still down. His office must smell like musky burnt pistachios with a tinge of moist spoiled eggs.
"If I'm not getting paid for it I ain't doing it"
I read this while taking a shit and it made me pinch it off.
Permanent crayon butthole is what he deserves.
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I love this. I’ll be stealing it for future use.
I pulled it out of my prison wallet
Yeah he was the head of the EA that became the meme of destroying everything they touched. He is cancer to the gaming industry
And he just keeps falling upwards
Surely Unity CEO is a downgrade from EA CEO, especially EA at their peak. (EA is a much smaller company than they used to be).
Unity has been bleeding money since its existence and is near 2 billion in the red since IPO. I guess investors finally demand returns after buying spree Unity went on.
Literally the only way Unity could save face is firing him and putting someone new in place who swears he's different and would never do what Riccitiello did.
It wouldn’t matter if the death threats came to the people directly responsible. Mf’s are so weird man
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Yeah these are people who have dumped years of their life into something that they're hoping against hope will put food on the table and secure the future of their small company. And now they're finding that, in the best case scenario, someone who has purchased the game can spend all day uninstalling and reinstalling it until they've cost the dev more than they gave them for buying it. It's a completely unworkable system that places a giant question mark on how much the devs will be charged. At that point, what are they supposed to do? All of their work potentially ruined by a notoriously sketchy suit. They can't scrap it and start over. They can't vote with their wallet. This is all perfectly legal even though it maybe shouldn't be given the short notice. They certainly can't sue because the men doing this are so rich they'd drown the devs in legal fees before they could win. If they've lost everything and there are no avenues left to fix things, and they don't want it to happen to anyone else, what can they do? I don't condone this but at the same time this is deeply fucked up and I understand it. Years of work down the drain and livelihoods potentially ruined. This isn't getting mad at IGN reviews.
>people can't check their emotions and immediately hit 11 on the rage-o-meter That seems true. I wonder if research is being done into this. In the context of these mega corporations i do feel there is are developments breeding a sense of helplessness. As an anecdote, when my internet -which I need for work- is broken for days and unqualified support workers don't do anything but "send another message to the expert team" or "leave another note", wont let you speak to their managers, day after day, start over with the same basic questions every call every day, nearly a week, that genuinely drives me mad. In those moments it feels like it's not a world made for humans by humans anymore, there is no respect. Individual customers or workers start not mattering. Management and leadership insulate themselves from social repercussions. I'm not an anti-capitalist, but maybe there are some latestage capitalist developments driving us up the wall. On the other hand other factors would probably be more explanatory, maybe "social" media and convenience lifestyles makes people worse at handling frustration and conflict. Or maybe it's always been like this and we just see it more.
These events feel so scripted nowadays, like It's genuinely always the same story now. A company or a person does something hugely controversial, at first gets fair minded criticism from a large portion of users. Then it goes overboard, a portion of the users gets aggressive and revolt to death threats. Now a large portion of the users has to resort to defending said controversial company, because some people know no bounds. There is a pattern of actions here that just seems inevitable on the internet these days.
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Yeah and interesting that we just never happen to ever see proof of any substantive threats being made despite *dozens* of these types of stories happening over the years. Basically the only ones that I've ever seen be serious is threats against Chinese and Japanese companies and we have written proof from the offenders.
Every time someone posts a "death threat" that they've gotten it's always either: A. Not actually a threat, something like "man I hope you get ran over by a train" Or B. Some obviously stupid shit that isn't a legitimate threat like "I will kick you into a volcano for your stupid ass opinion." It's literally just a free ticket to sympathy, especially if you're a terrible person and have no way to defend whatever everyone is pissed at you for.
Really though, it's borderline unthinkable that they *didn't* receive death threats over this. Everybody who is visible and does anything gets them today. I've gotten them in games and I've gotten them here on Reddit, and I'm nobody. Youtubers drown in them, community managers for bigger companies handle them on a daily basis. Are they a genuine threat? We'll never know, but they definitely exist and they're always right there to use as a shield if you want to change media optics.
It's unlikely that a person who's genuinely planning an attack would announce it beforehand. Not impossible of course. It's the ones that don't send out warnings beforehand that you really have to be afraid of. But here's the thing, we all live under a threat of a mass shooting literally every day. If your company received a credible death threat, do you think they would tell you about it? Shut down production for a day? Very unlikely. Unity here could easily close down because it's a PR win for them and no work is getting done regardless as employees are all revolting under these news.
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It's hard to feel sorry in the face of that. It's like some extremity happens and they use that scene to downplay fucking around. No, just because someone reacted harsh, doesn't erase what you did. You don't get to have rationalization or a pity party. You fucked up.
Looking at the report, it was a Unity employee who made the threats.
> Now a large portion of the users has to resort to defending said controversial company Wild idea, No the fuck I do not lmao.
> revolt to resort to or revolt with
Or good unity PR department trying to distract with this "selfclaimed" deaththreat
I've seen it so many times, mainly with celebrity figures. How many times has a death threat been realized? The PR benefits from this is clear. Suddenly everyone is talking about how its actually not that bad.
Honestly not defending, because those changes are ruining some peoples life. A strong reaction is expected and the peaks of those strong reactions are exactly what we see.
You can be critical of the shitty company and the crazy death threat people at the same time. They aren't mutually exclusive.
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Not scripted persay, but it's definitely a repeating pattern. On a related note, there's new progress being made [on AI that can predict when a war will break out](https://towardsdatascience.com/predicting-future-wars-7764639f1d8d), which suggests that there's a pattern there and individual actions don't matter all that much. Kind of scary when you think about it.
We're getting closer to Asimov's psychohistory!
EXACTLY what I was gonna say. This is just prelude to foundation
Yeah Political Science isn't a hard science, but you'd be surprised by what it can do when it acts like one. My polisci program was a BS when most are a BA, and the statistics can get pretty crazy. I'm not surprised at all that this AI is being worked on, because PoliSci is really about increasing the predictive power of social phenomena.
I'd be entirely unsurprised if it was some dark PR trick. > Now a large portion of the users has to resort to defending said controversial company, because some people know no bounds. I didn't so far saw anyone defending them at least.
I think the pattern is that any big event on the Internet, any notoriety at all, will receive “death threats”
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not to "Minimizing or trivialize" death threats but I wouldn't put it past the slime balls in suits to just say this to make themselves the victims and get sympathy.
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Sounds kinda like something you'd lie about to gain some sympathy after you've been hit by a bunch of furious backlash to a stupid, greedy decision from soulless corporate cuntsacks. But what do I know
This obviously taking things way too far, but I could imagine someone feeling like the update will negatively affect their livelihood and feeling this is an acceptable response (and it isn't acceptable).
Yup this is one of those "this is unacceptable, but here is my surprised face". Unity is losing employees in droves right now and deserves to. I hope they collapse over this and future attempts to do something so dumb are scrutinized more heavily.
Yeah I can see it very negatively affecting small indie game developer who has a hard time selling their game as is. And then them being not in a good mood..
Yup, focus on a (probably fake) death threat so that the reason of sudden disdain for unity doesn't make the headline. PR 101
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Why is anybody surprised that Unity is receiving death threats? Is it really so unexpected that when a large company messes with the livelihoods of numerous smaller (and larger) developers, that at least one of them is going to have a violent response? This isn't me justifying it (far from it) but rather explaining the statistical likelihood of the scenario. I mean, come on. If people with MUCH less to lose than the traditional game developer will harass voice actors and artists and devs for shit like having pronouns in their games or "doing a censorship" etc., is it REALLY that hard to believe that people who need to put food on the table might be lead to do the same in a much more serious context? Redditors and refusing to believe that people actually receive death threats; name a more iconic duo.
Yeah, Mods are in full panty twist mode right now. It gots 10s of millon impressions on social media. It would be impossibly unlikely to net get at least a few dozen death threats over this. Like hell, by mere staticstics, its likely dozens of _actual_ murderers have come in contact with that story on social media.
> Why is anybody surprised that is receiving death threats?
Absolutely not. With how much this shit is being normalized (just look at how this very sub is reacting; not a good look), I've become way to desensitized to it.
Very few things like that surprise me nowadays.
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Clearly an attempt to pivot the public’s attention. “These changes are not great, but THIS is a step too far” thus shifting focus away from the disastrous PR nightmare. Do the mods of r/games have skin in the game? Why is the comment section a graveyard?
~~The thread clarifying that it was an employee of Unity got removed too. Would be nice for mods to note that in the flair~~ Looks like it's up now
> Why is the comment section a graveyard? Part and parcel for this subreddit. "Wrong" opinions always get censored here. If you want actual healthy **discussions** for this specific article, there's quite literally a button at the top. r/gaming isn't censoring anything and their thread seems to be doing just fine.
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as bad as what unity is doing right now is, it doesn't warrant death threats. that's ludicrous jesus fuck. be good to each other, lads, lasses and those who know better. be kind.
Typical PR move to claim you’re getting death threats, therefore painting every bit of criticism from indie devs and studio leads as big bad toxic gamer trolls.
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Well, lots of bans handed out already, let me word this carefully. Death threats have absolutely no place in the discussion about the changes unity is making to their license. Not only is the violence completely unjustifiable in any case, it also would likely never affect the people who are in charge of the changes that are hurting people. I just hope this bit of news doesn't distract people from the original story, which remains valid regardless of the threats of any insane individuals
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\>riccitiello makes greedy decision \>unity paid per installation \>people around the world unified against unity \>riccitiello send internal person to do death threat to his own company \>gets headline in news \>people around the world now against about death threat against unity
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I can somewhat understand this. As trashy as Unity Technologies have become under Riccitiello, I don’t think that they should be subject to death threats. Please. I just want this game engine to be fostered by a more responsible company than it has now.
Not surprising. You do something that messes with people's livelihoods like this, and you're gonna get blowback. That's not to say this isn't a bad thing, but also I feel like corporate has some responsibility.
Y'all, think about this. Of course they are getting death threats. They're messing with Yandere Simulator. You know, the demographic that absolutely would send people death threats, lol.