After leaving developers furious for nearly a whole week after the recent announcement of making developers pay for game installs, Unity put up a fresh statement. I really do suggest you read that previous link for context, where I went over various issues.
The statement from Unity posted on X is as follows: "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."
So right now game developers have to wait and see what changes Unity come up with. For some, nothing short of entirely reversing it will do. Plenty of developers are already quite unhappy with the latest statement since it has nothing of actual substance after waiting nearly a week.
The problem is, as said by many developers, the trust has been broken. They've shown a total disregard for game developers since they're willing to change the terms on them at any point. Even if they put in protections against that, as shown before, they could just remove them again. How can a company rebuild trust when it has been so badly broken? It certainly will be interesting to see what they actually do.
Looks like we're in for an interesting week ahead for the industry…
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Linux_Rocks Sep 18, 2023
Mohandevir Sep 18, 2023
Last edited by Mohandevir on 18 September 2023 at 4:14 pm UTC
The whole fiasco is just a prime example of what happens after a company goes public: Greedy investors buy their way into the board and dictate bullshit policies that promise short term profits with no regards to what those policies will do to the company in the long run.
So in short: everything gets worse for everyone (well, everyone but the parasites i guess)
Quoting: RomlokQuoteWe apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused.This, ladies, gentlemen, and everyone between and beyond; is a classic example of what we call a "non-apology". They're not apologising for what they did, nor admitting that they were wrong to do it. They're apologising for making you feel bad about what they did.
"I'm sorry you feel that way"
It's exactly how politics apologize. "We didn't work enough on explaining why it was a good reform for the country".
Like everybody's dumb, flail their arms and rise their pitchforks without understanding how good of an idea the install fee was.
How is making further changes any better?
Until they go back to being contractually obligated to sticking to past TOS and fee structure, there is no way to trust them. They don't honor past agreements and they will try to extort money from developers and players, if not immediately, as soon as they feel they can get away with it.
Background: around ~2022-08 they removed the TOS history they put on GitHub the last time (2019-01-16) they apologised for trying to retroactively change terms (2018-12-05): https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/16hnibp/unity_silently_removed_their_github_repo_to_track/
On 2023-04-03, they removed a clause about sticking with past agreements when developers stick to the SDK they were using at release time.
Quoting: Sanaka3that apology message of theirs feels like any other corporate apology. same "we heard you", same "confusion/misunderstanding", almost like it's made from a templateIt is.
The non-apology, take-no-responsibility apology is taught in PR/corporatelawyercritter 101. Say what you did was actually wrong and it could be the basis for a lawsuit, goes the reasoning. Some of the more up-to-date corporate flacks who took recent PR 201 have actually been told "The non-apology apology is so cliched that everybody notices what you're doing; they just annoy the public. Genuine apologies are much more effective." Apparently the Unity folks don't have any of the more recent PR graduates.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 18 September 2023 at 2:58 pm UTC
Quoting: MayeulCI think the stockholders hate your idea more.Quoting: FurysparkThe only way they are likely to rebuild trust is by publicly executing John Rikitikitaco and all the other wretches who thought this was a good idea. Or at the very least, the next best thing to execution.Eh, let's not, please, that sounds a bit too violent and disproportionate. Let's not incite towards violence. It's a case of corporate greed, so... Just turn it into a nonprofit? :P
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