[dpkonofa]

This is it, in a nutshell. People don't want the apology. They want to know that a decision like this doesn't have a chance of happening because the people in charge know it's a bad idea before it leaves the door. No one wants to be stuck in a cycle of getting fucked and then boycotting to get what they want, especially for something that their livelihood depends on. They want a product made by people they trust who are making decisions in the best interest of the users/creators and not only decisions that are in the best interest of the company.

[hn_throwaway_99]

It's amazing to me how very smart people in corporations can convince themselves (and I mean, like really believe it) that the shit sandwich they are serving up is actually filet mignon. It's the whole "it's very hard for someone to understand something when their paycheck depends on not understanding it" issue. I've seen it a few times in person, where I'm like "How the f are we convincing ourselves of this?"

2 recommendations:

1. This is where a "neuro-diverse" person or two can really be an asset. The social dynamic in corporations often leads to people eventually shaking their heads in agreement, even if they have big underlying concerns. Those of us somewhere on the spectrum are less likely to understand those social dynamics in the first place and be more willing to call out BS.

2. Good corporate leaders have trusted outside council that they can run ideas by to get brutally honest feedback.

[coldpie]

I haven't seen any evidence that anyone smart was involved in this decision. There's been some hints that the actual smart people (devs, customer support folks) were screaming bloody murder that it was a terrible idea, but the execs pushed it through anyway. This is yet another entry in the enormous list of evidence that becoming the head of a company does not require any intelligence. Quite the opposite, apparently.

[hn_throwaway_99]

Don't mean to defend the execs that made this decision too much, but I think saying "they're all just idiots" is probably not what really happened.

Basically, execs (especially public company execs) have the responsibility for growing revenue and earnings. Ideally they do that by just making better products, but some times you do need to "thread the needle" by charging more for your products while not pissing off customers too much.

I'm sure the devs and customer support folks were screaming bloody murder, but they are also not responsible for satisfying public markets, so it's easier to say those things without having to worry about revenue growth.

So point being, I'm sure execs thought there would be some blowback, but they probably felt it would be "manageable", and like others have said, they overestimated the irreplaceability of Unity. So its important at the exec level to have someone who can whisper in your ear, someone who does understand the requirement for growing revenue, that can honestly say "you've managed to convince yourself of this bullshit."

[lamontcg]

So they're just sociopaths who minmax how much they can abuse their customers and get away with it.

[jenkstom]

There are so many things left unsaid, but implied, in this post. I love it.

[m463]

I wonder what the reality really is? Does this stuff all blow over?

Thinking back to recent controversies:

- reddit with third party apps

- the D&D open gaming license

- redhat and centos

- etc...

[dpkonofa]

I think it does, to an extent. Reddit is still alive, for example. It's just nowhere near the community and content it used to be and, in my mind, it won't ever be that way again. Reddit's biggest benefit was that most of the moderators were people who were really, really into very niche topics. The big subs were all moderated by the same 10 people so they devolved into meme depositories and made up stories that stoked emotions. Now that the principled mods have left and those niche subreddits are being taken over by people who care more about the memes than the topic at hand, it's falling apart.

[badRNG]

Reddit, like Twitter, isn't going anywhere. It's just a worse value for the end user, and in Reddit's case the business is potentially better off for it, users be damned.

[dpkonofa]

I disagree. Twitter is already dying, albeit slowly. Reddit will suffer the same fate. The entire reason Reddit grew the way it did was because it had content that other sites didn't have and the reason it had that content was because of the niche subreddits modded by people who were extremely passionate about niche stuff. Reddit won't grow anymore because the content being fed to it now is just content stolen from other sites and it's not any easier to access or better for being on Reddit. It's a worse value for the end user because the value was in the people that have now all left.

[octacat]

+ steam now opens steam + shows you ads, each time when you start a game, using a game shortcut from the desktop. You still could disable ads in settings, but not starting steam.

Another "genius" improvement. Yes, I recommend buy factorio directly from the dev now.

[drpossum]

Maybe, judging by their actions, they're not actually that smart.

[the_snooze]

Exactly. If your project or organization is dependent on some external product or platform, that thing had better be boring and predictable. Busy people don't have the time or the patience to be jerked around by external surprises.

Walk-back or not, Unity is demonstrably not boring and predictable anymore. That's done.

[sounds]

Oh they didn't walk it back. It's now one of two ways for them to get a percent of your revenue - that did change.

(It also was only going to kick in once your revenue hit a certain point.)

The CEO John R. didn't chime in here, and that would have meant him being accountable for this decision and its effect on Unity. His mask slipped here.

[brucethemoose2]

They did walk back charging per download/install.

There was no way they couldn't. Its literally not practical.

[3836293648]

They only walked back it applying retroactively. Now it's from the next LTS release.

It applying to free games was walked back immediately and isn't news

[Applejinx]

You misunderstand, I think.

ACCOUNTABILITY would not be practical.

Them charging for whatever they can make up and claim to be true, is neither walked back or not walked back. It's waiting to happen again, in whatever way they dream up. You're assuming they wouldn't simply make stuff up and that there would be a chain of accountability, so the process would make sense.

Such things are for making money, not sense. You have not seen the last of them.

[coldpie]

Sorry, where did they walk it back? The letter linked in this thread still refers to the "runtime fee".

[brucethemoose2]

https://www.axios.com/2023/09/13/unity-runtime-fee-policy-ma...

> After initially telling Axios earlier Tuesday that a player installing a game, deleting it and installing it again would result in multiple fees, Unity'sWhitten told Axios that the company would actually only charge for an initial installation. (A spokesperson told Axios that Unity had "regrouped" to discuss the issue.)

[dpkonofa]

That's not walking back. That's taking a step back. The runtime fees still exist.

[usea]

If you're working on strategy at Unity in good faith right now, I think you announce like they did rather than having the CEO take accountability. Because I think the CEO apology strategy depends on the CEO's ability to convince people he's sincere and contrite. That's a tall order under these circumstances.

[Macha]

Even for a decision by middle management, the trustworthiness of senior management is a cap on how much you can trust middle management - how can you trust a decision more than you trust the people with the ability to overrule it?

[krapp]

>No one wants to be stuck in a cycle of getting fucked and then boycotting to get what they want, especially for something that their livelihood depends on.

A lot of devs and studios are, they know they are, Unity knows they are, and there's little anyone can afford to do about it. I suspect most of the crowd that ostensibly abandoned Unity will return because they've already sunk too much time and energy into the platform, and that's the path of least resistance. They will tolerate whatever deal Unity gives them because they can't afford to do otherwise. Even if they liked the alternatives, the only reasonable business decision is to return to Unity and pretend this never happened.

Unfortunately this probably means much of the interest in Godot and other open source alternatives this debacle created is about to evaporate. Inertia is a harsh mistress.

[hintymad]

Is Unity's CEO a product guy? It appears that the CEO does not give a shit to the product, or details of pricing policy in this particular case. If so, I could never understand how a tech company would get someone who wouldn't pay attention to such details.

[octacat]

more like bonuses guy.

[dredmorbius]

I don't have a horse in the Unity issue, though I've been following it loosely. I can speak to my own response to another organisation.

I'd written off Reddit personally around five-six years ago. This despite having a fairly long-lived bloggy subreddit (and a small smattering of others) on the site, which I still use as a reference (despite having taken it private).

It wasn't specifically on account of the specific technical decisions they'd made, or the site changes (or lack of site changes) resulting, but the fact that those decisions were being made. That is, as with other business organisations I've encountered over the years, Reddit had repeatedly proven themselves antithetical to my own interests and values.

I suspect that's the issue Unity's going through here, and that though the final endgame may take some time in coming, it could well doom the company.

One business strategy that seems to have been increasingly widely adopted over the past decade or two, or perhaps I'm only simply far more cognisant of it and recognise it where it occurs, is the "walk right up to the creepy line" approach (as Eric Schmidt put it: <https://thehill.com/policy/technology/71739-schmidt-google-g...>), or moving products or services right to the pain or tolerance threshold.

In the short term this can work. It can even be successful over a longer term, in cases. But there are two inherent problems with the concept:

1. The threshold, whether it's pain, tolerance, creepiness, or whatever, can change, and often startlingly suddenly. At which point the organisation is caught high and dry.

2. The long-term erosion of trust and affection for the firm and its products effectively primes a trigger of latent demand for any viable alternative which appears. An example that comes to mind is the exclusive launch of Apple's iPhone in the US by AT&T. On the day that Verizon began officially supporting the iPhone on their own network, people were cramming Verizon stores and phone lines trying to make the switch. (A cow-orker at the time was one of those people.) They were absolutely fed up with AT&T's service and behaviour. See: <https://web.archive.org/web/20110112092318/http://www.engadg...> and <https://web.archive.org/web/20101007000511/http://online.wsj...>, discussed at the time: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2092273> and <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1765104>.

I've seen IBM, Microsoft, and Google subject to similar shifts, some more pronounced than others, over the years.

Leaving a considerable goodwill moat around offerings is an alternative. I'm too far outside the consumer mainstream to know what business, products, services, and/or brands exemplify this, though I suspect Costco and Trader Joe's might be among these.

[SleekEagle]

> moving products or services right to the pain or tolerance threshold

When did we start talking about the airline industry?

But seriously, the reason it works for the airline industry is because there is literally no other alternative, unlike in this case.

[dpkonofa]

This is a great take because I suspect that the airline industry is exactly the reason why all these companies are now in the "death by a thousand cuts" stage of their strategies. Literally no one prefers the airlines today and the experience of flying to the same degree (and especially not more) than they did a decade ago or more. Everything about the experience, from the boarding to the seating to the food, is objectively worse than it was before and yet people still need to fly.

[dredmorbius]

Commercial office real estate is another example that comes to mind.

TINA. Until suddenly, with COVID-19, there was an alternative.

And the real estate market is now (slowly) imploding.