Technology

Shitty Executive: “Oh shit, our terrible idea turned out to be wildly unpopular and we’re getting massive negative feedback! Quick, play the death threats card to make us look like the victim!”

No need for death threats. Unity already committed suicide.

Unsurprisingly, it's likely that this "death threats" situation was made up by the ceo: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/16j21jg/the_truth_behind_the_unity_death_threats/

It's a reddit link, ik... here's a copy of the post:

The truth behind the Unity "Death Threats"

Unity has temporarily closed its offices in San Francisco and Austin, Texas and canceled a town hall meeting after receiving death threats, according to Bloomberg.

Multiple news outlets are reporting on this story, yet Polygon seems to be the only one that actually bothered to investigate the claims.

Checking with both Police and FBI, they have only acknowledged 1 single threat, from a Unity employee, to their boss over social media. Despite this their CEO decided to use it as an excuse to close edit:~~all~~ 2 of their offices and cancel planned town hall meetings. Here is the article update from Polygon:

Update: 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.

https://www.polygon.com/23873727/unity-credible-death-threat-offices-closed-pricing-change

Polygon also contacted Police in the other cities and also the FBI, this was the only reported death threat against Unity that anyone knew of.

This is increasingly looking like the CEO is throwing a pity party and he's trying to trick us all into coming.

This shouldn't be a distraction from the core issue, but obviously people should cut this shit out.

You can't sneeze online without some sociopathic child threatening to slit your throat.

Edit: Annnd it was an employee of Unity that made the threats...

Talk about blowing shit out of proportion. People need to realize that making death threats is a good way to make the bad guys look like the good guys.

So, the leadership of Unity is a complete piece of shit, but death threats (or really, any other threat of violence) are just straight up idiotic. It’s a game engine company. There are much more fun and interesting (and, you know, legal) ways to kill the company in a commercial sense.

The overreaction to online death threats is so stupid. An anonymous 0 follower Twitter account allows organizations and people to instantly turn the PR situation around and become the victims and act like they are personally being hunted down by Mossad.

Hey! Don't threaten people! Don't hurt anyone! Just move to Godot. That's it. Abandon ship, peacefully. These people care more about money than employee lives anyway.

That 4chan sure is a wild dude.

I hate humanity sometimes, why would they send death threats? Just don't use their engine; this is the way you actually make a change -- switch to something else, threatening people does not help you prove your point. I hate their new pricing changes too, but death threats are never warranted

This, like cancel culture, is a direct result of a justice system that pretty much never delivers justice to the victims of the rich and the powerful. Fixing that is the only thing that can stop this escalating cultural phenomenon.

I am usually against such and still am, you should never send anyone deaf that's, that is a felonious offense.

That said I don't feel sorry for the victim. You can't blackmail every game developer in the world simultaneously and expect nothing to happen.

One of the issue here, and I am in absolutely no way defending Unity, is that legally an executive team works for the shareholders. They must ensure shareholder return no matter what as they are in the hook for it.

Unity’s biggest issue is that they like many successful companies stopped innovating and have moved from a company run by technical people to one run by sales and marketing. Sales and marketing only know how to extract more out of the product they already have and not how to improve the product to make more in honest ways. I would (have) gladly given Unity more money if they offered tools that truly helped me get to market faster as then my win would be their win. Instead their product has become stagnant, slower not faster since 2019 and more expensive. I am getting less for more and it is unacceptable. Unity is a horrible business partner. But I can see why as they are a sales and marketing company now. Steve Jobs says it best in this 2 minute video. He got it. Why are so many other not getting this?

https://youtu.be/tGKsbt5wii0?si=km7LTxsY6gwD-mvo

This is partially what "eat the rich" rhetoric meant when acted on.

This is a reminder that paying for a subscription means t&cs can be changed. You aren't buying the engine etc just a license to access/use it for a period of time. Stop buying subscriptions!

Somehow I get the feeling that this may not just be some unhinged internet troll throwing out online drivel from his mom's basement. Unity's pricing changes are posing an existential threat to smaller studios that meet the minimum income threshold and are placing the livelihoods of countless thousands of smaller game studio workers at stake. This is one of those changes that is going to impact whether you can continue to put food on the table.

John Riccitello has pissed off a lot of people with his disgusting levels of corporate greed, to the point where even the fourth circle of Hell may not be enough to punish his avarice once he pops his clogs. This move may even be worse than the crap Martin Shkreli pulled as a big pharma executive.

This is a reminder that there are crazy people on the internet.

But this is NOT a reason to have sympathy for Unity.

Starting on January 1, developers will be charged a fee every time someone installs a game built in Unity after they reach certain revenue or install thresholds.

Obviously death threats are not ok, but for fucks sake, that change is insane. People may install games many times for many reasons, like switching drives, computer, OS or debugging, or corruption, or because they go back to it after not playing for a while.

How is it a good model to charge for repeated installs?

The decision sparked an astonishing backlash against Unity from across the gaming industry,

I bet, this will threaten some people on their livelihood, and if you are 90% finished on a project, it's an insane change that will force you to switch to another engine, and could kill several projects.

Also as a user, this increases the need and amount of DRM mechanics, which we need less not more of.

I hope Unity will see a massive dive in customers on these policies. This is the kind of decision a company deserves bankruptcy for. And the CEO John Riccitiello deserves to be fired without benefits, and never hired as CEO again.

Edit PS:

The fee is up to $0.20, that's steep and would mean the end of sub $10 games. This would hurt single and indie developers very much.

Luckily there are other engines, but Unity used to be among the good ones, now they've become an untrustworthy player, and that decreases competition for the entire field.

All because Amongus sold so many times…

Well looking on the bright side. If death threats are starting to become common for the decisions that companies make then maybe WFH should also be common to protect employees. Can't target employees at an empty office. The employees will have to be careful with social media however.

Mm, I'm curious as to what the threats actually were. I've seen people claim they got death threats because someone tweeted "kys" at them in response to their homophobic bullshit.

This is becoming standard operating procedure from companies that want a quick PR boost.

Unity is the sort of company Steve Jobs called out in this 2 min video clip. https://youtu.be/tGKsbt5wii0?si=v8_A2jW5uLewhbVS

One threat, from and employee. Sigh.

More realistic outcome - some game loving tweenage hacker does something fantastically destructive in whatever part of their infrastructure they can get into.