#unity debacle

[kosah-hedron]

I heard from a friend who i trust with this information that Unity is basically taking the decision back 90%. Since I heard about it though, I redownloaded a bunch of Unity games and realized just HOW MANY are unity. Like, just to name a few favorites, Slime Rancher, A Short Hike, Bugsnax, and Spiritfarer. And I mentioned Subnautica in my last post about this. I LOVE these games and I hope Unity's image never recovers.

Edit: HOLLOW KNIGHT TOO

Edit 2: asked for a source, so found this one on the official unity blog

[concernedfriend]

Just want to say in light of this whole Unity thing, when my mom mentioned that they were changing the engine that Nancy Drew games were developed in and I heard it was Unity,,, I said they would regret it. Never got good vibes from Unity

[valiancenodel]

It seems that the CEO of Unity had sold thousand of actions just before announcing the new fee...

How isn't this guy in jail yet?

[corruptionpit]

The thing that makes me feel the most ill about Unitys cash grab fuckery is that with this going into effect retroactively the affected games are going to be VERY hard to archive without making the problem worse. Combine that with planned obsolescence making devices the games are already installed on not last as long as they should... it's all just really fucking grim

[glugglestar]

when a company offers a "compromise", look at it like that's what they were implementing in the first place.

chances are, the company is trojan horsing its userbase - giving them a shit deal and then presenting them with a better one when the backlash starts to come in. The deal will be better, but NOT good. do not fall for this tactic

[ironmyrmidon]

I was actually considering learning Unity recently, lol. Now I am open to suggestions about what other game engine I should use to make* a turn-based rpg.

*no guarantees

[silver-eater]

Based on what I've seen so far of the events regarding unity, here's what I think will happen

(I am not a reliable source, I'm just some guy who likes to hear myself talk. I probably have no idea what I'm talking about.)

The CEO and other people behind this will get off Scott free, this is all part of an insider trading scheme, which is perfectly legal like most rich people activities so long as the government gets a cut.

As for unity itself, the damage done to it will be severe. If it goes under completely, many games will cease to function or be developed, possibly for good. But I expect them to be preserved/repaired in some capacity by media archivists(pirates)

If it survives for a bit, big companies like Nintendo and Sony will probably force it to remove the royalty fee, though people will scramble to port their games to Godot and the like and no one will ever use unity again, so it will go under from lack of customer base, maybe be kept on life support for games that can't be ported.

[mirrorful]

the whole unity thing

i'd meant to jot down a few thoughts about the whole unity thing, and now that riccitello's apparently stepping down and putting an end to this chapter, at least, i've put it off about as long as i can.

unity's announced pricing changes were stupid: tone deaf, privacy nightmare, potentially unbounded financial obligations; you've heard it all at great length. but as weird and outrageous as it was, the reaction might have seemed a little overblown if you haven't been watching unity get worse and worse over the years; every new version boots up more slowly in service of features that they've slapped in and haven't bothered to finish.

so i'm mostly sad about the whole thing. it was a great engine in 2009! but idk how much riccitello & crew understood that a lot of unity's greatness was their decision to build on c#, and others have done the same--godot & fna/monogame from re-logic's announcement, among others. and the more engines i use (we're on unreal now at work, for art/graphics quality/big team reasons) the clearer it is that they're all doing the same thing. they've each got their own quirks, but there's a consensus around how to edit animations or materials or what have you that nobody strays very far from.

in conclusion: switching will be mildly irritating but extremely possible. i said that i wouldn't use unity again until someone resigns in shame, but i honestly didn't expect it to happen. riccitello by himself is probably not enough, could be a few more that have to go before they can turn it around.

[xeansicemane]

I think what's fascinating about this whole Unity debacle is how clear it makes something.

The entire C-suite of every company on earth are idiots.

That's not hyperbole, they are people serially uninterested in becoming informed and constitutionally incapable of hearing they're wrong about something. They build a thick shell of unreality and assure themselves they can direct any human venture even if they know nothing of how the enterprise in question works or how its' customers interact with it.

They had it. They were THE tool for learning to build games and even worked for larger projects. Producers and consumers alike knew Unity as a trusted albeit occasionally teased household name.

And they fucked their institutional trust like a university of Florida fraternity pledge strung out on something called "gator blood" fucks a supermarket turkey.

And it isn't even just Unity - look at Twitter, the smoking ruin of something once synonymous with the digital commons. It isn't just Twitter - look at grocery prices.

Our "business leaders", our "movers and shakers" don't know what they're doing. An MBA is taken as a stand-in for competence and knowledge. Because the neo-feudal overlords can never hear no.

The enshittification continues.

[kosah-hedron]

Just heard about the Unity situation recently. If you don't know, look it up or go to the #unity tag and read someone else's message.

As a huge Subnautica and Bloons TD 6 fan, and video game fan in general, I hate this. Companies es are so crazy sometimes. This is just like flash, and so many great games will probably be gone forever. Doing my part to spread the word and hopefully get people to quit Unity. I know it's more complex than that but good luck!

[vampirecatprince]

I was thinking of going with Godot for my game project and just accepting that possible console releases would involve a remake, BUT I just found out that Game Maker Studio just revealed a new one time fee set up for non-console commercial ports AND has a free option for actually making the game and non-commercial uses...

[prokopetz]

For my money, the most interesting part of the whole Unity debacle is that by a strict reading of the new policies, ceasing to offer one's Unity-based games for sale won't even work as a means of getting around the fees: if your Unity-based game is no longer available for sale after January 1st, you'd still be on the hook for the Unity Runtime installation fee for new installs performed by previous legitimate purchasers, even in cases where such installs are performed from physical or archival media or are otherwise impossible for you to prevent. It's going to be fascinating to see what happens if Unity's publisher ever actually tries to enforce payment that scenario.

[civildisorderstream]

2023, The Year of Self-Sabotage

Has anyone noticed the trend businesses have been on in 2023? There's a LOT of self-sabotage going on in the business world. Throughout my life, and everyone else has their own observations too, once in a while you see a company make a boneheaded decision about their product or service. And once in a while you'll see a decision get made that is bad, but maybe it at least has some justification (even to an anti-capitalist goober like myself). But this year has been nonsensical moves of greed or product/service sabotage that make no sense for longevity or harm what's in the best interest of the consumer.

Activision-Blizzard: The Overwatch debacle, and Diablo Immortal's scummy practices.

Netflix: The account sharing debacle.

Twitter: Maximum divorced loser Elon Musk destroying its functionality and branding and we still call it Twitter.

Reddit: Inspired by Musk's stupidity, the API tools debacle. Shame on the Reddit communities for not knowing how to strike btw (you don't put a time limit on it).

Hollywood: Pulling shows and films from streaming services to declare them as failed products and somehow get a tax write-off for it.

Also Hollywood: Willing to take quarterly losses greater than the annual cost to meet the demands of two striking unions put together.

Unity: Announced in the past day that it will charge developers a fee for installations because greed.

Titan Submersible: "Safety is for losers" says billionaire who proceeds to use his shoddy tech to do a murder-suicide.

Starbucks: Breaking ALL of the labor laws to try and stop unionization. Admittedly a reach to be on this list but the situation (like all the others) is ongoing and can compound.

Embracer: A massive corporate company that bought a bunch of smaller companies. Thought a 2 billion dollar deal with the Saudi government was a sure thing, so they spent 2 billion dollars on stuff. Deal falls through, so they start closing companies they acquired.

That's just the ones I can remember off the top of my head. These aren't business decisions done for the sake of consumers. These are all decisions done to spite consumers or the workers who produce the products and services.

People try to remember years as being the "year of" something. And it's a thing I do too. For me, 2023 is the year of corporate self-sabotage.

[gilmorenights]

I’ve always imagined there being an episode of VAT7K where team radical hears of this fortune teller and spends the episode seeking her out and when they get to her she reveals in a dramatic way that someone is going to betray the team (a lot like The Oracle in the Pjo musical) and that ends the episode.

So next episode we see team radical is on edge and suspecting each other to be the traitor of the group. Obviously it’s Hugo, but he freaks out and just kind of fires back every time someone says something about him (“How do we know Nuru won’t steal the totems for herself once we complete the quest? I bet Varian has something to hide”) and he does it in a way that just kind of fans the flames.

Varian is the only one not acting like this because he is CONVINCED the traitor is him. At this point in their journey, his past as The Alchemist is still hidden and he intended on keeping it that way until this whole debacle. Now he has to watch his whole team fall apart and accuse each other of betraying the team all the while knowing he’s the one who betrayed them.

The last straw is when they’re sitting around the campfire and someone accuses Yong. That’s when he finally snaps and is like “It’s me, okay? I’m the traitor!” Then there’s this whole dramatic lament he does about his past and how he’s a terrible person for not telling them and he understands if they don’t want to help him anymore. Nuru and Yong are understandably shocked, but Hugo? Hugo just sits there quietly, trying to figure out what that weird feeling in his chest is. It almost feels like guilt, but no. That can’t be. Hugo doesn’t feel guilt. If anything, he should feel relieved that his secret is safe.

Eventually, Nuru takes Varian’s hand and smiles softly at him. She tells him he’s not a traitor for keeping this from them, for trying to hide something he isn’t proud of. She says everyone in the group betrayed each other by turning on and accusing one another the way they did. They’re all traitors to each other, and they should all learn to do better.

This is the turning point where I believe Team Radical officially becomes a real team. Before this they were just a group of kids with their own interests in mind, but now they’re a unit. There’s a new, unspoken level of trust and unity between them and it shows in the way they handle the rest of their journey. I think this is also the point of the show where Hugo starts doubting his mission just a bit. It’s not enough to make him want to back out (yet), but it is when the first seed of doubt is planted in his mind.

Sorry for the ramble I’ve just had this idea for so long and had to get it out somewhere 😭

[markrosewater]

Has there ever been any thought to combining the Ox and Minotaur creature types? Such as simplifying both to simply "Cow?"

I'm a huge fan of bovines in all forms and it would be nice if all of the Ox in magic worked alongside their more anthropomorphic cousins the Minotaur. As it is now we're lucky to really get cards of *either* type printed. There's resonance to the name Minotaur, no doubt, but it also has its share of baggage. It has Greek connotations and that's probably a big reason Minotaurs are almost strictly in Theros (although some favorites, such as Neheb, are from other planes).

I was happy that Outlaws had more Ox cards, but it also highlights my dissatisfaction: Holy Cow is an *ox* not a cow, despite the name. It feels like a retread of the Hound or Naga debacle all over again. Hound was simplified to Dog and all Snakes, from rattlesnakes to Naga, are simply the type Snake now. This allows snakes and dogs of all walks benefit from a shared unity. Cats had it right, we didn't need Leonin as a separate type.

I just feel like there's unnecessary separation being created by dividing Ox and Minotaur and it has the same resonance failings as all dogs being labeled "hounds" had. If it's important for a particular creature to *be* a minotaur then they can just *have* minotaur in their name, like ~30% of minotaurs already do. There's also the simple fact that Minotaur is a longer average creature type, limiting design space for other types to be included. It's hard to justify why a Minotaur is on a random plane, but much less so if it's simply a "Cow Warrior" for example.

As for why I think "Cow" should just be the combined type name, I simply think it fits. Cow is a resonant name. Almost everyone, East to west, knows *of* cows if only because their milk is such a widely used commodity. We don't call it "Ox's milk" after all. More than that, it's fun! Cow is *funny* in the same way *squirrel* is funny. It's amusing to see "Squirrels you control" in this game full of fighting. In that vein, "Cows you control" is an amusing line that can help break up the seriousness of a setting.

I know this is making a mountain out of a molehill, but magic is a game of different perspectives coming together and creating something new. Cows are my favorite animal and it's simply dissatisfying, to me, that my Holy Cow can't benefit from a Kragma Warcaller. That Angrath, colloquially named "Cow Dad" in the community, would have the creature type "Minotaur." The only downside I can see is that "Cow" *does* specifically refer to females of a bovine species. But that is a distinction few, if any, seriously take into consideration. If one sees a field of cows, they're not saying "I see lots of cows and 3 bulls!" They're going to say "I see cows!"

So to bring the thesis back, has there been any discussion internally to simplifying the Minotaur and Ox creature types under a single banner, such as "Cow?" I would also happily settle for "Cattle" as the new type. I just feel the current Ox vs Minotaur divide has to go, for both flavor and mechanical reasons, and the sooner the better.

I have been on Team Cow (as I was on Team Dog) for many years. I even made Cows in Un-sets. I still believe Minotaur should be its own creature type though.