Does Riccitiello think we are stupid?

Edit: A lot of people are trying to say he's being misrepresented, misinterpreted, etc. Please at least read the full interview before saying that. But even better, watch the excellent videos on the subject by YongYea on youtube. He goes into a lot of detail, putting up the sources on screen (and linked if you want) showing where this information comes from.

I mean, honestly, he already did say we are with the verbage he used. But I mean... really? Does he think we're a bunch of gullible idiots? Or perhaps we're all desperate employees of his that will jump on whatever nonsense corporate maneuvering he thinks is a gold mine, because if we don't, we'll lose our jobs?

This is a genuine question, btw. I am genuinely shocked at this behavior. Do I expect executives to be scummy behind closed doors? Sure. But to be so hostile to his *actual* customers, that is various other business owners, whether they're AAA or Indie devs, is mind blowing. He's clearly making poor decision after poor decision in some attempt to follow the money from games like Candy Crush and whatever is the latest, most popular, Japanese gatcha game.

When UE5 was announced, I took a thorough look into it, as a professional. A lot of the new tech was incredible, and some of it would streamline my workflow. But overall, the cons of UE5 still outweighed the pros (at least in my circumstances).

But then, Riccitiello announces they're getting greedy and *removing* free features and moving them to Pro-only? Stupid, but fine, I can live with that. It's inconvenient, but I can live with it.

Then, Epic releases their own store with higher profit margins for devs.

Meanwhile, I'm waiting on several packages to become useable in Unity, hoping they will save me time in the long term. Packages that have seemingly been abandoned.

Now, the Riccitiello thinks acquiring a famous-for-malware company is something I want my products to be associated with? That laying off "300-400" employees, probably working on the packages I'm hoping will come together, finally (Things like MLAPI, Input System, DOTS, Burst, to name a few), or packages I'm already using will stop being maintained and improved upon (which over the last 18 months of my current project, I have seen great improvement and support from things like UMA) is going to be acceptable for us? So they have the money to do a corporate merger with a malware company? So that we can make games full of IAP and ads, because Riccitiello thinks we all just need to be encouraged to make "Candy Crush" or "Fortnite?"

Does Riccitiello think he can constantly make the company and engine worse while their main competitor is dropping bomb-shell improvements to their workflow?

Well, let me break some news, to you, Riccitiello, since you clearly have zero knowledge of the industry you're in. Candy Crush has MLAPI. Fortnite has multiplayer and meshes. Games have input. Many other games, especially in the popular "voxel" category rely off the heavy number crunching DOTS can do. "Prioritizing money" isn't going to do diddly squat if you have no players, because your game is another piece of shovel-ware in an ocean of chinese shovel-ware, and nobody wants to play.

"Promise to do better." No, you've been an absolute train-wreck for 5 years. Before that, you lead the most hated company in the game industry *by players.* I can't see anything good happening while you're in charge, and some PR that you're embarrassed you got caught being a terrible leader, and really a terrible human being. While, clearly, you're not at all sorry you are a terrible leader making not only terrible PR choices, but terrible business choices.

So, while I'm sure my words will never reach your ears, I think the community's will. Riccitiello, resign. Go work in an industry you understand. And maybe, just maybe, my next project will still be in Unity. But as of now, I have no trust left, and even 2 years in my current project, I'm wondering if I would be better off jumping ship, now. After all, are the things I was trusting Unity to do, for my game to even work, just going to die? I can slap all the ads, malware and lootboxes I want in it, make them a "Priority" as it were, but if the game is broken garbage, I (and by extension NYSE-U) will never see a dime.

 

I mean, it makes the number one Unity subscription feature, the ability to get rid of Unity's splash screen, even more valuable, right?

 

I've met people like Riccitiello and to put the best spin on it, he's pointing out that many brilliant artists are not business people first by using colorful language. I've had artist friends like that as well, and my comment would be they are 'not into the business part of art' rather than calling them names.

Game development is a mix of art and business and I think what he is not considering is that quite a few creatives are using Unity and driven to make the game that 'they want to play' more than pure financial reward. There are lots of ways to make money, not all of them sound fun or interesting to me.

The thing is, a lot of very big tech companies have been made by people making something that 'they want to use', Google, Facebook, Etsy, Uber all come to mind. I don't think it's worth denigrating people that are pursuing their passion projects, for many of us it pays off just because it's fun to make the thing. But, it's nice to also think it could pay off if a lot of other people want to play the thing that we made.

 

Dragon Crashers never had any mention of multiplayer. It was always a sample game built for single player.

If you have screenshots/evidence id be curious to see; but as the lead developer of the project im 100% sure no mention of multiplayer was there.

Also, it was updated December 2021 - The 2D Team adopted the project after I was moved to another team (Gigaya).

 

If this is the point, then it's kinda unsurprising if he does not care about them, since those people (which includes me xP ) clearly do not make money for the Unity company.
Only if you think very long term we are valuable by providing verbal supper and a workforce in case one day we do work in a company that has a Unity subscription or implements ads etc. or by buying a lot from the asset store over time (though the asset store is a reaaally cheap store for industry standards).
Such long term effects unfortunately are naturally beaten by short term efforts to achieve market share and revenue for the company.

However as for Riccitiello, don't think he really thinks we are stupid; he does not truly feel like someone who doesn't understand passion or anything like that. What he said is being taken out of context a lot...
It's just that it's about "business first" decisions.

 

When did this happen? I've been using Unity for a long time and don't remember anything going in this direction. Could be wrong, though.

Best guess, he legitimately doesn't care, and doing something attention grabbing took some of the media heat away from details of the whole "merging with a company with a reputation for malware" thing.

But I've got to ask: are people upset about the part where he literally called some people "biggest f****** idiots", or the message about monetisation? The former is inexcusable. The latter was twisted quite a bit from what he actually said - he was talking about monetisation broadly, not microtransactions in particular.

But, again, for the sake of clarity before someone twists this out of proportion, no excise for the "idiots" bit.

 

So, giving him the benefit of the doubt, he's saying that game devs who don't use IAP and ads, are bad business people, by being vulgar and attacking them, to a Journalist for an industry publication, as the CEO of a company? I think it's clear who's a bad business person, in this exchange.

Regardless, the verbage "monetization" is very specific industry verbage. If he had said, "Prioritized being profitable" or "Make enough money to continue being a solvent company" that would be nowhere near as controversial. It's quite clear he's saying if you're not using monetization, as opposed to selling your game for an upfront cost, he considers you an imbecile. Meanwhile, all the biggest sellers I know of, that haven't come out of a AAA studio, have NOT used monetization. Games like Stardew Valley, Hollow Knight, and many more...

Btw, here's one of the many different pages, from Unity, that explicitly state monetization are ads and IAP. https://unity.com/products/unity-ads

Oh, my mistake! I have mixed up Boss Room and Dragon Crashers. My point about being worried about the state of the engine and the various packages, after massive layoffs, still stands, though.

Is that because you can't currently make a game by yourself, or is it because you're a f***ing idiot for not prioritizing monetization?

Either way, Unity has always been an engine where they're betting that out of 100 hobbyists, 1 of them go on to make a game that sells pretty well, and 1 in 1000 sell a million copies.

It is not. I have read the whole interview a few times now. I have seen some big names in Unity talking about this in Discords or on Youtube. It also isn't just about what he said, but the clear indication where the business is headed... laying off 400 people and acquiring a user data harvesting and malware company, are even louder statements than what he said, but not quite as obvious to the average person.

But don't believe me, here's a long interview with Riccielto where he says "ads," "monetization," "player behavior," and all the other aggressive privacy intrusions that can easily ruin your reputation as a dev, are the exact reasons they bought Ironsource. https://www.singular.net/blog/unity-bought-ironsource/ I don't even see any other reasons except the "great team that will contimplate the unity team"... which, is obviously a bold faced lie, since they're laying off 300-400 people.

 

Are you aware of the full context?

“It’s a very small portion of the gaming industry that works that way, and some of these people are my favourite people in the world to fight with – they’re the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people. They’re also some of the biggest F***ing idiots.”

Albeit it sorta refers to me too, I don't feel unfairly attacked or anything.

 

You know, I really don't like this kind of drama. It mostly finds traction on reddit and then sweeps over to other media.
The same rhetoric gets remixed over and over again and it's so boring.
What gets on my nerves now is this: IronSource is kept being called a malware company and this is just dishonest. What people refer to is InstallCore. Has it been used for shady things? Yes! Was it designed that way? No. Was it used for legit things? Yes. They obviously saw the problem, that's why it was discontinued in 2020. Now if you keep crying about this in 2022 I don't know what to say other than, you want to feel outraged because you want to find some reasons to S*** on Unity but not exactly because of fair reasons.

Has John said something he shouldn't have in this time and culture? Yes. When it comes to business I'd call myself a f*cking idiot. I have no idea. Best I could do is copy monetization schemes. Now, I've grown up with Fight Club. I'm not a unique snowflake, I'm the same decaying organic matter as everything else. I can withstand a few colorful words, because unlike others I understand the meaning behind it, I agree with it.
Should he have chosen other words? Obviously!
But hey, he has not disrespected your mother and if you are such a great business man, he obviously wasn't talking to you. In case you have a free app floating around and you want to make some money, he offers some solution. Take it, or not, just stop crying about the whole Unity engine. It's lame and childish.

 

I don't feel attacked, either. So what? Yes, I'm aware of the context, that doesn't make it excusable, and no good will come of debating that - so I shan't be doing so.

 

It is not just the words, it is the fact that a combination of things happened at the same time. Unity set the kindling with Gigyaya and layoffs, which told developers they didn't care about games, then they buy ironSource and then hey, lets light the effing idiot match.

It's just dumb and not good enough and I have had enough. Of everyone, I expected more. Worked for more, from Unity.

I don't want to hear the whine from Unity. I want to smell action, feel action. I want to sense the results of hard work bearing fruit. I want to see healthy employees, happy and motivated. Only then will I raise my opinion.

 

I'd like to clarify something.

It's not as specific as you seem to think it is. "Monetization" includes any strategy used to make money, not just ads and micro-transactions. This is immediately clear if you do an (unbiased) search on this stuff. I searched "game monetization" and all bar one item* in my first page of results includes up-front retail/digital, subscriptions, and/or other models to generate money from games. (Examples: 1, 2, 3)

* The AdMob front page. And they didn't explicitly exclude it, they just don't mention it because it's not relevant to their services, just like the page for Unity's equivalent service.

 

In the case of the games that I typically work on it's: (a) how many copies of the game we expect to sell, (b) what will be the DLC and how many copies of that we expect to sell, etc. We only deal with ads in the sense that we're advertising our games and we leave that to the publisher.

 

You keep saying this, yet John states:

Those 400 are actually 200 in a company that has nearly 6000 employees. Layoffs are always sad on an individual level but we can't pretend layoffs are not allowed and be outraged on every one that happens. It's, sadly, how business goes.
Where I do account John for his words was his promise that the company is in good hands and no layoffs are happening. Having said those words, 200 is still too much and I can understand the distrust. As far as I'm aware he never commented on this.

The only thing I have to say about Gigaya. Why has it not been released of what they have?
I didn't expect a full game. I expected a half-done product showing off the capabilities of Unity.
It's a shame some (all?) of the team was layed off but I don't know what went on behind the curtains and I don't want to speculate. Maybe it's justified, maybe it's not. I don't know.

Where I fully agree, the timing of these events is absolutely atrocious. I'm not arguing away that this is a pretty good S*** storm. A good business man should understand that.

Where I draw the line is the dramatic posts of how horrible Unity is as a whole company and how damned the engine is now. I don't agree at all, unlike others I see a bright future ahead of Unity which I mainly account to DOTS.

 

Depends from which departments and teams those 200 were laid off. Unity has 6000 employees but I dont believe majority or even big chunk is actuall engine devs. Considering how much time it takes to get from preview -> production ready stage.

 

He is calling studios like Grinding Gear idiots.

You can make a lot of money using the model of games are a vehicle for monetization. But there is a huge market of players that don't like that type of game, and a huge number of game makers that have no interest in making that kind of game.

People in glass houses really should not be throwing stones. Unity is a mess and their CEO is out telling other people they are doing it wrong...

Not smart.

 

Grinding Gear Games very much monetizes their games.

 

No he does not. GGG clearly have a working business model and monetization scheme.

He calls devs idiots that give their product away for free and have no idea how to monetize then. (Being free - is also okay for devs who WANT to do that and just do it for the art)

 

So many laymen/hobbyists in here thinking that monetization doesn't have an explicit meaning both on Unity's website and the industry as a whole. They compound that with wishful thinking to turn a clearly opportunistic and parasitic individual, spouting hateful words, at a journalist, into "no big deal." Plus, as Hippocoder has already stated, "It's not just the words, it's [all the things that are happening]."

They made compiling for consoles a pro-only feature. When did they decide to release this information? Roughly a week after that big UE5 reveal, when everyone was asking themselves if they should be switching. It was truly a galaxy brain move.

I think that's something people do sometimes. Like the whole "Meta" name change thing from Facebook showed up at the same time as they were in the news for something bad (forget what it was), and that could have been to overshadow the bad press.

But I don't believe it in this case, because he said what he said in an interview where he was justifying his purchase of this company.

I don't feel attacked, and I'm not against either ads or IAP (to a point. I'm against gambling for children or loot-boxes with such bad odds it takes $500k to "max" a character). However, it shows that his mindset is completely in the wrong place.

I've been doing this a long time (longer than you'd think based on my Unity forum profile). One of the early rules I had to make for myself is *never* work with anyone who's in it for the money. Early on, I didn't have this rule, and the stuff I made with people like that was just bad. If you get into anything creative, even on the edges of the process, like Riccitiello's position, "For the money," it's going to affect the final product.

400 positions eliminated, which still means we're looking at either a very large, or several projects being cut. Which ones are they? Plus, you have to take the word of a man who literally said 2 weeks prior that "We're not laying anyone off." Do you trust a person like that? Even if you think 2 weeks ago they weren't planning layoffs, that means they suddenly changed their minds, which would be an entirely different problem.

 

No, he's not. The fact you think he did means you didn't read what he said at all.

He is explicitly talking about things like monetization early in-dev and using constant player feedback to guide a product, as well as focusing on things like compulsion loops and player engagement in terms of further monetization. He is talking about all the worst monetization practices we've seen in the mobile space, monetization practices that are often outright predatory.

He is calling people who don't buy into that F***ing idiots.

 

You can "think" what you want. Evidence is to the contrary.

This one's a fair call. It may have changed the focus, but not the topic of conversation.

 

I've never heard of this, but I would actually like it if this were the case.
Such as adding Speed Tree, Collaborate, ArtEngine into Pro subscription instead of separate subscription. (Why isn't this a thing?)

Depends on your goals, but the greatest titles are marriage of Art and Technology, with business as a byproduct of its excellence.

Coming from someone selfish, I still say this is very selfish. Not everyone's goal is the same. Some people use the engine for just to survive, some people use the engine to make a business, some people use the engine to make art. It just so happens the last few years are focused on the other side. Games that requires cutting edge features are barely a small portion of the whole market.

Development of the core engine are not paused just because Unity has been buying out a lot of different companies unrelated to the game industry. 3000+ engineers have been hired to work on the core engine this last couple of years. You can buy out external services, but you can't buy out other game engine and merge it with Unity as it is. You can only solve this internally, which unfortunately there seems to be huge mismanagement that cripples progression.

Contrary to this whole thread, Ricitiello said both are great and noble cause to pursue. I agree, life is too big to be constrained by a single definition of what it should be.

 

Can confirm. Even when the Free/Pro feature split was eliminated, console deployment versions of Unity were always Pro.

 

Eh, you are just twisting words of where you think his statement applies. Obviously he excludes games who have a set price and monetization scheme. So the devs who are left by this exclusion are devs who give away their product for free and have no idea of monetization or don't want to. Essentially what I said.

Feedback is another topic and I don't know anyone who doesn't want feedback on their game. Every game has playtesters and the game is tuned on the experience of those. If you don't have the capability or money for a testing group you rely on metrics/analytics and social media feedback. In both things (monetization/analytics) Unity has invested heavily.

 

Because Ferrari famously gives all their cars away for free.

(also what the F*** is up with Unity and stupid sports car analogies? seems all figure heads love them)

 

He doesn't, unless you think Ferrari doesn't charge money. Unity literally has articles up right now about these kinds of engagement. This is explicitly what he was talking about and I even included more context for his quote than anyone else has.

 

I'm pretty sure he chose that analogy not because Ferrari costs (a lot of) money but they hand-craft their cars. He even specifically mentioned their tools not their price point.

 

I mean, if somone decides to create a game for free, this doesnt give permission to the CEO to call such ppl F* idiots, they are still his customers, because they buy assets and perhaps have a sub on Unity. This white knightning some ppl are doing here is beyond me.

 

It's not about the tools and really you're the one twisting his words here. It's about crafting the experience and product outside of the framework of mass monetization, which is what he's calling a "successful product." That's why in this same response he's talking about attrition rates and compulsion loops. Stop reading one sentence at a time and take the whole thing in context.

 

Actually this runs deeper: they are fuudgling idiots by setting an example that great content can be free, taking away monetizable game time from games that are indeed monetized. I mean, what does that tell players not having to PAY for the color pink on their virtual shirt?

Statements like these run parallel to EAs absolute disdain for the used games market well over ten years ago no thanks to the (then) success of GameStop and their competitors. That is when EA sought to embrace online-only and microtransactions to combat this revenue drain.

 

They probably love their Ferraris and other sports cars. While also using them as an example of how they're stupid and backwards?

"Rolex still makes analog watches in a day of smart watches. Aren't they stupid? See, look at mine, isn't that a stupid watch?" See, I can be the CEO of Unity just as well as Riccitiello.

I bet the PR/Media staff love the guy. /s "Please don't do an interview, we'll do it." Riccitiello, putting on his best Homelander impression, "I'm the strongest and the smartest. Nobody tells me what to do."

Better go get mad at a "small" publication known as Gamasutra, then, since they're apparently spreading lies.

https://www.gamedeveloper.com/progr...vs-will-need-unity-pro-to-publish-on-consoles

It's incredible, isn't it? Not only was his words very clear, but all surrounding language, and everything else he said, and even stuff he said publicly while being CEO of EA, makes it explicitly clear what he meant. Plus the people who are buying the "Oops, sorry, we'll keep communicating with you (while doing exactly what your mad about while hoping you forget) apology letter," which he probably didn't even write himself. Like, what did they think he'd do if he was a vile human, come out and say, "Yeah, I meant it all" and then pull off a mask revealing he's actually (some comic book villain)? I mean, he literally went to a journalist and spent the entire interview praising in-game ads and lootboxes, then calling (you/us) "f***** idiots." How explicit does he have to be, before you believe him?

 

I don't know if you were doing this on purpose, but 10 years ago, EA's CEO was... Riccitiello

Yup, that's right. The man who got EA voted the most hated company of all time is also the man who has been screwing over unity, while telling journalists exactly how he feels about game devs.

 

My interpretation would be as follows:

Since Unity makes its major part of income through ads, and since the current license terms do not provide more money to Unity if a game succeeds (*1), they want to make sure that their customers (us, the devs) include ads etc as early as possible in the development cycle and release games as early as possible (even in POC state?). This would lead to increased income to Unity since ads...

*1: Even though there's some hard income limit before you must pay for the pro version, there seems to be a limited number of actual companies which pay for pro (around 900 IIRC). I have a small company and paid up to 12k€ to Unity per annum (have highly reduced this since I dropped down to 3 licences recently).

 

Wouldn't hand-crafting be inferior to robots, though? Seems like an awful analogy to use.

I mean handcrafting makes sense if someone is building bespoke one of the kind solution, but that's not off-the shelf gaming engine for sure.

 

I don't think it's an awful analogy. There are quite a few overlaps. The old way of doing things, not using anything modern like assembly machines, true premium handcraft. Not needing feedback, they do their own style. Not conforming to trends while being around and known for long enough that they can do what they want and still be successful. Imagine wanting to make a car company in 2022 and say I want to be like Ferrari. I'm pretty sure that won't work out that well. The prestige Ferrari has doesn't require them to act like their competitors. Hell, I haven't even seen one single ad from Ferrari or Lamborghini. People do advertising for them. They are completely above it. Same goes for some game devs. FROM software says hello.

To finish this off and the last thing I'll say about this drama. I am under the impression that he only called out a fraction of people. The unsuccessful ones, found in the endless sea of apps and games, who fail even with a good game because of their ideologies. Wanting to do the right thing because that's what they believe in or rather, what they want the world to be like. Why do I think that? Because I've gone through 3 companies (as employee) that went bankrupt and all had the same kind of CEO. A very good person, highly ideological, good values, ethical, someone I'd consider a friend and also a "f*king idiot" when it comes to business. I am not a business man, I'm not cut of for that. Most of the views here I completely share. Were it for me, MTX, ads and F2P games would not exist. I don't ever want to make such games. Yet I also understand that ideologies don't pay bills and that my games were not successful. As a matter of fact, the mobile game I made can't even be found through organic means. I rely on ads and those ads are too expensive to break even with my monetization scheme which is trial to full version. I knew it would fail in the mobile market and it did. The game is good, it's a very kid-friendly learning app for math and miles ahead of the utter garbage that is considered a "highly grossing" app in the kids space. I made it for my nephew primarily.

I'm not much of a capitalist and I'm proud of that. I value other things more. So when a big capitalist like John comes around and spouts "f*cking idiot" I wear it as a badge of honour. I mean, I do agree with him, if I'd be in it for the money and I don't do all the stuff he's suggesting I am indeed an idiot. There's absolutely no argument against it. Reality paints the picture.

Yet I'm not doing it and most of you here aren't either, so why feel attacked by it? Just do your thing and market yourself as being different. Fight against the industry with better products and not just with a meaningless forum post and outrage. And after all is said and done, those who empty their wallets are to thank for the state of the industry.

But worst of all, some are abandoning their projects and switching engines because of this. It's such a knee-jerk reaction. (I don't think those never had anything of value to begin with but that's just like my cynical opinion man)

We have said our share now and made it clear. He apologized. The ironSource merger will still be a thing and for us it will not make any difference. Unity ads exist, Unity analytics exist. If anything they will get better so whoever uses them, profits from it. (Personally I find Analytics great)

And hopefully, Unity will find a better CEO after him. I respect him for bringing Unity out of red numbers but I also wish that acquisitions are actually more game dev related and not business related. I'm still salty Unreal has Quixel Megascans. That's the kind of acquisition I'd value.

 

IMO, It is "premium", because human labor is expensive in certain countries. Therefore it is literally paying for someone to do it by hand when a machine could've done the same thing faster and better.

I've googled and found plenty of adverts. Lamborghini also makes tractors they're definitley advertising those. It is possible that those split into two different companies, though, but that didn't stop Lamborghini from making SUVs. Priced at $200k, but it is still not at the level of their sport cars.

This doesn't seem to match reality. While From Software has a long history (Does anyone remember Armored Core?), their latest installment borrowed many elements from everywhere which is why many people disliked it. Even though, of course, it was a commercial success.

 

Everything else aside, it was a *terrible* analogy. The whole thing is they still handcraft using clay sculpting. Clay sculpting a prototype to see how a "look" of the car will look, IRL, is still extremely common in many industries. I think we're all well versed in how different something 3D on a screen can look from when you see it in reality. Someone might say, "Well why not 3d print or whatever?" But the point is, this is for the initial prototyping stage where they are trying to make a unique and attractive car. There's no 3d cad file to print out, and paying a 3d modeler to make 3d prototypes doesn't even make much sense. A lot of 3d modelers, even, start in 2d, too. I know some who start with pencil and paper...

The reason other car companies, like Toyota and Honda, don't do this is because they primarily focus on function. They make a car to function well, be repairable, be comfortable/roomy/trunk space for customers. Then, they work on the confines of that design to make an attractive exterior.

I mean, he basically complained, "Why are they using an artist to design their luxury cars, where 90% of the appeal is its aesthetic, when they could just pay some intern to slap together a cad model?"

I can forgive him the analogy, tbh. He likely just totally misunderstands some other industry he doesn't know and/or repeated something he read in a business publication like "Business Insider" by someone else making the mistake.

But taken with everything else, it does magnify his look of being ignorant, arrogant and dismissive of things he should understand as a professional business leader of a multi-billion dollar corporation.

I'm sure you just haven't thought about this angle, but you realize how incredibly targeted marketing is nowadays, especially with "the algorithm." You aren't (and never have been) their target market. If you started looking up a bunch of videos on youtube about "Which ferrari to buy" or "Which supercar to buy", bought ultra-wealthy publications like Conde Nast (I think that's the one?), or were in certain geographic areas (Dubai), you'd be seeing their ads.

For example, I started getting rolex ads a couple years ago. My uncle had passed away and while we were going through his trust, I had to try and get an estimate of how much his rolex was worth, which meant I did a lot of googling. I went from zero rolex ads, to a bunch.

I think this person doesn't know that From Software has made any games besides Elden Ring/Souls games.

Also, contrary to their point, I got tons of Elden ring ads on youtube.

Btw, I *usually* hate ads, but I actually find it somewhat useful to see *some ads* especially related to game development. So on my youtube account, which is almost all game-dev related activity, I specifically don't pay for premium. I didn't used to do this, I think it might have been the pandemic that made me feel more disconnected from "trends" or something, though.

He said some magic words and we just forget he laid off hundreds of people, cancelling a project that people had been requesting for years, so they could spend billions on acquiring an infamous malware company? That to justify that, he had a very explicit (in several meanings of the word), interview with journalists about how he sees devs and gamers as nothing but dollar signs, a thing that matches his history of older interviews, and his career as EA's CEO?

I think you're being terribly naive.

 

Indeed. He's not apologizing for any of that. He's apologizing for getting too enthusiastic and choosing the wrong words.

 

So you're saying he was too enthusiastic about plans to aggressively push ads, user data mining, and IAP, so instead of saying something less offensive with the same meaning, he said exactly what he thought?

If so, then yes, I agree.

But again, all these recent developments, plus everything going on with Unity over the last several years, plus all of the things Ricitiello has also said to game journalists his entire career, are all the "big picture." That particular line, was the least impactful, tbh.

 

He said that, didn't he? He specifically said that if he'd "spoken with great care" he'd have said something else, which turned out to be a rather different message indeed.

What makes you think anyone has forgotten? The noise has died down a little, but that's because people have already said their bit, not because it's vacated their brains.

Dwelling on it only makes us less productive. There's no need to compound bad news with unproductive behaviour. For most people here, reaching a point where we can do something about it (i.e. re-evaluate what tools we're using) involves first finishing any projects tied to Unity.

 

I'm a little bit dumb. Maybe pretty dumb. But I think big rich is way dumber than I am.

Carlo M. Cipolla - Wikipedia

If there is any truth to that^

At least Im smart enough to not cause problems for other people.

I don't really care though. At least he isn't threatening my marraige rights or stealing land.

 

Well, to put it bluntly: Have you also helped as many people as he/Unity has?
Even if they laid off 400 people now (of whom half supposedly just was moved to other sections within the company), Unity still pays the sallary of 1000 more people now than they had end 2018!
https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/U/unity-software/number-of-employees
And the sallaries at Unity are really top notch (as a German I tend to forget how much software devs earn in the US...): https://www.zippia.com/unity-technologies-careers-510086/demographics/ (see sallary distribution).

2014 when Riccitiello took the position, Unity was even way smaller.

Sure, black&white thinking like this doesn't really lead anywhere, but it's important to see a big picture not just the events of one week.
People do indeed tend to forget the bad things, but sadly also the good things that happen (especially when they progress slower while bad news are relatively abrupt).

 

you think salaries at unity has something to do with rich's generosity or good spirit?

i doubt it.

i see another greedy ceo who makes more money in one bonus than all the hundreds of people just fired right after he said noone would be.

Maybe my thinking isn't so black and white, maybe yours is naive?

 

Another behavior I've never understood. That worshipping of CEOs like they're an Ayan Rand ubermensch. People do realize she was a fiction writer who spent a good thirty of her years living off government handouts, right?

The guy took a growing company and rode the wave. Meanwhile, and this isn't my opinion, but a wide sentiment I've seen across numerous communities, Unity has been taken a noticeable dive over the past few years.

Wow, that is incredible, he took Unity from 0 employees in 2018 to 5,245 today! Quite amazing.

I also found a website that says employees number at 3,379, and another that says 5,864

Oh, that's actually quite a lot worse than I thought it was. They must have a lot more marketing/support/admin staff than I expected, or their devs are paid poorly.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Jobs/Unit...EI_IE455854.0,5_KO6,24.htm?filter.countryId=1

Oh wow, that's even worse than I thought! $44k to $69k for a senior software developer in Sacramento California? That's a joke. They'd be lucky to hire a Sacramento for that salary in that location. Here's the same page for "Senior Software Engineers" for Sacramento CA. The low end is triple that.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Search/results.htm?keyword=Senior Software Engineer &locId=1147229&locT=C&locName=Sacramento, CA (US)

Yes, like how he was the CEO of EA during the era when they beat out the corrupt banks for most hated company in the USA, and how he explicitly went into details about how to extract money from players via IAP, in an interview, talking about getting players to spend thousands of dollars on IAP.

More people really need to watch YongYea's video, where he presents his thorough investigation, including all the sources...

I'm talking about the people who saw the apology and were immediately like, "Oh yeah, nothing is wrong here. He just was a bit excited (about ads and IAP they fail to mention) and got super colorful about his ~~disdain~~ (some kind of handwaivium). Nothing to see here.

As I said, those people seem to expect bad people, bad employees, bad whatever they are, to rip off a mask like a cartoon villain and declare their true evil intentions in a monologue, after being caught.

 

Speaking of behaviors that defy understanding: the idea that pointing out someone has been beneficial to others is somehow approval or worship of that person.

 

Agreed, but the distinction is subtle, and the internet is bad at subtle.

Also, gotta admit, there's a high level of excuses / apologism coming from a certain direction.

Also also, wasn't the beneficial trajectory referred to set long before Riccitello came along?

 

There is.

Quite possibly. Wikipedia page history shows that Unity had 150 employees in Feb 2013, 300 in Feb 2014, and 500 in Nov 2014.

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Unity_Technologies&oldid=537723435
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Unity_Technologies&oldid=596571991
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Unity_Technologies&oldid=632106424

 

I don't think Unity has been a positive force in the universe. I think in Unity's vacuum something better would have taken its place, or we would all have better tools and knowledge to write our own engines, which is a lot more useful knowledge than "1001 tips on how to avoid making Unity S*** the bed for absolutely arbitrary reasons".

 

You cited the wrong person. I didn't write that...