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My first experiences with Connect

Discussion in 'Unity Connect' started by eatsleepindie, Jan 1, 2018.

  1. eatsleepindie

    eatsleepindie

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    I haven't used it in quite some time other than to take a quick look and ensure that it is still a mess. I am going to guess that everyone is sick of the system and have ventured off to find other means to hire people, and so now the market for those hiring and looking to get hired is scattered throughout the interwebs.
     
  2. HolBol

    HolBol

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    I've been seeing the same ones on there for the past few months at least.
     
  3. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    So it looks like it is mostly dead, then (-_-)
     
  4. eatsleepindie

    eatsleepindie

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    Let's hope. And hey, at least we still have the forums.. oh, wait...
     
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  5. HolBol

    HolBol

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    Also I've noticed a lot of these job postings never seem to close? Do people actually get accepted for jobs through Connect?
     
  6. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    No idea. Connect displays a tiny amount of jobs for me, and a lot of them seems to be quite old. There's month old request for assistance, for example. Probably stale and no longer relevant.

    All things considered, what can realistically be done to be get job forums to reopen? @Buhlaine, @aliceingameland ?
     
  7. Rich_A

    Rich_A

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    You still have www.gamejobforum.com :)

    I'm getting good reports from users who have found jobs from the site. The best thing to do right now though is to setup a good profile on gamejobforum with embedded images/videos of your prior work and a full description, then cross-post to reddit.com/r/gamedevclassifieds with a link to your gamejobforum post.

    That way when gamejobforum.com gets spikes of traffic, your thread there still gets views even weeks after you originally posted it.
     
  8. eatsleepindie

    eatsleepindie

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    I'm on there. I just don't visit because I'm currently under full-time contract. I still kind of wish there was at least a general discussion forum but I completely understand the decision to keep it pure "jobs".
     
  9. Schneider21

    Schneider21

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    What in the hell happened in this thread? I'm seeing a lot of prominent, active community members sharing valid concerns with a service, and no response or input from any Unity staff. That's pretty disheartening.

    I don't find Connect to be worth my time as a contractor. Most of the jobs listed are for unpaid work or offering $50 to make somebody's entire game. Of the many jobs I applied to, 4 approved me as a match and moved forward with discussions.

    One of them stopped responding after saying hello. The other three took longer to realize that the amount of work they had scoped would cost significantly more than they were able to spend.

    Why can't I put my hourly rate on my profile so we can determine much sooner if we truly are a match? Is this a jobs site or not?

    And now that these jobs have me listed as a match, I don't seem to have a way to remove them?
     
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  10. Rich_A

    Rich_A

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    Trust me, as someone on the hiring side, its just as bad.

    The Unity jobs board was a plethora of amazing talent before it was shut down. I've still found some great freelancers - but it feels like I have fewer to choose from, and its much harder to find them. I've also had to rely on posting my own advertisements, rather than browsing through hundreds of freelancers. This is not always ideal, because seeing the portfolios of some of those freelancers sometimes triggered ideas and discussions about work they could do for my project that I hadn't even thought of.

    Its up and coming, having just passed 100 registered members and 30 freelancer profiles, but I'd recommend using www.gamejobforum.com as an alternative. Better to have a community-developed site optimised for just freelancing, than to have to rely on a slower moving corporation with its own interests and commercial objectives.

    I mean, lets be blunt - a forum is dead-easy to setup and maintain. The old jobs board effectively had the Unity stamp of recommendation, but its the users and the network effect that counts the most. I'm somewhat surprised that someone didn't setup a replacement forum much sooner, closer to when the jobs board was actually closed down.
     
  11. MaciejKrzykwa

    MaciejKrzykwa

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    The second option would be to take a look at the group on Unity Connect which was created some time ago by me and my friend: https://connect.unity.com/g/5abbf8b5880c640019af3bb1
    I'm accepting only those people which have at least one project in their portfolio on Unity Connect or those looking to hire someone. I hope you can search through all members profiles somehow. I think it can be a great place to find freelancers because you see their work and also they had to at least click here and there to join the group so they can be seen as active users.
     
  12. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    Does unity ceo has contact information? I think would be a good idea to ping him with concerns. Directly.
     
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  13. Bamboy

    Bamboy

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    That sounds like a good idea, TBH.

    I just posted my availability to www.gamejobforum.com, check it out if anyone needs a programmer. :)
     
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  14. WhendricSo

    WhendricSo

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    It's been a year already, Unity team! The connect experiment has failed, and we want the old job offering forums back. I made a lot of money on those forums and helped a lot of developers. It was a goldmine, not only for freelancers and outsourcing studios, but for project leads looking to hire as well!

    Connect is nice as a social network and that's cool. But it's not a place where we can find contracts consistently or hire freelancers to take on our grunt work. Please re-instate the old forums.
     
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  15. Steve-of-Construction

    Steve-of-Construction

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    I didn't read the whole thread but reading just some postings it seams I'm not alone.

    Imho Connect was a bad idea cause it has endless bugs, some depending on the browser, some by Connect itself.
    I'm not able to update anything on Connect without a disConnect or browser crash. *lol*
    Deleting the job forums and MadeWithUnity was a really bad idea.

    The Asset Store. Hell, I never saw a company with such a bad shop.
    Slower than any website in the early 90's.
    It's now for 2 months I can't use the store with Unity anymore.
    It just says 'You're offline' bla bla bla.

    No way to fix this, nor Unity support can help.
    The only answer from support was a copy & paste from the web about closed ports, bad antivirus and firewall settings.
    Funny it worked for years and from a day to the next it stopped.
    They are just not interested that someone can purchase something on their store.
    So I buy elsewhere or directly from the creators :p
     
  16. Rich_A

    Rich_A

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    Agreed. I've done my bit setting up gamejobforum.com - with 142 registered members so far - but an official forum with the Unity stamp of approval would still be the best.

    I say get a change.org petition going, and get some momentum on this. All it needs is a Unity employee with Forum admin powers to unhide the old forums (in fact, it would be great to look at some of the old profiles). It could be done in a few days.
     
  17. eatsleepindie

    eatsleepindie

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    I stopped receiving alerts for this thread, was surprised to see it still going. I also haven't visited Connect in a very, very long time but it seems the consensus is that it is still a mess(?) Seems like people have the same exact complaints (justifiably) and Unity is doing nothing to serve its customers, which leaves me even more weary than I was when I started this thread.

    Sorry to hear about your troubles everyone. Again, there are links to some good subreddits that have worked well for me a page or two back, just in case anyone new comes here.
     
  18. MaciejKrzykwa

    MaciejKrzykwa

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    Surprisngly, nobody from Unity team is talking with us in this thread. Maybe there is no Unity Connect team anymore? :D There is no announced "big update", there is nobody here... it's like Unity Connect doesn't exist, yet it does. Weird.
     
  19. Bamboy

    Bamboy

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    I would definitely sign that!

    I'm just so cynical these days that I'm not surprised at all that Unity has not replied to this thread. They probably wanted to be able to take cuts off of freelancer exchanges.
     
  20. mgear

    mgear

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    feels like Unity Connect is the New Google+

    - partly forced on users (not allowed to look project/jobs in forum where it would be easier, more visible etc)
    - users are not interested on it, and are there any active users there? Anything interesting there? (maybe live tutorials, but last time i checked, it wasnt really suitable for it, live twitch/youtube stream with chat is much better)
    - mainly just promotional stuff as content, cannot be too interesting (and pretty sure later will have paid ads there, so you'll see even more ads)
     
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  21. Rich_A

    Rich_A

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    I think Uni
    I think Unity Connect does have a role: to encourage and showcase professional use of Unity, and to demonstrate its capabilities when being used by well-resourced and talented teams and individuals.

    It would make a great jobs board for *permanent* roles. The kind that you would widely advertise anyway.

    It could probably be integrated with the work that content creators like Brackeys are doing, and with the Unity Blog. To be a one-stop shop of Unity full-time job ads, best practices, showcases etc.

    But for freelancing - there is simply no beating a plan old forum. The reality is that even as a 3-person studio (designer, programmer, 3D artist) there are going to be gaps that you need filled by well-regarded freelancers with good portfolios: Logo Design, Music, Concept Art, etc. Finding these freelancers should be made as easy and transparent as possible - and the simple reality is that *the old job forum was much better for this purpose than Unity Connect* - and so should be restored.

    There was a survey sent out by email where I said as much. I hope the feedback is acted on by Unity managers.
     
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  22. Bamboy

    Bamboy

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    I have looked and tried other services, including gamejobforum, but all of them including Reddit combined do not come close to match the traffic I used to get from the old unity job forum.

    A full year later and Unity has still done nothing to improve Connect, or to fill the gaps left by the removal of the old job forum. WTF Unity??? Have there even been any updates to Connect in the last year? I can't see any. The chat channels for job seeking/job posting are still as unusable as ever. People still post in the wrong channel. Nothing is streamlined at all. I am extremely upset nothing has been done or even been addressed. This is not a hard thing to fix.

    I even just looked at the parent "Unity Connect" board of this thread, and a decent number of people are posting their jobs there, or complaining about the service. This is as recent as TODAY. People are still talking about the old job forum absence. There is no way this has gone unheard by Unity. At this point I can't think of anything else rather than Unity is doing this on purpose to step on the little man.

    The pinned thread "A tip for freelancers" just gives me more mixed signals.

    Listen here... Personally speaking, I am unable to hold a regular 9-5 day job due to an absurd amount of mental and physical health issues. My only feasible source of income is via online work. Game programming is something I've taken a passion for, and I have taught myself the skills over the years to use the Unity Engine in a professional manner. I've sworn up and down to others trying to learn games that Unity is a really good tool to start working with, and I recommend it if a client of mine isn't sure what to use.

    I've maintained at least some level of professionalism up to this point throughout this thread, but this rant post has been a long time coming. Unity freelancers have had no home in which to find online work. If I hadn't been using purely Unity for so long, (7 years) I would have already migrated to other tools for which I can actually find work. Statistically, I cannot be the only one, because it has been an entire year now.

    Unity Team: This issue is losing you business.
     
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  23. Rich_A

    Rich_A

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    If its any consolation, after my game ships in a few months, I'm going to spend a little money upgrading the design and visuals of GameJobForum. This should make it more visually appealing and encourage people to use it. Right now I know that it is barebones. For these kind of platforms its all about the network effect.

    I'm also going to write an article on the best use of Freelancers in modern indie games, plugging GameJobForum extensively (I have legitimately hired a lot of people from there anyway), and aiming to get the article featured on 80.lv or gamasutra.

    Really though it needs advertising, probably about $1,000 to $2,000 annually to encourage constant traffic onto it. I ran some experiments on Reddit and was getting a good level of traffic and new registrations with advertising targeted to gamedev communities there with $5 daily spend. As soon as the advertising ceased traffic and registrations dropped off.

    If you want Unity to relent, we need to create a petition and make a clear case for it. Really though I don' think Unity want the administrative and legal overhead of managing a forum where business is conducted. The only alternative is probably the community.
     
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  24. Diviner

    Diviner

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    @Rich_A I take it from your post that you are the owner of the GameJobForum site.In which case, I'd really love it if subforum subscription sent email notifications when new threads were added to them. That would mean I could be remotely notified of new job postings without having to constantly be active in the forum and waste your traffic bandwidth by refreshing for new threads. This was a major thing I liked about the old subforum over here, and it will help a lot to facilitate the service you've chosen to provide.
     
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  25. Rich_A

    Rich_A

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    You can do this already! :-D

    Just click 'Subscribe to this forum' in the forum you're interested in.

    Thanks for the feedback. Anything else you would like to see?

    I'm pretty confident in the core functionality of the forum, it is simply built with myBB which has been refined for years. It just needs a new slap of paint and some tidying up, then some advertising for about 6 months to kickstart the network effect.
     
  26. Diviner

    Diviner

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    @Rich_A I have been subscribed for over 2 months and I never received an email from your website. I checked my spam folder as well, nothing blocked them. Perhaps your mail servers are down?
     
  27. Rich_A

    Rich_A

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    Looks like you have to visit the board in between each notification. I'm investigating if this can be changed.

    Code (CSharp):
    1. "Richard_E,
    2.  
    3.  
    4. ModeratorAlpha has just started a new thread in [PAID] or [ONGOING] Job Seeking. This is a forum you have subscribed to at Game Job Forum.
    5.  
    6.  
    7. The thread is titled Test post
    8.  
    9.  
    10. Here is an excerpt of the message:
    11.  
    12. --
    13.  
    14. Testing forum subscription function
    15.  
    16. --
    17.  
    18.  
    19. To view the thread, you can go to the following URL:
    20.  
    21. https://www.gamejobforum.com/showthread.php?tid=110
    22.  
    23.  
    24. There may also be other new threads and replies but you will not receive anymore notifications until you visit the board again.
    25.  
    26.  
    27. Thank you,
    28.  
    29. Game Job Forum Staff
    30.  
    31.  
    32. ------------------------------------------
    33.  
    34. Unsubscription Information:
    35.  
    36.  
    37. If you would not like to receive any more notifications of new threads in this forum, visit the following URL in your browser:
    38.  
    39.  
    40.  
    41. ------------------------------------------
    42.  
    43. "

    The other option going forward is just to move to premium Forum hosting platform like Xenforo. I'm willing to put a few hundred dollars towards the site (have already paid for hosting) since I rely so heavily on Freelancers anyway.
     
    Last edited: Jan 29, 2019
  28. MadeFromPolygons

    MadeFromPolygons

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    Its been a year and all this has done is killed off any viable freelancer work using unity. Before everyone was forced onto connect, people were able to make a living freelancing with unity. This just isnt the case anymore except for a very small group of people.

    Why are you not listening to the community on this one, when this is literally stopping people making a living?

    Sure, keep connect, but why oh why remove the job posting forum? It really is nonsensical at best
     
  29. Bamboy

    Bamboy

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  30. Rich_A

    Rich_A

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  31. lilymontoute

    lilymontoute

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  32. Bamboy

    Bamboy

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  33. Thomas-Pasieka

    Thomas-Pasieka

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    Many months later and Unity Connect is still not anywhere near useful or usable. I don't understand why the decision was made to close the job forum (prematurely) and replace it with something that wasn't ready for prime-time. As it stands you are making all our lives far more complicated and job search has become a real pain in the rear. The old "Job Forum" did the job. Easy to use. Easy to find. No fuss. Even the guys at Epic still let their users connect via a Job/Collaboration forum. My question is, why is Unity making it harder on us? What is the benefit of the unfinished/hardly used "Unity Connect" site?

     
  34. MadeFromPolygons

    MadeFromPolygons

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    Unfortunately unity staff have never replied to anything in this thread, so I dont think they are actually listening to this :/
     
  35. Rich_A

    Rich_A

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    https://unity.com/solutions/gambling

    Search for 'Unity Connect'

    "With an extensive global talent pool centralized on Unity Connect, and the widely recognized Unity Certification program, it’s easy to find skilled and knowledgeable Unity talent to build your team."

    Unity Connect is a sexy global product, the job forums are not... unfortunately.

    Just use gamejobforum, offer me your feedback, and help me improve it. Unity are not bring the old forums back. I'll improve the website design and put a little advertising behind it eventually.
     
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  36. newlife

    newlife

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    @markp-unity are you watching this thread?
    Are there any news? I need to find a talented collaborator for my projects but connect doesnt seem to be suitable.
    Do I have to search elsewhere?
     
  37. Rich_A

    Rich_A

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  38. newlife

    newlife

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    Rich_A, thanks for your reply.
    I would like to have an official reply from Unity too. @markp-unity seems to be inactive on the forum since February 2019 (Last Activity:Feb 5, 2019), so it seems that he is not working on Connect anymore.
    Are admin aware of this? @Aras, @Graham-Dunnett, @duck, @LeonhardP, can you please tell us which is the future of Connect?
     
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  39. sgtkoolaid

    sgtkoolaid

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    unity connect is pretty much useless scrolling chat room that serves no purpose. no way to keep tabs on your job request submission. just a scrolling chat room. lol. I used to get so much work from unity. now, I get none. thanks unity for killing your freelance potential. they had a perfectly fine system in place prior.
     
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  40. Rich_A

    Rich_A

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    I have registered GameJobForum domain for another year. The design needs a coat of paint, and there is some superfluous text from the forum template. but its perfectly functional. I'd recommend you check it out and offer any feedback.

    Apart from that, Reddit GameDevClassifieds and Polycount forum are good too.
     
  41. Thomas-Pasieka

    Thomas-Pasieka

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    I created a Discord group for "Freelance Artists" if anybody is interested. We're already 88 people strong. Come and join as well! https://discord.gg/jaxfzAh
     
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  42. Dazo1985

    Dazo1985

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    Complete network layer, multiplay and google cloud hosting where are you?
     
  43. reggie_sgs

    reggie_sgs

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    I've been trying to find reasonably priced talent for a while but haven't gotten many responses from my post on gamejobforum and don't know where to look. I tried Connect but it was awful and I never went back. I wish there was a good way to find developers these days.
     
  44. newlife

    newlife

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    Same here. Several weeks Im searching for a 3D talent but there is no easy and established way to search for a talent.
    Till now, the very few places that IMO are worth a look are:
    https://www.behance.net (filter by Game Design)
    https://clutch.co/
    https://www.linkedin.com (serach for 3D / 2D artist Unity3D)

    If anyone has any other suggestion, just let us know.
     
  45. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    Go right to the source. I hire near exclusively off polycount.
     
  46. newlife

    newlife

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    Cool. How do you use it? Do you post a job or search for an artist looking for job?
    Why do you use it? Cause you think that you can find there the best artists?
     
  47. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    You would likely need to stick with freelancing platforms at this point.

    Polycount has freelance job postings section.
     
  48. Bamboy

    Bamboy

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    Bump again.

    8102a38df0ae80585f0e2e2f2bf8d117.png

    Good email I got today. I think it represents one of the big problems of Connect. The "read more" button doesn't even take me to the post, so this email might as well be spam to my inbox. Many more similar "noob" posts are rampant on various places on the site itself.

    Connect has had some time to develop on its own now. It is in what I consider to be an awkward position of being, what I would call "Too professional" like LinkedIn, yet overrun with people who are new and/or don't speak english well or at all.

    LinkedIn (and thus Connect), for me, has the problem of expecting you to be a "Cookie cut out" of a "professional" like everyone else. Expecting that you worked at a single company between these dates and went to school at these universities. I'm disabled and self-taught. My history does not fit that "Cookie cut out". Yet I still am good at what I do, and when I can find it, people pay me to do programming for them. Because I cannot fill out my profile with what "Connect thinks I should be", I am disadvantaged when people glance at my profile. I can't be the only one out there with similar issues.

    On the flip side, making a "Job available" posting on Connect shares the same issue of expecting a "Cookie cut out" of your business information. People don't always have all of this set up, yet still want to hire someone independently. I work for individuals like this fairly often.

    I'm sure Connect cost quite a bit of money to develop. It's a shame because it doesn't do what, I as a user, need it to do. The old job forums did what I needed it to. Ask for what you want, get what you want. It's that simple. No fancy hoops to jump through or confusing UI. Instead I still struggle to find clients compared to the days of the Job forum.

    I'm sure Connect is useful to some people out there, but it absolutely fails at improving or even replacing what it was trying to do; find people jobs. It would take literally minutes to bring back the job forums here, and then keep Connect for "professionals" to use. Unity employees probably aren't even going to read this, so I don't even know why I'm bothering.

    Long live corporate profits...
     
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  49. richierich1204

    richierich1204

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    Not afraid to necro-post here. Unity Connect has been and is an abject disaster. Same as all of you I went from shooting fish in a barrel getting work to literally not a single paid gig. I was fortunate enough to have a nearly 3-year contract right at the twilight of the old forum. I was very diligent curating my connect post hoping to get ahead of the curve as the community transitioned and it's just been a complete dud.

    I want the old job forum back, at least in tandem. Surely this is possible? I mean, if well-known and respected moderaters @hippocoder and @Thomas-Pasieka (who were both very early present on Unity Connect) are complaining about it then Unity should pay attention. Real professional co-developers making a living and contributing to the platform and community are not happy or taken care of here. It's a disgrace.
     
  50. Rich_A

    Rich_A

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    Coronavirus and the shift to online work, and general disruption to the industry, means now is a great time to bring back the old Jobs Board.

    I've been able to nurture www.gamejobforum.com to 400 members, but nothing beats the official stamp of approval from Unity.
     
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