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Unity going public?

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Murgilod, Feb 11, 2019.

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  1. zenGarden

    zenGarden

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    New releases and version of Mudbox , 3dsmax, Maya, Fusion 360 , AutoCad.
    I don't know what is wrong with Autodesk, perhaps some pricings.

    Anyway we're getting off topic.
     
  2. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    hippocoder likes this.
  3. zenGarden

    zenGarden

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    lol

    It's normal outdated products are no longer supported when there is better solutions available elsewhere or products are not selling well.
    We could say the same for many great Unity plugins that stopped getting supported.

    Anyway, main Autodesk products are still very well supported with new releases, but we're getting off topic.
     
  4. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    Scaleform did not have "better solutions available."
     
  5. zenGarden

    zenGarden

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    ?
    Even Cryteck is replacing Scaleform for something better.
    There is many out there.
    Does Unity needs ScaleForm to have great HUD ? No.
     
  6. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Do you mind waiting on your squabbling, I don't have any popcorn at the moment?
     
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  7. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    Yeah.

    Replacing it.

    In 2019.

    Also, you don't need any middleware to have a great HUD and literally nobody said that. The reason scaleform was good was because it was well documented and produced incredibly consistent and easy to debug results. Not only that, but it was technically discontinued ages ago. When we lost scaleform, we lost a fantastic tool.
     
  8. zenGarden

    zenGarden

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    You got a good point here.

    No need popcorn, i lost too much time on forum already lol
     
  9. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    *chokes on little husk kernel things*
     
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  10. ShilohGames

    ShilohGames

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    Don't confuse technical issue with business issues. Every piece of software has some technical issues. The success of an IPO is tied to things like market share, revenue, etc.
     
  11. AlanMattano

    AlanMattano

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    If It's public we can buy a portion of Unity Technologies. Less accessible than crypto but It's simple to subscribe to a trading system. We also as users (thanks to your help @hippocoder) have done an immense contribution.

    @David-Helgason
    I agree that quality matters. This wonderful technological company must be creative, modern and revolutionary as it has been. Sell certified shares within the cryptographic market instead of the limited traditional old market, preserving the spirit of revolution of democratization. It can be a currency or an eth certificate. This process is probably better before being public on NASDAQ.

    One possibility is that Unity Technologies sells only a small portion (20%) on NASDAQ to collect cash and maintain control of its own market. This money can be used to democratize the world maintaining the same spirit that has done so far. This means that if the spirit of the CEO is preserved, it can revolutionize the world. It will continue to grow fast and healthy by adding more services. Competitors became partners in parallel such as Adobe, Wavefront, eBay, APPL, etc. As a software service of large multinational supermarkets. It is not necessary to give dividends to shareholders. If it continues to grow well, the stock will continue to grow.

    The price of the stock or the cryptographic share price must be very low. Much less than a dollar, because the poor can only buy shares with a very low digit value. In general, if it reaches 100 USD, it is better to divide it 1: 1000. This approach allows for a greater number of people to access their favourite stock.

    Better shares to users and developers than stocks to the traders.

    Selling stocks will be difficult to grow and pass APPL or Google. I firmly believe that Unity Technology, with more experience in security, is capable of creating a new, more modern international channel, with technological quality than NASDAQ. And you can call it "Unity Share Market" where "SpaceX" or small independent game developers can be proud to participate! You can create your own financial platform where it is possible to perform eth certificates to buy blockchain shares certified by Unity Technologies (ONLY IF FIXED IN TOTAL NUMBERS). Game developers and the world need, as an example, general public money from around the world in their games, such as the experiment Linder dollar.

    Step by step at long terms Unity Technologies has 4 options:
    • Slowly sell (became Alias> then Maya then Lt, Algorithmic, etc),
    • Buy, as is doing now (and became like Adobe, eBay, ),
    • Close (like Blockbuster, Commodore, Silicon Graphics, )
    • Or be creative and do something new ... (like NASDAQ(structure all the industry), SpaceX(outside), Unity(inside), etc ...) discover and explore a new universe.
    I believe that this community of good passionate unity will focus and create more!
     
    Last edited: Mar 14, 2019
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  12. WTF? (the other one is subjective, so I don't care about stomach ache regarding licensing)
     
  13. Murgilod

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    Each successive iteration of Photoshop introduces bold new bugs and amazing new performance regressions.
     
  14. RichardKain

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    Becoming a publicly traded corporation has natural and inevitable motivational pitfalls. Not all corporations fall prey to these, but quite a few do.

    The most obvious is sustainability. The value of stock becomes central to a publicly traded company's motivation. Stockholders are essentially the ultimate "bosses" of a publicly traded company. And on the whole, stockholders always make decisions on whatever will improve the value of the stock. They are motivated by increasing the value of the stock they own.

    The problem is, the usual best strategy for increasing stock value is growth. Grow the corporation, grow the revenue, grow, grow grow. And eventually this growth always runs up against logistical limitations. Nothing can grow forever. But the motivation for the stock holders never changes, so they frequently push for additional growth, whether it is healthy for the corporation or not. This can be useful for some companies, but not for all of them, in fact not for most of them. The majority of companies would be better off finding more balanced and sustainable business models. But public trading frequently knee-caps that approach.

    And of course, you have the issue of personal interests conflicting with corporate interests. This usually shows up in upper management. Frequently, executives will actively force short-sighted decisions in order to line their own pockets, and then simply leave the company. Make cost cutting measures to improve a company's short-term financials and boost the stock price, then sell all your personally held stock, and leave the company for a position elsewhere. Happens all the time.
     
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  15. Joe-Censored

    Joe-Censored

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    Adobe and Autodesk don't offer near unrestricted "Personal" licensing of Photoshop, 3DS Max, or Maya. Google piggybacks every other project the company does on their cash cow search near monopoly revenue stream, so behaves differently than most other publicly traded tech companies regarding developer tools or services outside of Microsoft (which does the same thing using Windows/Office revenue as Google does with search).

    I think it is more informing to look at the monetization strategies of companies with a lot of free users, but without any monopoly like mega product, which then go public. Aggressive monitization of the free users seems to be the norm, increasing short term revenue but often at the expense of the brand itself.
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2019
  16. zenGarden

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    New releases means new bugs, that's normal i would say.

    But about amazing performance regressions , do you have some sources ?
     
  17. zenGarden

    zenGarden

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  18. Joe-Censored

    Joe-Censored

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    Yeah that compares to Unity Plus, but most Unity users are using Unity Personal for free. This has been a boon for the Unity community, growing it exponentially. But will public shareholders, who are often in the company to see a short term uptick on the stock price so they can sell, really going to see the same value of who they may view as freeloaders? Or are Unity Personal users going to be viewed by public shareholders as a lost revenue opportunity, demanding a return to the crippleware Unity 4 strategy for free users, or something similar?
     
  19. zenGarden

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    Most users with Unity personal don't sell games, when you need to go commercial or indie studio you'll buy Plus or Pro, specially to get rid of the Personal splash screen that make you look as a very amateur developer.

    I think Unity Personal users are big plus value, they help a lot to make Unity more popular.
    Bigger database Unity users, more users sharing about Unity , great for new comers, a lot choose to switch to Plus or Pro, thousand of free tutorials made by Unity Personal, and they also buy Asset Store stuff.

    Anyway about Photoshop, if you don't use it for commercial work, Gimp or Krita are good alternatives.
     
  20. Joe-Censored

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    Yeah but they may have spent 2+ years on Personal before upgrading to Plus, which they may not have ever bought Plus if Personal wasn't viable for their use.

    We both think that, but the opinion that will matter to a public company is the opinion of the voting shareholders, not you or me, or even the internal Unity staff. (Hedge fund managers, small scale investors, mutual fund managers, etc) Their opinions will be shaped by their own goals, which won't necessarily be the same as us.
    Yeah and when you use Gimp you're one less person involved in the Photoshop community. That's my whole point. If Unity Personal became no longer available, you'd see the community of Unity users shrink, making the forums less effective, fewer YouTube tutorials from 3rd parties, etc. Not good for the users of Unity, even if it did increase Plus/Pro subscriptions increasing Unity's revenue in the short term.
     
  21. RichardKain

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    A lot of Unity personal users don't ever sell their games, that is true. And those that do often don't make very much money from their games, which would not require them to upgrade to a Pro license. Also true.

    But that's a short-sighted approach. Because a LOT of those same users DO purchase Assets from the Unity Asset Store. In the modern age of free-to-play, there is real value in attracting users, even if those users don't spend money immediately. If nothing else, those users become community members, beta testers, and providers of data, information, and feedback. And once they're part of your infrastructure, they can easily be up-sold on optional assets, produce assets of their own, or eventually be converted to pro licenses. Take away the free-to-use option, and you lose millions of those potential customers, throwing them away to whichever of your competitors keeps their free-to-use option alive. And once they learn your competitor's tools, they'll probably be lost for good.

    Exactly. But a panel of major shareholders might not see it that way. Shareholders, by and large, do not understand the businesses they are investing in. All they care about is the stock price, and boosting it as high as it can go. Shareholders would likely push for changes that might not be in the best long-term interests of the company. They don't always trust the developers to do their jobs effectively.
     
  22. zenGarden

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    I'm not sure Unity Personal would change, this would mean loosing lot of users base.
    Even if there was Plus and Pro only, there will still be indies and Studio working on commercial games that will stay with those subs.
    Like many companies and users still using Maya or Photoshop.
    Perhaps i'm too much optimistic, but a possible change does not mean it should be negavtive.
     
    Last edited: Feb 13, 2019
  23. RichardKain

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    Any executive with half a brain would be able to explain to a group of shareholders why the Unity Personal license should stay. There are way too many justifiable and measurable reasons. I'm honestly not that worried about that particular aspect of the software. It doesn't take much in the current industry to explain why you don't ditch the free-to-use version of the software, not the least of which is that almost all your competitors are doing the same thing.

    What I AM worried about is extensive external advertising in the Unity editor and on the Asset Store. That is the sort of no-brainer decision that WOULD get pushed through by a bunch of shareholders. Imagine having ads for coca-cola running IN your editor while you're developing. That sort of thing could happen.
     
  24. MD_Reptile

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    Whaaatt.... nawwww. They wouldn't go so crazy :p

    It could be a problem one day, but not that bad, at least I seriously doubt it.
     
  25. Zarconis

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    Oh yeah it's done wonders for their neighbours, CryEngines in a ditch somewhere, UE4 got tossed a few royalties but since they earned real money from Fortnight UE4 is the QA + support equivalent of a plasterer after two bottles of whiskey.

    Xenko is now MIT (falling down a pit), nobody uses Lumberyard etc. etc.

    If nothing else you have to admire that Unity is an engine for developers irrelevant of it being somewhat inconsistent with a snail pace development. Point being though it doesn't necessarily mean free is a good idea.
     
  26. Ryiah

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    CryEngine was bombing long before they decided to go free. :p
     
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  27. Zarconis

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    Can't disagree there..
     
  28. Obsurveyor

    Obsurveyor

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    Don't forget slapping a new keymap over it all just to really twist the knife.
     
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  29. yoonitee

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    So like the worst scenario I can think of is that the shareholders vote in a new CEO who will focus on big companies. Withdrawing the free versions of Unity. Taking down the links to legacy versions. And making all new versions of Unity Pro only.

    Then the shareholders might vote to try to make an ill-fated Unity Game Store. Which will fail gigantically bankrupting the company.

    That's why I'm going to stockpile legacy versions of Unity.
     
  30. TurboNuke

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    Oh my god it did!
     
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  31. Murgilod

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    None of them were nearly as compatible or feature complete when Scaleform started to wind down at all.
     
  32. Tom_Veg

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    This thread have more information about investments and capitalism then Wall Street and Wolf of Wall Street combined ;)
     
  33. BrewNCode

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    I would love that an actual company would buy it (it that would be the case) and finance for a more structured project so all Unity services are up and running, Unity connect is almost dead, The asset store is quirky and slow, Unity needs more people that do their job.
     
  34. hippocoder

    hippocoder

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    Unity is successful because of people like me or anyone posting here, for example every programmer who cares enough to submit a bug report or have a quick chat with Unity staff. Or the artist giving great feedback on rendering.

    When you separate the loyal and passionate people from the business itself by too wide a margin you create 50-50 situation where people no longer have loyalty but just go for whatever has the latest feature. Tech is converging. Fastest code? OK. Best visuals? DX12 Raytracing API. So what is left?

    Brightest tech minds will know, so never let them go by expanding too big that the staff who matter or the users who matter can no longer be heard, because then they have no reason to stay.

    I think Unity's position as leader is going to be tested every day. Spatial. Epic, and a hundred SV startups are just waiting, learning from and even using Unity's technology. They wait for that time where Unity will no longer be able to communicate clearly or move quickly.

    That happens when you allow tech to be led by non-tech.
     
  35. zenGarden

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    Best tools out of the box, i find UE4 lot better on that side at least for how i use it.
    Anyway we're getting out of subject lol
     
  36. protopop

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    Why does venture capital mean you have to be bought or go public? Is it because you have to pay back the VCs? with interest i guess?

    So if a company take VC backing then do they all, or mostly all, have to go public or be bought? I guess the only other option is if you have enough profit after getting VC backing that you can pay back the full amount and then keep going forward privately. But i guess realistically 600 million, now that i look at the number, would be very hard to pay off.
     
  37. hard_code

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    VC's typically wont let a company sell unless they make 10x-30x on their initial investment. The reason is in the math. Most companies they invest in fail so the VC's need just a few 10x-30x to make up for all the other companies they invested in that failed.
     
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  38. protopop

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    I guess that means most companies that take VC should expect to either go public or sell to a larger organization as was said. I didn't realize that. It's good to know because when we hear a company has raised xxx in venture capital it gives us some insight into the future direction of said company.
     
    Last edited: Feb 14, 2019
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  39. Marc-Saubion

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    Facebook and Google don't have a product targeted at their customers but at their users. These users are mainstream and can access an easy to use service for free. If google map was to close tomorrow, if would take me less than ten minutes to replace it with a similar competitor and learn how to use it. I can't do that with Unity because it's a professional tool that require years of experience in order to produce the content I'm selling.

    And Windows actually is an example of what I'm worried about for Unity. I have a computer with W10 pro and yet, it doesn't understand that not rebooting for updates in the middle of the week has to be an option for professionals. There are dozen of example of "good enough" features okay for domestic use but insufficient when used as a pro. Unity already has its share of things that are setup for hobbyist at the expanse of professionals and it's understandable we are concerned about it's future.

    Actualy, this already started. Yesterday i received an Email from unity about perks that comes with a subscription, none of which are relevant to a pro.

    12 months of Unity Game Dev Courses for free: I've been using Unity for eight years. I don't need any course and never did because I've found everything I need on the asset store or a youtube tutorial.
    25GB Unity Cloud Storage so that you can store your entire projects in the cloud: that cloud service is notoriously broken and I had to replace it by an independent competitor.
    Access to Success Advisors (yes, that’s us!): I don't need advice, I need features, bug fixes, tools...

    Meanwhile, interesting feature request are ignored even though most pro users would be happy to pay extra for those. I have the feeling Sunday hobbyists might weigh more than professionals and if so, Unity might become "good enough".
     
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  40. hippocoder

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    Unity is a collection these days so it would not surprise me to see a merger one day, which is not different to an IPO if the merger is with a public company.

    Unity is forced to expand of course.

    What I am saying is that there's a cap on expansion if Unity just remains only an engine + engine services, but no cap if the services go beyond engine services.

    So for my mind, it's inevitable where Unity will realise it will go.
     
  41. AcidArrow

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    Yeah, Mudbox was supposed to take over the world, a lot of 3d artists that didn't want to bother to wrap their brains around ZBrush's weird workflow, quickly embraced it.

    Then it was bought by Autodesk and got stale, fast.

    In fact I don't know of even 1 piece of software that was better off after being bought by Autodesk.

    Same with Adobe.

    (and yes, photoshop keeps getting worse. Why do you think we finally have decent competitors to photoshop after who knows how many years?)
     
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  42. JustColorado

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    Yes Totally. 24000 posts should be worth at least a few thousand stock options
     
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  43. JustColorado

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    I think my point was misunderstood. And the topic went into whether vendor A or vendor B makes good software. I am vendor neutral and do not favor any particular company's product line. I think everyone should use whatever they are comfortable with to get the job done.

    I heard a lot of people say they are going to stop using Unity, because they might go public. And my point was that it is perfectly fine to use products from a public company. It seems silly to simply decide not to use any products or services from Adobe, Autodesk, Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, nVidia, intel, AMD, PlayStation, Nintendo, etc etc because they are public companies.
     
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  44. Eric5h5

    Eric5h5

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    Wait, this goes by post count? Indeed. Indeed, I say. In that case, my first act as Majority Owner of Unity will be to finally implement the "Make MMO" button.

    --Eric
     
  45. ikazrima

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  46. TurboNuke

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    I've twice had the pleasure of removing all traces of Scaleform from big games and replacing the system. We certainly found better things. True though, I didn't use it when it wound down.
     
  47. katoun

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    That is exactly what is happening right now with big players like Activision-Blizard, Bethesda, EA, Ubisoft, etc.
    I felt/thought for many years that this stock/investors system in its current implementation is flawed.
    I think that investors should be smart enough to want the company to grow to its best capability and hold the position there as much as possible. Unrealistic expectations will always be proven wrong.
     
  48. zenGarden

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    1) Do you have sources about Photoshop would be bad ? Did you tried it lastly ?
    Because lot of people use it without issues, and they say it's very fast to work with layers and 4K images.

    2) Do you have sources about Mudbox would be bad ? Did you tried it lastly ?
    Because i seen many artists doing amazing work using it.
    Zbrush is perhaps the best for sculpting, but others like MudBox or 3D coat are very capable and able to achieve the same results in many situations.

    I think you just wanted to bash Autodesk and Adobe, without trying or recognizing their software is good.

    This reminds me people bashing CryEngine, it's a difficult engine to use not for everybody and not the best workflow, but it's a very optimized engine, and very capable when you look at games like The Hunt , Miscreated or Kingdom Core.


    Anyway we're getting off topic once more lol
     
    Last edited: Feb 15, 2019
  49. katoun

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  50. katoun

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    You put it better that I could. I totally agree. When the ultimate objective is Only Growth instead of Sustainability First then Growth when Possible, reality hits hard over and over, just a matter of time. I think that natural flow is : Innovation, Standardisation, Optimisation then Innovation, etc.This is sustainable progress, that is also growth over time.
     
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