Unity is laying off staffers

Guys, this right here is the most perfect example of corporate-speak I've ever read. Just... beautiful.

 

Damn did you really let go that many engineers because this response looks like it was written in a lab

 

Cue scene in Mars attack from Tim Burton with alien using the translator "We come in peace".

- when you are hired: welcome, we will treat you like family.
- when you are fired: it's just business, nothing personal.

Also firing ml people, I wonder which one, machine learning is setting itself up to disrupt everything in a few years, I hope they did the long-term planning right.

 

Kinda reminds me of Roxwell Retro Incabulator, though.

Spoiler

 

Cool to see Unity Tech making use of community projects.

 

God I hope not. One of the biggest reasons why I'm using Unity is because of the no royalties license.

 

To my disbelief they actually did, Gigaya is one of the most valuable projects contributing to progress Unity have done recently. Losing one of the most vocal member actually in touch with the community is also a disappointment.

 

Wow. Laying off one of the staff that was maintaining good will with part of your user base... not the brightest move.

Not surprising from the CEO that killed every last ounce of respect EA once had.

 

WTF, ok this is definitely bad, i now some people think this kind of actions will not affect the engine, but it will in a pretty bad way.
I was slowly recovering my faith in unity but this make it very difficult for me now...
My god i do not want to learn c++ or other engine from scratch again noooooooo

Yeah, exactly...

 

Did your CEO not just recently tell people that nobody was going to be laid off?

 

For those who aren't familiar with corporate speak, I'll break this response down for you:

We were spending too much money...

So we fired people.

Notice that at no point does this statement actually say where resources were being 'realigned' to, or how that realignment was supposed to drive focus or support the long-term goal, or even what the long-term goal was? It's literally just a bunch of neutral-sounding words to make 'we fired people' sting less.

Boilerplate "but we care" statement.

 

So
Create Solutions 116.4 Mio
Operate Solutions 184.0 Mio
Partnerships & Other 19.7 Mio

Create ~36%
Operate ~58%
Other ~6%

Create is ... what exactly? The pro subscriptions?
Operate? Like .. doing work for others?
Partnerships is maybe .. more than pro subscriptions?

Asset Store Revenue? Ads Revenue?
I am thankful for your answer but unfortunately I don't understand this kind of wording.

 

Hello, I don't think it's fair to lash out your disappointment on Jeff since it is most likely he have no part in this decision, nor could he say more than he could without being unprofessional.

Unlike how Unity used to operate, they are now publicly traded company, anything outside the roadmap should be confidential and sensitive information. Some staff are in no position to say anything about it. Unity have pushed out large scaled products and solution such as game service without any prior information. I miss how Unity blog used to be, before it became very opaque and directed more towards investors in the recent years.

Mind you there are people with long time friends that are affected by this if you follow some of Unity member's Twitter.
They are currently helping each other get another place for a job, and I do believe it when he said they care and is grateful to those affected. He cared enough to say anything to us where there is no obligation to do so, and that is good action.

Action dictates more than words, if anything you should question someone in a more powerful position, the ones making all the unpopular and questionable decisions.

 

I'm fairly sure Jeff is posting a response crafted by PR; not his own personal opinion on the matter. What I said wasn't directed at him, but the statement he made.

As far as the boilerplate "but we care" statement; I'm sure it's true that many employees genuinely do care. But this is a company decision, and this is a company response, and given that the company chose to fire the engineers who actually make their product instead of the CEO and management who made the decisions that caused the problem tells me what they care about, and it's not their employees or the longevity of their company.

 

For me is rather obvious what Unity should do- learn from rivals (UE) and make a proprietary 3D game. And for that hire some highly qualified team. The benefits:

- Money from selling game or in game stuff. Not just mobile ads income. Like UE is making fortune with Fortnite.
- Other dev teams would trust more in Unity's 3D sector. Right now if you check the list https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unity_games its rather poor. All I know from 2022 is "Valheim", because it's actually popular. And this poorness makes devs draw conclusions and turn to UE, which has rather huge list with AAA titles included. But maybe for no reason?
- The insider team could communicate bugs and feature requests in much more efficient way. For me in general building a game engine and never actually a full game on it, feels wrong. This is like not testing it properly and giving it to others to test. But we don't want to test, we want to make games with insurance.

 

What guarantees that game would be successful? You can always dream to make a new Fortnite, but it usually remains dreams.
Think an open source project like Gigaya is the more reliable aproach, even if not providing money.

Btw. apreciated that an actual number (4%) for the layoffs has been given. There are companies that have shrunken 10-20% in the last 12 months so it could be way worse.

 

Guarantee is the team picked for this job. They should have good history of making spectacular and popular games. Other then that there is never a 100% guarantee, that's just life, who doesn't risk doesn't drink champagne at the end of the day.

 

Well, that's why one of the major tasks of management/leadership is risk-management and -mitigation.

 

While getting laid off due to company changes like that is always a rough deal... On the plus side, a lot of talent with incredible insight and unique knowledge of the engine just hit the market. Every studio I know is pouring through their contacts looking of opportunity hires. I have got jobs via similar situations. (though working for big studios... not WORKING ON THE ENGINE THAT EVERYONE USES!). Just sayin'... time to bump your salary requirements and let folks effectively "bid" on you.
Again, condolences for the situation, but good luck in the feeding frenzy in the next few months!! Myself and most of my peers almost always come out better on the other side of layoff or studio closure. (shoot for director/lead/senior roles if you can.). Good luck!

 

I wonder how many people fail to notice that he's just copying the statement from Unity.

 

Very disappointing to see this. Always enjoyed the content and contribution @Andy-Touch & co delivered.
Good luck to all former staffers and as @zombiegorilla said, there will be plenty of companies climbing over each other to hire many of you.

 

Which is likely all they're allowed to say.

It still doesn't gel with other (claimed) events.

 

What's the ratio of engineers vs sales/marketing/etc people at Unity? Because I vaguely recall engineers already being the minority.

If they're cutting from the very people who sustain the engine's functionality and development, rather than the bloat that's built around the engine, it doesn't spell a pretty picture for the already troubled Unity development.

 

In regards to Gigaya, will the layoffs affect it at all? Considering rumours the entire team has been laid off, I think it's relevant to Gigayas future.

 

Apparently everyone on the Gigaya production team has been fired? https://twitter.com/sh4na/status/1542808112683417600?s=20&t=-oCAIDCv7e_FRUBOna9VUQ

This is F***ing ridiculous.

 

Holy.. seriously?
There's no way unity will mess things up this bad again, is that confirmed?

All this hype around gigaya, eating it's own food, releasing a proper URP demo and all that is gone just like that?
If this is true I can officially say I lost all hope in unity, not a drop of trust will remain.

I will literally never be positive about unity again if this S*** is true. I already view it negatively due to the S*** show decisions we've seen, but this will seal it.

Out of all department, this is the one that gets booted off? Smells like they will focus more on ads, analytics, and all that crap.

edit: Guess what, the team that worked on the HDRP FPS sample demo was axed as well.
Great job.

edit 2: I'll hold some hope that this is all wrong, and that we'll see a post soon telling us gigaya is still happening.

 

Really?? But what's next?? Are they going to release it at least?? Was the project complete?? who is going to maintain it further??

 

Everyone who worked on Gigaya got fired, what a joke.

 

Can we get a confirmation from a credible source?
If this is the case Unity is dumb.

 

Twitter / Tweet from ex-unity dev, there's also one more unity dev that confirmed this.
Management is a joke. We can literally see that from the fact they entertained the thought of closing down Unity Answers.
They live in a black box that has no knowledge of the community.

I'm pretty pissed off as i was really looking forward to it. The only similar demo from unity is the 3D template which is ancient and no where near the scale of gigaya.

All this talk about listening to the community, unity eating it's food, all that S*** is just thrown out of the window.
Not just gigaya, also the team that worked on the DOTS HDRP sample has been fired.

What a F***ing joke.

------

Want to see what previous employees think of unity? (they weren't fired, they quit a while ago)
Developers that were with unity for over a decade?

Shawn White (@ShawnWhite)
It's clear that the sentiment around unity here in the forums is shared by some employees.

edit: I'll hold some hope that this is all wrong, and that we'll see a post soon telling us gigaya is still happening.

 

I guess time to seriously learn C++

 

General mod notice:

Keep any conversations respectful at all times and remember you do not have the full picture of why anything happened, and nor do ex-unity staff.

With that in mind, you can link to sources or talk about it in general - just do not single people out. That's not what this forum is for.

 

Laying off all of Gigaya and FPS sample devs makes completely zero sense. Didn't they see how positive people have been for Gigaya? It's one thing the community has been asking for forever. Does the management really lose contact with reality to this degree?
They don't care about Unity Answer. They don't care about production teams that do dogfooding their own products. How do they think this is a solution to their recession? This will just make the company stock plummet even lower.

 

This project (Gigaya) renewed my confidence in Unity's future, if the team is gone I might have to legitimately reconsider my long term plans.

 

The truth is most likely investors don't care about all of this, they care about one thing: $.
Current quarter and upcoming quarter predictions.
Much of what brings the revenue for unity are ads and other 'solutions', analytics and so on.

What this will do is drive developers away, and damage an already dying reputation among it's customers (and employees/developers).

Which will come to effect it's revenue eventually.

IF this is true (gigaya layoffs) then it's clear what unity's goals are. And these goals are far removed from what most developers, and users around here have been asking for.

 

I have a feeling, game dev side of their business gets the lowest love from all their branches. Weta purchase is also, imo, not aimed for game production. So the business they started off years ago, is the least important to them. That's what i feel.

 

Things like Gigaya are indeed great but I don't think companies using Unity care that much as long as they still have the tools they can work with. There's like a different community of CEOs CTOs and you know, businessmen who wear suits and ties and stuff.

 

Godspeed, you magnificent bastards.

I personally mark this moment as the beginning of the end for Unity the Engine. Unity the company will probably linger around in absolute irrelevancy for many more years, sadly.

 

if anybody was holding out on adding new tools to your skillset because you think it's going to be very hard or different... it's not. Virtually anything I've learned from Unity almost directly translates to other game dev softwares.
I mean there is time to learn, and it takes effort but probably not nearly as much as you imagine.

 

https://twitter.com/sh4na/status/1542808112683417600?s=20&t=-oCAIDCv7e_FRUBOna9VUQ
Can we get some words from unity on this, will there be a new internal team to work on gigaya???Don't just go radio silent on this!! We need answer ASAP from unity!!

 

The mods just locked that thread an removed a lot of its discussion about the Gigaya team has been let go

 

Yeah, I had a bunch of posts there that were removed. I guess we'll be waiting for a post explaining the gigaya situation, not looking good so far though.

 

over the last weekend started to see planned fix bumping into 2023 aka api 15x

 

They were *moved* here, into THIS thread.

When posts are moved or merged, they're done so in chronological order, so if you look back in this thread you'll see it. You will also see it in your alerts.

And if people continue making stuff up out of thin air, then I'll lock this thread too. What has happened is common in tech right now. It's also a case where Unity has compensated these staff for a couple of months - way better than a couple of weeks. Unity didn't have to go that far but it sounds like it was an unfortunately necessary thing.

There's a lot of drama but you guys are not helping even a tiny bit by making stuff up. Just chill, make your game, act like adults. Enough is enough.

 

Even suits understand perception, that's why Unreal engine is so popular. Perception of being a higher quality engine, it is a boon of marketing to have an Unreal Engine label on your game. It resulted in a lot of really horribly performing MMORPG's for a time.

Unity does not have this boon, and hasn't for a long time.

Gigaya was very public for both or devs and gamers in general. If the perception of the engine skews too negative as a result of this a suit wouldn't pick the engine regardless of it's actual quality. But now even devs would be disheartened.

Provided it's true ofcourse.

 

If they dont release Gigaya in the state they were speaking about, the percepction would be "URP is so bad even Unity cant finish game on their own engine".

 

I would be legitimately floored if this is true, but so far I think it's just something the heard on a discord somewhere and repeated on twitter. Or maybe something misheard.

I'm watching the subject like a hawk cause if it's true or not is extremely important to me.

EDIT: That said, I'm sure there's plenty of people here well informed/involved enough to say for certain and clarify the issue.

 

I've been with Unity for over a decade now and through a lot of S*** storms, this is probably the worst I remember.

 

Yes and I still hope its fake with the "entire Gigaya team is sacked"...I just dont want to believe in it. So lets hope its not true.

 

Nothing is being made out of thin air. You have ex-unity employees saying the gigaya team was axed.
Is it official? No, but I'd say it's quite a bit more than random assumptions out of thin air.
Hence I still said I'll be waiting for an official announcement, and that hopefully I'm wrong.

Not sure what the compensation the ex-employees received has to do with gigaya as a project or the current situation of public tech companies.
I don't believe I complained about the act of firing employees itself, although I am complaining about the situation of gigaya as a project, which is related to it's team and their employee status.