Creators of Slay the Spire will migrate their next game to a new engine if Unity doesn't completely revert their changes
Picture taken from their Twitter
I love that last line.
"We have never made a public statement before. This is how badly you fucked up."
A public statement ever? Or about this? If the former, damn.
ever
It must have felt good to say but I suspect they'd have better chance of seeing positive results if they avoided confronting the Unity team's egos.
If Unity dies, it dies.
The only way Unity can realistically fix it at this point is to pull a WotC and not just backtrack all these changes, but implement a legal mechanism that guarantees changes like this cannot ever be retroactively applied to past versions of the engine.
I don’t think Unity will do that.
Is it just me or are all big companies killing themself right now?
Yeah, inflation rate is high, so central banks are trying to counteract that by basically slowing down the economy, so that our normally scheduled inflation countermeasures kick in appropriately. Well, and the usual way to slow down the economy is to make it more costly to loan money, i.e. increase interest rates. Which means investors can't just pump money into any company anymore, they want that money to actually pay out to cover those interest rates. And that means companies need to actually be profitable to get money to finance their operation.
So does that mean all these businesses were always doomed to fail anyways, just living on borrowed money/time, and now the bill comes due, they’re all fucked?
This would make sense if Unity increased their fees, but it doesn't make sense to invent a new revenue stream based on a metric you can't even accurately measure. That's profit-seeking.
And it's most costly to increase interest rates not because those directly affect the investors, but because those interest rates affect the borrowers since the borrowers will need to make more and more money to be able to pay back the initial injection + interest.
If borrowers don't think they can pay back, then they probably won't borrow in the first place. If they do borrow but don't make enough to pay back those loans + interest, then the investor loses out.
And if borrowers don't borrow in the first place, then investors sit on their money when they could theoretically inject it into other businesses so they can earn on what they own, and not just let their assets stagnate (or decay). To investors, this might also be perceived as a loss.
Do I have that right?
I've said this for about a decade now: I firmly believe this world we live in now is the inevitable, unavoidable result of having every company run by people with business degrees and no passion for the businesses they run. When your entire education was focused on how to extract one more penny from customers and how to psychologically make addicts out of everyone, this is what we end up with. I fucking hate it. Everything is enshitified and it sucks.
Agreed, VC have poured free money into excellent, but unsustainable businesses trying to chase 'growth' long enough that they can sell out just before everyone realizes that it won't make money. It's just a scam of rich people preying on other rich people.
Instead of trying to build a self sustaining company to begin with (which requires hard work to balance revenue against customer needs and desires) they build 'free' products that people love, but can't make money, only to switch the company to crappy products that people hate, but now are trapped into using.
Our entire digital economy is built on these bait and switch companies and it sucks
result of having every company run by people with business degrees and no passion for the businesses they run
You'd think that even soulless business ghouls would've learned somewhere along the way to put a price tag on things like long-term customer loyalty and the soft power of your brand. So either they're too dumb to take all the variables into account or they're looking only at short term gains.
This angle is absolutely brutal. Never seen it that way.
I disagree. This is all the system working as expected. There is no such thing as infinite growth and yet we are conditioned to always need it or else it's a failure.
We are on an ever accelerated race to the bottom.
The definition of success is woefully broken.
We just live in a dystopia. The leadership will milk you dry, for pennies, for short term profits. When you're this greedy, you can't see more than a day into the future. It's just another reminder than corporations aren't your friends
Sort of but not exactly, the recent shift is because money has gotten expensive and now investors are wanting to take a profit rather than tossing money around hoping to get lucky. So now these business types are scrambling to do anything that makes the business profitable when their entire business plan was unsustainable without the constant influx of money keeping them afloat under the guise of "growth".
I think I disagree a bit. It is the owners of the companies that have no passion for what they do. They just want that particular position in their portfolio to appreciate or spit out dividends.
Then they put the MBAs in charge to get the most efficient use of capital.
Corporate suicide is so hot right now, all the cool companies are doing it. Are you really even trying if you can't feel the pain of the bullet in your foot?
The poor guys just want to fulfil the infinite company growth expectations of their stakeholders.
Eat the rich. ALIVE.
What really bugs me is that it's not even infinite growth they're after. What they want is as high growth as possible as soon as possible. Planning a sustainable long term profit business would mean great employee benefits to attract and keep the best, a ton of funding for new product development, and building things slightly more expensive so that they last longer.
There is no financial analysis that would say cutting safety measures is a net positive to your money in the long run. The bill will come due and you'll lose an extraordinary amount of money when things blow up or derail. If I make a change that raises my risk to 1% over a year to have a safety incident which would cost me 5 billion, I'd have to save more than 50 million each year with that decision for it to make me more money. Plus it would take 100 years for the realized savings to cancel out the event. If it happened before 100 years, I'm at a net negative.
All of that is to say that the stakeholders aren't just greedy bastards, they're also dumb as fuck. But that's not surprising -- the type of person with that much money didn't get it from consistently working over time. They think playing fast and loose will work in their favor always.
Welcome to late stage capitalism. The US is totally doing great...
Not just companies, but countries too. We've apparently reached the Age of Idiocy where everyone that got big is just doing these epic face-plants. I don't know if it's desperation, arrogance, greed, or a combination, but so many shitty decisions coming out left and right all over the place.
Late stage capitalism. You can't expect year over year growth for eternity without running into a resource cap. Profit growth is all the shareholders care about because it's literally written into United States economics laws that investors get paid first. All these dirty tricks and bad decisions are coming from CEO's with limited understanding of the effects of their policies, trying to push for an extra 2% on top of their already obscene margins
Publicly traded companies*
Private ones dont always have CEOs chasing every penny looking for only short term gains.
Depends on if they still have private investors propping them up.
If they've not paid back their loans to the private investors yet, said investors are looking for their loans to be paid back and then some.
I like to call it the “2023 Userbase Alienation Olympics”
"activist investors" of the worst kind has forgotten what makes the companies valuable and want quick money
Well, with the current happenings around the world loans got a lot more expensive and that's basically what internet companies run on since the start, many of them never made a profit but even others will run their buissines to the ground during inflation and shit!
We have never made a public statement before now. That is how badly you fucked up.
Lmao shots fired. Unity’s C-suite made their own bed… and the bed is made out of anti-personnel mines. I genuinely hope this picks up steam.
Unity showed their hand when they made the announcement. I had never thought to look up who owned them before. Now that I am aware that they’re majority-owned by VC and PE firms, it’s pretty clear to me that this category of monetization-oriented behavior is here to stay, because that’s how VC and PE operate. Unless and until they somehow get a new owner, it’s my sincere opinion that Unity should absolutely not be seriously considered as a game engine for any new game project.
If there's a penny in your hand, it's a penny they need. Leave not one cent to be saved, not a morsel for tomorrow, because the people who control the money, want to own it all too.
There's a subscription for every need, for every hobby, for ever facet of reality. No matter what you do you can give one of these firms between 30 and 300 dollars a month to send you a box of crap you don't need.
There is no aspect of your life that is not fully monetized, and if there is, they're coming for it. A stroll through the park? Buy water from a fountain that used to be free. An old game with friends you love? Why not buy the expansion, play online only a small fee to have the latest updates and play with anyone! They'll find any avenue to sell to you and completely miss the point of what it is you're looking for, in the quest to fill that need at the highest price you'll pay.
LOL this is how capitalism operates.
This. We're only just now feeling the sting more keenly in a number of ways because companies are desperate to stay the course with increased profits year over year despite there being a massive global economic slump.
The 2010's were full of venture capital pumping money into companies, and when we asked, "How is this business profitable," they'd respond "Just trust us, bro." Well, now the well has dried up, the venture capitalists are here to collect, and we all get to be surprisedpikachuface.jpg watching this trainwreck unfold in slow motion.
Even if they do revert it, the trust has been lost. They've made mistakes before, but none as stupid as this one
It's a matter of self-preservation to get away from Unity as soon as possible at this point.
Yeah, you should diversify your skills as a dev because soon the market for Unity devs might become noticeably worse. As a company, if you can afford it it might be worthwhile investing some money into Godot
The Unity to Godot Importer is looking awfully tempting!
With the words of the rust developer: Unity can get fucked
I read rust as the programming language for way too long reading that article, lmao.
Ohhhh me too, right until "Rust 2 won't be a Unity game"
Same I was way confused. Didn't know of a game also named Rust
I'm buying rust and a few other games that I am probably not going to have time to play in order to support these companies.
Fuck unity! Unite!
Why stay at all whether they revert it or not? They're egregiously incompetent and if they've done this sort of thing once, they're going to do it again. Developers should go where their support will help make something better (Godot) and not stick with the crusty old Unity hag that is constantly pawing at their pockets hoping for the jingle of coins.
Because changing the engine in an existing project is a huge pita that requires many, many hours and possibly in some cases a full rewrite.
This also applies to games that would be released in 2023 or 2024.
Nobody should be considering Unity for a new project, but it's understandable to make either decision for many existing projects.
Ripping out the engine of your game isn't a trivial thing.
Many many hours is a massive understatement.
Thousands and thousands of hours is more appropriate
I agree, although a lot of the work going into a game is the game design, art, and iteration, and not just the programming and rigging. And it may actually be a catalyst to rewrite parts better
In this case it sounds like they were talking about their next game rather than a current project.
If Developers were in a relationship with Unity, it'd be the sort where Unity always comes home drunk and is verbally abusive, but they stick around with the belief that Unity will change.
Cause it's probably not worth it for them to migrate and learn/train on a new engine unless Unity goes forward with their plans.
But you're right, this completely destroyed Unity's reputation. Even if they revert, who's to say they won't try something like this in the future.
This is the classic tactic of doing something just to see if people will accept it. Even if they backtrack, they absolutely WILL do shit like this again. It's just like EA and micro transactions
OMG that last bolded line made me legit LOL. Gotta love it!
Agreed.
I was like... DAAAAAAAMN.
Just the latest in a wave of companies that seem to be looking for ever-more scummy ways to take advantage of their customers in search of the Holy Dollar.
This is hardly a comprehensive list, there's so many recently, but this is just what I could remember off the top of my head:
Add Google/YouTube to that list as well! Google is enshittifying both Chrome and YouTube to prevent ad blocking.
Evernote. Mentioning adding AI is code for incoming price hikes and limitations.
- Wizards of the Coast
The OGL stuff and the Pinkerton incident, right?
- Adobe
They've been pretty shitty for a while now. What have they done recently? (I don't use any of their stuff.)
- X-Rite/Pantone/Danaher
Don't even know who these guys are.
- Monotype
Something font-related?
- BMW
This is the heated seat subscription, right? Anything else I'm not aware of?
- Netflix
Account sharing?
No explanation needed there.
Pantone suddenly decided to assert copyright and licensing to the literal names of colors in a way the broke art files going back decades.
Add sony to that list for the recent ps plus price hike and google for their new invasive ad tracking feature in chrome and their youtube ad changes.
Yeah fuck Unity, I'd love to see devs abandon them altogether whether they revert the changes or not.
Fuck yeah devs! Get em!
I would love to know what they would port to. UE and Godot seem like obvious candidates.
Unreal could do the exact same thing. Obviously preaching to the choir on a Lemmy instance of all places, but open source is the only way to be safe for the future. If you're already making the switch because Unity forces your hand, you might as well go with the long runway.
Not only can UE do the exact same thing, but Epic doesn't need small indies as much since they have a more diverse clientbase of heavy-hitters. Epic is much more able to absorb the damage if they make a pricing change that loses them the indie market.
If it's a 3D game, UE is a safe choice. If it's 2D I'm willing to bet they'll go with Godot.
Slay the Spire is currently -66% on steam... just saying
Haven't Hearthstone been made in Unity? Are we to believe Blizzard will be OK with this?
Looks like you’re right! Blizzard definitely isn’t okay with it. But I would expect them to get a sweetheart deal behind the scenes
I'm willing to bet this won't affect the AAA companies - they almost certainly have exclusive licencing deals already.
Activision and Unity high fiving in the background
This is what we get with propietary software. We can't go to another entity or create one to develop the engine for us moving forward. We can't take the current state of the engine and just patch it to keep existing games alive.
If you depend on some work and that work is being done by software only some other company control, this company is really in the control of that work.
See the devs just need to pass the cost back to the consumers, retroactively /s
Why does Nitter.net block VPNs? Literally worse than Twatter.
Reminds me of when oracle changed their licensing model.
Oracle are the OGs of enshittification.
Was Oracle ever not shit?
Get fucked, you could have use godot to develop your game or any other free engine
Get fucked, you could have use critical thinking to develop your opinion or not been a prick
Unity: Successfully implemented a product strategy that floods the market with game developers that know how to use its product.
You, an insufferable prick: "Why would they use a product they could find ready-trained developers for when they could use a niche product no one has any skills in??!?"
The Unity training materials are amazing. I took their beginner programming course and even made a tiny little game of my own afterwards. I had plans to make a real game later for fun. It's awesome software and they have a great ecosystem for beginners with no experience.
So it's a huge loss, but why would I support them now when Godot exists? The only prospective user I can think of now is someone with no experience that needs all the tutorials, so they're only using them to learn and have no dreams of making a successful game. All the wannabe devs who think they're going to make the next great indie hit (and trust me based on game dev forums - there are a ton), why would they set themselves up to pay a ton of money to Unity when starting out? The people they're going to hold onto are those who don't have the skill or resources to switch, which probably coincides fairly well with those who don't have the skill or resources to make a commercially successful game. So they've limited the amount of money this move makes to existing games they can squeeze some money out of, and maybe some potential breakout hits from people who are pot committed to Unity and not skilled enough to switch. It's a crazy move.
I think many would agree that it'd be great for FOSS engines to get more attention and contributions, but this is the most asinine way to get that message across
It's not even getting it across. It just associates FOSS engines with assholes.
Well that's... a take.
Yes hindsight certainly is 20:20 isn't it. What a pearl of wisdom you have bestowed upon us this day.
In 2017, when slay the spire released Godot was only 3 years old and not nearly ready for any serious development imo.
Just because it is quickly becoming a good option for game dev, doesn't mean it's a good option for every game ever in the past.
the "just don't do it" argument ignores the problem. it's like replying "just don't buy Apple products" to people complaining about right to repair. the key part is that regular people won't know beforehand until they need to notice. by that point, it's profitable enough to show other companies like Samsung and Motorolla that restrictions are profitable, so jumping around brands will also never work when the intention is to have your phone for a long time.
back in the context of game dev, add that to the part where not only people don't anticipate the retroactive changes of a license they have to rely on when choosing an engine, but there's the added weight of having to learn an entirely new library and oftentimes even an entire new programming language, so you have to commit to it if you want to make a commercial product or else you risk losing literal years of development just from rewriting the same thing over and over.
not to say that there's a reason why a lot of people chose Unity. Godot may be in development since 2014 but they are still relatively new in popularity. not only they have less total instructions resources from the community due to it obviously being smaller than Unity's, but people also look for already known games as one of the first factors when choosing something, which is something Godot is still catching up on. knowing legal jargon to even comprehend the difference between free and proprietary is the least of their worries when someone wants to jump into game development and build stuff with it.
I'm reminded of a post recently where someone asked how to get rid of a dialog in Windows and got swamped with replies saying to install Linux. It's like getting a check engine light in your car and being told to buy a truck.
Are people not allowed to change their minds? It's called progress
This is exactly how I picture the Stallman fanatic crowd
I prefer to call them FOSSholes.
Fanatic is really good word here. We should be sorry for the devs and just give them advice.
Yeah, fuck console sales, amiright?
@Voyajer is either a jackass or doesn't understand sarcasm.
Buddy you're at -6 for a low effort comment, don't get buttmad at me. Why are you going back and checking your reduces so obsessively?
They should honestly just move their engine anyway. Unity has played their hand, and showed they are willing to make changes to their pricing retroactively.
Yep, they might roll back the changes this time but they’ve shown where they want to be and now we know. They’ll work their way slowly towards it instead of a sudden change now and it will be less noticeable and harder to fight legally when they do that
They're cranking the bad PR to 11 so they can dial it back to 9 and point to it as a compromise.
I think most developers can see the writing in the wall there, but switching mid-way through a project will be costly and time consuming. If the changes were fully rolled back, I would still bet many would finish what they working on and then switch for their next game.
I bet they will do so for their next game but reimplementing a entire game is FAR easier said than done, something like that could very well bankrupt a smaller studio!
Alright guys, time to get more copies of slay the spire
But not moving could be far worse based on what some devs are saying.
I mean it's easy to reimplement entire games if you've built it modularly. Just swap your core game logic to run on another library and the game works the same it did before.
Edit: 'course, exceptions exist like if you wrote everything using their proprietary coding language, instead of using something universal.
Edit 2: It MAY still be possible that a translation/compiler exists that'll run as a plugin in a proprietary engine, and converts it into something universal.
Exactly. They should take this as the warning it is, and start work on moving to an engine not run by morons.
I have a feeling a lot of the engine devs from unity are seeing the writing on the wall and looking for places to jump to. Betting they have a brain drain soon
How can it even be applied?
This. It's not easy or trivial but as a long term strategy, they should already plan investing efforts into consolidating something like Godot or another FOSS engine. They should play like you calm down an abuser you can't just escape yet while planning their demise when the time has come.