Of course they don’t see synergy. The vast majority of Unity game developer will never need Weta Tools or Ziva FX. And the one that might have been useful, that texture generator tool called ArtEngine, is discontinued. And all their other tools they acquired are half baked. Like that version control system Plastic SCM
Don't get me started on Plastic... There's this weird thing that happens internally sometimes when we get to work on fun projects, like mini game jams kind of thing. Someone in the group will inevitably be like "We should use Plastic" and we all kinda have to go along with it because it feels like we're not allowed to admit that Plastic blows. Then we end up frustrated and complaining about it but not switching to Git because again, can't say out loud that one of our own tools doesn't work well that would just be silly
Translation: the higher ups fucked up because they’re so disconnected with their own product, so now they are making their employees pay for their mistakes in order to keep their bosses salaries and bonuses intact.
Is anyone believing they would not have layoffs anyway? They are likely just trying to pin their cost-cutting plans on game devs who protested against their ridiculous scheme. Comes to mind that the money their clients were already paying is the money that would have paid for those employees' wages.
I work for Unity, granted I'm just a lowly worker they don't tell me shit. I honestly don't know on this one, or rather I feel there probably still would have been but maybe not to the extent this one is rumored to be. Our change in leadership is the starting point for some internal reworks so it is possible if the pricing scheme worked JR wouldn't have 'resigned' and we'd be operating on a more status quo basis. I suspect layoffs would have come down the pipes again sooner or later though
Excuse you, but Riccitiello retired. Sure, it was at the last minute with absolutely no transition plan ahead of time, but it was totally voluntary and not at all forced by the board!
Any more manipulative than a ceo making the decision to axe a functioning and profitable licensing structure to implement a new one with more dollar signs?
If you told me the same exact ceo made the layoff decision, I wouldn't be surprised.
Ford did a nice end run on them eventually. He had to do twice. He never liked investors.
At least initially Dodge released a upgraded Ford for their first vehicle before things really got into the make them different for each year to create a reason for customers to buy a new one to replace their current one mode.
It's a shame, but considering that Unity is deep in a hole of unprofitability coupled with high interest rates across the globe, I can't say it's surprising.
Plan A was to rip off all of their users and Plan B seems to be to downsize. I wonder if it'll be enough to right the ship...
I feel bad for the people that actually make Unity what it is. I hope the C-suite fucking chokes on the money they’ve taken that they don’t deserve. This whole situation is their fault.
Used unity for my last 3 games and I'm getting really really tired of their shithouse performance over the last 3-4 years. They've gone from constantly making new features, tutorials and systems to barely doing anything.
Engines need constant feature packed updates, not bare bones rubbish. For example there's no DLSS support for URP, it only works in HDRP. There's also "no plans" for it according to the devs, which boggles the mind considering URP is arguably the better platform for mobile, console and regular console gaming.
Game engines should be rapidly evolving and supporting these features, they should take 3-4 years to get commonly implements features or to have to rely on third party plugins to make them happen.
Yeah, I hate that my game is far enough along that it would be... infeasible to restart development in a new engine, but still needs enough work that the uncertainty of Unity is going to be with me for quite some time still.
I just can't help but think how the Unity Engine is a phenomenal product. Maybe our systems don't work as well as we think they do if this company is foaming at the mouth because the metric says its bad. I used Unity for five years, its great, it didn't need to change, but green line needed to go up.