this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2024
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Unity is laying off 25% of its workforce in what it's calling a 'company reset' (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
45 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Roughly 1,800 people are being put out of work, but hey, at least the share price is going up.

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[–] [email protected] 106 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Bring in a billion dollars of investor money.

Hire thousands and thousands of employees.

Spend way more than you bring in every year.

Hire some shitty CEO with a terrible track record. Pay him way too much money.

Become desperate for cash and think of ways to milk your users dry.

Get rid of bad CEO and pay him even more money.

Then when all that backfires and you've further tanked your reputation you go back to the drawing board and realize the only option to cut losses is to fire half your staff, or more.

And that's the story of Unity3d.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago (1 children)

And that's the story of Unity3d.

Enshitification

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That's the story of every "line go up" CEO. You think they would stop hiring these guys.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Why? Line go up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Because the fastest and easiest way to make the line go up is to cut costs, and the fastest ways to cut costs are to cut corners on your product, or cut your staff. Both of these action only produce a brief "line go up" moment before their consequences cause line to go back down. But you're a line go up guy, and you know just what to do, cut more corner! Reduce more overhead! The problem is that eventually you won't be able to cut anymore corners, or reduce any more overhead, and then the whole house of cards comes tumbling down.

[–] [email protected] 82 points 10 months ago (5 children)

2024 Year of Godot?

[–] [email protected] 33 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Weird how at the beginning of last year I had people call me a cultist for saying Godot would replace Unity in 2-5 years as the defacto indie engine.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (1 children)

To be fair, I don't know that anyone was predicting that Unity would do... all this.

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago

This actually isn't the first time they've done something similar. I was already dissatisfied with their decisions, so I started dabbling in other engines. I left for good when they merged with Iron Source. I told everyone they'd eventually shift to trying to wring every last dollar they could (again not the first time they're tried)

After ther merge with Iron Source they became an ad company who owns the IP to a game engine. They started making one bad decision after another, it was only a matter of time before they did something that pissed enough people off.

They shut down the game they were developing, they repeatedly over promised, then stopped developing a system half baked, then deprecated it and then over promised on its replacement. There are so many half baked systems in the engine, and then they started firing people and shutting down projects, while you can see the Unity logo on mobile game ads all over the place. That's what they did improve, they worked on making it easier to use ads to monetize games. The CEO said anyone who doesn't want to use ads to monetize were "fucking idiots"

The writing has been on the wall for a long while.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

Especially when stuff like this is possible:

https://youtu.be/ao34A0Y2x6c

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

Bee picking it up the past few months and the transition from unity has been relatively pain free. I'm hoping for more of the useful unity add-ons to transition to godot!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Godot Gang

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

The wait is over.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Just started with it this week 😁

[–] [email protected] 77 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

This was clearly inevitable even before they chased away every customer they've ever had and every potential customer that has ever looked into the engine. Now that so many people have jumped ship, I would not be surprised if this was just the first of many such moves.

Fucking morons running this company, that's for sure. Way to just give away what was easily the greatest market share that they will ever see.

[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago

But this next fiscal quarter is going to look real good though. 🙄

[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago (1 children)

you ever notice that c suite never needs a reset?

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Sometimes they do, but they usually have a golden parachute that makes it still a win for them.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Fun fact: gold makes for terrible parachute material.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

Don't tell the rich that, please.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

Those 75% remaining are probably looking for new jobs.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I will not buy any games made in Unity after September 2023. I'm giving the devs who had projects going before then a grace period, but if you're dumb enough to use Unity for a new game after the shit they pulled you're too dumb to have my money.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I suggest you also pay attention to when a game’s development was begun as it’s no simple task to switch engines mid development. Still, your wallet, your call.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Remember when I said "I'm giving the devs who had projects going before then a grace period?" or "if you're dumb enough to use Unity for a new game AFTER THE SHIT THEY PULLED.

Developers or studios that have been working on a game prior to the shitfest are grandfathered in, but I'll not have anything to do with projects that began after the whole price tier shenanigans.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Gotcha, wasn’t sure if you meant shipped or started. We’re on the same page then

[–] [email protected] 32 points 10 months ago (2 children)

This guy out here thinking it takes less than a year to develop and release a game

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Well you know that's what happens when your experience of gamedev ends at flash

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Could someone with any reading comprehension skills verbally explain what "I'm giving the devs who had projects going before then a grace period" means to Skipcast?

I'm not buying any game built in Unity whose development began shortly before, during or after September 2023. IIRC, it was late September when they announced their change in price schedule, which 1. they indicated would apply retroactively, changing the terms of a contract after they had been agreed upon, and 2. evidence showed was partially intended to punish the use of a competitor.

I don't want a company that acts like that to succeed in business.

Why "shortly before" the announcement was made? Well, say you started development of Interstellar Bum Pirates that August, and 40 days later Unity pulls a Unity. What work has your team actually done in those 40 days? Probably more work in Word and Excel than in Unity; you've probably worked on the design document, outlined some game mechanics, drawn some concept art, maybe written some story. You're probably in the very early stages of programming, and that can probably be redone in Unreal, Godot, Source 2, Amethyst, Pygame, Commodore BASIC, whatever else you chose. "We're two years into this project, we're in closed beta, we don't have the funds to re-implement this thing in another framework." You guys are a maybe.

I'm not interested in entertaining excuses like "I'm used to Unity, it's what I learned in school, it's what I'm used to." 1. Congratulations, you have demonstrated the ability to learn how to use a game engine. Do it again. 2. Do you see this? It's the world's tiniest open-source violin.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

Its not often you get a stark reminder that the people who play games genuinely know nothing about how they are made

[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Just feels weird to punish game devs for spending years of their life learning an engine ruined by circumstances outside their control (plus there were no signs Unity would come close to downfall back then)

I had friends in Digipen's gamedev course and they paid for torturous nights and their final year on it, what a damn waste.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Being able to pivot is an important part of being a software developer. Technologies come and go faster than careers do.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

That is a truly daft take. Ability to pivot is a useful skill in software development but that means moving from one engine to another for your future projects, not to port an existing game over to another engine, that's a completely different task to learning a new engine and making future projects in that new engine.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 10 months ago (2 children)

They made a decision that is bad for game developers and your response is to punish ... game developers?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

I don't see the problem with this. I won't buy anything from EA, Activision, Ubisoft, etc.

The logic that I'm "harming game developers" by NOT buying something is absolutely an asinine statement. I am not required to buy something if I disagree with their decisions.

If I don't buy a gas car this year because I don't like petrol use, am I "Harming Automakers"? See how stupid of an argument that is?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Obviously you can buy and not buy whatever you want, but usually if you're going to boycott a business, you would pick the one whose decisions you disagree with (Unity), not the victims (game developers)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

Yes, but gamers don't buy game engines, they buy games. And part of the money they payed for the games goes to the engine creator. If you want to boycott unity, you have to boycott games made in unity.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Maybe, wait until they start their next game, and see if they've moved away from unity.

Maybe, do some research and find out what the specific situation is before you buy.

Maybe, don't hurt the people who were hurt by the situation.

But definitely this comment is for others, not you, since your mind is made up.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Yep. I don't want to fund Unity even second-hand at this point. Using Unity is a business decision, and if that's the kind of business decision you make, we're not doing business.

Plus, I've done my own game dev in the Godot engine long before Unity shit the dishwasher.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Man, I'm already annoyed by every other game looking like Unreal. While the Unity style is also boring me out of my mind, having Unity commit seppuku does not help.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It absolutely does. Godot is growing a LOT. I see it frequently in my local game dev community.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

I mean, yeah. At this rate, I expect Unreal to have close to a monopoly in a few years, when it comes to bigger, published games. And it's required by law that monopolies turn into trash cans. Young devs will choose Godot rather than the trash can and at some point, we may come to a better duopoly than we have today. But it's going to take a decade or more for that. I guess, I'm just tired...