this post was submitted on 12 Jan 2024
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Another good lesson about why we should trust only FOSS ecosystems

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[–] ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.ml 191 points 10 months ago (11 children)

Unity employee here, idk anything specific about the departments that handle this I wouldn't even know what their name is. With that caveat, I will say that all the layoffs last year going into this year, changing CEOs, and the competition between big company beurocracy and the dying breath of small company culture, a lot of departments are behaving erratically. I wouldn't be surprised if nobody internally has a clear answer why this was banned but others aren't. Some workers may legit be trying to help but their hands are tied for corporate or maybe even legal reasons, it could be people trying to keep their heads down and close tickets quickly to keep metrics up in the hopes they're less likely to be fired. I think you all know this already but please don't be too hard on the workers we're doing what we can but it's a corporate mess right now

[–] taanegl@beehaw.org 76 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Look, it's a low level employee of a faceless corporation!

GET 'IM!

Jokes aside, thanks for the transparency, and salute to you and your coworkers for trying to weather the storm caused by "shifting paradigms"... that's what they call it, right? I know the execs can shift my paradigm, that's for sure.

Peace and love.

[–] ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.ml 13 points 10 months ago

Tech in general but especially the game industry desperately needs to unionize. If the last couple years doesn't convince tech bros they're just as expendable as all the other working class out there, idk what will. Got to do something to insulate us from "restructures", "rightsizing", and "company resets"

[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 27 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I feel like more than anything right now, you need a hug. 🤗

[–] ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.ml 5 points 10 months ago

I appreciate you

[–] Secret300@sh.itjust.works 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Wow I never knew it was that bad. I hope you have something else lined up it sounds like everyone's employment is shaky

[–] ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.ml 14 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Yeah it's a bit of a shit show for sure. Unfortunately I do not have anything else lined up right now, I know that's an unsafe decision. My life has been a mess lately I can only handle so much at once and finding different work is exhausting

[–] Secret300@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago

I can understand that. I wish you the best

[–] Tyfud@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

If you're a software engineer, and you're in the unity Austin area, lmk. Assuming you would be open to writing b2b software, the company i work for is huge, and still hiring devs.

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[–] Feidry@lemmy.world 7 points 10 months ago

As a long time Unity user, thanks for your hard work. It's appreciated more than you could ever know.

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[–] Grass@sh.itjust.works 113 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Really though, what were they thinking. Why would anyone risk staying with unity after all their bad decisions, especially when they clearly have no intention to stop being dumb.

[–] Godort@lemm.ee 65 points 10 months ago (3 children)

They're mostly banking on the cost of change being higher than the inconvenience of staying.

[–] rastilin@kbin.social 26 points 10 months ago (1 children)

They probably are, but it's not really about cost, it's about fear. I fear that while it costs $x to switch to Unreal Enigne now, it'll cost $x+10 after a few weeks when they do their next decision, and $x+20 a month or so after that.

[–] SlopppyEngineer@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Like buying a reverse lottery ticket. If you're unlucky, you suddenly have to pay a big amount somewhere in the future.

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That description really fits all kinds of technical debt.

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[–] SilverCode@lemm.ee 12 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Which signals to investors that there is little to no expected growth. If you aren't attracting new customers to grow your user base, then you only have the option to milk your existing customers to increase revenue.

That may work short term, but long term it signals a death knell for the company, since as the old customers retire or the studios close down, the new crop of game developers would have been trained on or adopted a different engine so aren't going to switch to Unity. Eventually they just run out of customers.

[–] detalferous@lemm.ee 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Especially in a competitive market where compelling alternatives exist.

Especially in tech.

And especially in software.

[–] vexikron@lemmy.zip 6 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Yep, but the best part is because their core demographic is moronic, know-nothing-about-how-any-technology actually works, start-up indie game devs with basically only a dream and prayers combined with 'i have played some video games, it cant be /that hard/ to make one!' kinds of people...

...you can expect discussion around everything going on with Unity to be filled with irrelevant and infuriating opinions/beliefs/concerns that will eat up most discussions in most communities while also mocking and downplaying actually correct and actually relevant things.

It never fails to amaze and infuriate me how confidently completely wrong nearly all video game players are about literally everything about /creating/ video games.

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[–] CosmicTurtle@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago

That may work short term

That's all that matters. The next quarter's growth is more important than the year-end P/L sheets.

[–] the16bitgamer@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

I moonlight as a small app developer. This is absolutely correct. I have a handful of legacy apps which uses Unity, and makes so little that moving them would cost more.

That said, if/when I do another project, it won't be in Unity.

[–] solidgrue@lemmy.world 22 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

edit: The following is off topic, but I'll.leave it as a testament to my gray-beardedness. In my defense: Unity isn't Unity anymore. Don't get old.

I've been using Linux for 30 years now, and for a while I was an advocate for Ubuntu and Canonical (among others, I'm pan-distributive). Then things changed: GNOME 3, Wayland, Unity, something-sonething, Snaps... All too much.

As an advocate, I'm apt not to emerge with favorites, or to yuck others' yums. Neverthekess, Canonical is a press beyond the pale, many days.

In the end, I don't recommend Canonical distros. LMDE is solid, as are most of the *bian and redhat downstreams. I don't recommend the others because I don't know them, but more importantly I couldn't help a friend un-bodge a bad installer on them (likewise for "BSD or Darwin).

But really, no love for Canonical. They went to some Dark Side, and I'll have a hard time forgiving them for it.

[–] sir_reginald@lemmy.world 19 points 10 months ago

I also thought of Unity the DE before reading the article

I understand the confusion. This doesn't belong to a Linux community. I mean, I see the relation with FOSS but I'm sure there are FOSS communities out there. The article doesn't even mentions Linux, just Windows and Android.

[–] troyunrau@lemmy.ca 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You do realize this is about the Unity game engine, right?

[–] solidgrue@lemmy.world 9 points 10 months ago

I do now. See edits upthread.

[–] leopold@lemmy.kde.social 4 points 10 months ago (2 children)

This is about the Unity game engine, not the unrelated Unity desktop shell from Canonical.

[–] dis_honestfamiliar@lemmy.world 4 points 10 months ago

Well said nevertheless. Both suck.

[–] solidgrue@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

Yes understood. See edts up thread

[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 2 points 10 months ago

With ibm working hard to enshittify redhat even faster than newredhat themselves, we should consider avoiding them as a first-class porting and work target.

Look at OpenEL as a successor to the RH and an upstream for the other ELs once RH starts eating from that tasty "free stuff they can sell" trough. Having made bank on TheForeMan without actually making an effort to support it, they have a model they can use for everything.

[–] OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml 2 points 10 months ago (4 children)

I went to a game dev meetup in Seoul last year. Everyone was using Unity.

I went again last month. Half the people were using Godot.


For a bit more context, I used to work in the gaming industry. We used Unity because it was great for making money - drop in ads and tracking, you're good to go. The Godot ecosystem isn't as mature for that yet. However, even we were considering switching to Godot. It wasn't worth switching for a number of reasons (besides the above mentioned ones, Godot is also "laggier" and we have some heavier games), but had we started shop yesterday, it's safe to say we would have used Godot too.

Unity just laid off 25% of their workforce. That is not a small number. Their days are numbered.

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[–] detalferous@lemm.ee 111 points 10 months ago (1 children)

The VLC team are heroes. Three cheers.

[–] TragicNotCute@lemmy.world 24 points 10 months ago

This headline was the subtle push I needed to donate to Videolan. What an amazing project, we’re lucky to have it.

[–] ThermoToaster@exng.meme 80 points 10 months ago (1 children)

At this point you should know that unity is an evil company.

[–] backhdlp@iusearchlinux.fyi 27 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

It was literally led by the evil EA guy.

[–] nekusoul@lemmy.nekusoul.de 17 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Was led. He left after the license fee catastrophe.

[–] backhdlp@iusearchlinux.fyi 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)
[–] corsicanguppy@lemmy.ca 6 points 10 months ago (5 children)

The parachutes don't work if you stay on the plane.

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[–] Aurix@lemmy.world 46 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What a horrible way to handle this. A bit like YouTube demonetization policies.

[–] taladar@sh.itjust.works 7 points 10 months ago

Only in the licensing space in particular there is really no good reason to hide the exact rules what is acceptable and what isn't. Nobody is going to circumvent your defences if they know exactly which licenses you allow.

[–] Evil_Shrubbery@lemm.ee 25 points 10 months ago

Who tf bans something so good, benevolent, and upstanding as VLC?

[–] SmoochyPit@beehaw.org 23 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Companies really do be taking people’s work and profiting off of it, then not giving back whatsoever. :(

[–] zeluko@kbin.social 12 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thats why you need Licenses to stop that.. well jf you can afford to fight them at all, haha.
Money always wins..

[–] aniki@lemm.ee 5 points 10 months ago

Licenses are only as good as your most expensive lawyer

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