Technology

"We apologize for the confusion (...)"

We thought removing the git repository that tracked terms of service would make it clear.

Do not believe their lies. Do not accept their token gestures. Abandon them. Let them burn. If you tolerate this your children will be next. Trust no one.

Developers remain critical of this latest statement from Unity. "There wasn't any 'confusion'," said Trent Kusters of Jumplight Odyssey studio League of Geeks. "In fact, the exact opposite is the concerning issue here; That we all, very clearly, understood the devastating impact and anti-developer sentiment of your new pricing model far better than you ever did (or cared to) before rolling it out."

That's the exact point. The apology is a joke.

Good God, what an arsehole.

We apologize for the confusion...

Confusion? No, there was no confusion. You announced a policy that was terrible, but there was nothing confusing about it, it was just stupid. I wasn't at all confused you condescending twat, I fully understood what was being announced, as did everyone else, hence the backlash.

They are implementing the "Anchor High" plan.

1. Come out with a ridiculously high number
2. Take the back lash
3. Issue an apology, claim you are "listing to the team, partners, etc" <---- We are here
4. Release a "revised" plan, which is really what you wanted all along
5. Profit (quite literally)

I'm willing to bet they are angling for an acquisition, and trying to bump up their value to get a higher number.

'confusion'. Yeah, right. Not a single person was confused. You went for the cash grab and it blew up in your face.

Now you're going to go for slightly less cash grab and because it's 'better' and 'we listened' everyone is supposed to just accept it. Been here before..

That’s not an apology.

And if we’re talking about apologies and corrective action: the only real way forward is a completely fresh executive team at Unity. Anything short of that means they’re simply going to try this all again in a slightly different fashion once focus on their clusterfuck dies down.

They went for a retroactive pricing change.

Imagine that you start a game project (which will cost you years and a lot of $$$ to develop) and at any point Unity just arbitrarilly changes the conditions (which can be of any kind, not just extra charges) that apply to your game, after you're too far into development to feasibly replace Unity, and do it retroactivelly, so after your game is already out it can still get impacted by it.

Suddenly a totally viable project might become unviable or, worse, an active drain on your company's finances or even your own (i.e. your company and, depending on how you structured it, even you yourself can go bankrupt), and all of that based on the fickle wishes of a higher up in Unity.

At this point it makes no business sense whatsoever to choose Unity: there is way, WAY, WAY too much risk involved by choosing it (new charges that apply retroactivelly as this one can literally kill your company) and at the same times there are viable alternatives out there without such risks.

For any project not yet deeply tied to Unity, from the day they came up with a retroactive change to their pricing, the obvious, clear as day, choice from a business point of view became to not use anything from Unity, even for shitty shit asset-flipping "near zero investment" projects.

This seems to be a case of start with a horrible plan that they know will make everyone angry only to roll it back to a plan that still sucks but isn't quite as bad to try to reduce the sting. The thing is, I don't think their customers are that stupid.

We apologize for the confusion and angst the runtime fee policy we announced on Tuesday caused. We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of days. Thank you for your honest and critical feedback.

Allow me to translate:

We're now publishing the terms that we were actually going for from the very beginning. We've always known that the flaming bag of shit that we laid on your doorstep was unreasonable. If it worked, it worked, but if it didn't, it can stand in contrast to the new less shit terms that you're either supposed to agree to or rewrite your whole game. Not like our PR was great before this gambit. What have we to lose?

If you believe it and keep using Unity for new projects, you're kind of a sucker.

“Well I’m sorry that you feel that way.”

That’s how this comes off. The ultimate non-apology. Fuck off, Unity.

Edit: something to consider is that Unity intentionally made this change as terrible as it is so that they could put out this apology, and roll things back to where their main goal was the entire time. It’s kind of like when you list your house for a high price so that it gets negotiated down to the price range you wanted from the outset. Don’t be shocked if Unity changes this a bit but keeps it essentially the same. It means they can then reflect on history and go “hey, remember that time we listened to the developers?” while still fucking them over.

They seem to think we’re all stupid.

Reputation is a perishable commodity. It is very hard to replenish it once gone.

Xwitter and Reddit understood it the hard way. Even if Unity goes back to exactly where they were before this ruckus - people will think twice before trusting them again.

How to be a company in 2023

1. Make a controversial move to please your shareholders without caring about your loyal customers.
2. Don't use a proper PR team, just use the same apology template on Twitter that everyone is using.
3. People are angry... Could anyone seen that coming? 🙈
4. Undo some changes without addressing the root problem.
5. ????
6. Profit (if by profit, you mean loose every inch of respect people had about you)

Rinse & repeat, because we're all humans and we can't learn from our mistakes. Surely, this won't happen again... right?

Anyone who still uses Unity for their new projects after this would have to be completely stupid. Of course they'll jack up the pricing again as soon as they can.

Nothing short of a full reversal and Unity's entire board standing down would restore the goodwill they burned.

I read it, it's clearly not an apology. Companies don't ever apologise. Ever.

Nobody in charge there is sorry whatsoever, they're just looking out for their wallets.

They're busy trying to figure out the best way to spin this to get what they want. That's it.

Eh, he said the word apologize, but that's not a full apology. All they essentially did was acknowledge that they noticed the public was mad at them. A full apology includes that acknowledgment and then what they did wrong and how they're going to try to prevent it again. I doubt that last point will happen.

We are listening, talking to our team members, community, customers, and partners, and will be making changes to the policy. We will share an update in a couple of days. Thank you for your honest and critical feedback.

Let's see what they'll announce. So far it's nothing.

Too late. Everyone I know is deep into their Godot or Stride projects.

This after the ceo dumped shares

Anything short of a perpetual, binding agreement to never do this type of shit again is nothing more than "we're sorry if being awesome made you idiots mad". Get fucked.

CEO needs to step down after this

They've burned so much trust in leadership after this, and Unity is now going to be known as a sketchy platform to develop for since they've done really scummy monetization policies over night. This is extremely important if you're going to be pouring millions in budget for game development in that engine.

That wasn't an apology at all.

I'm sorry. We're sorry. Sorry. Sorry.... Sorry~ Sorry. We're sorry. We're soary. Sorry.

"we are sorry you feel that way. Cope".

That's what it reads like, honestly

"Sorry not sorry. Here are the amended prices that we intended to change all along, but knew you'd revolt unless we did something thoroughly obnoxious first."

The CEO of Unity was also CEO, COO, and president of EA. So, is anyone surprised?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Riccitiello

Sorry our awesome plan was so clever it got you confused. We'll try and make it simple for you morons next time.

Ah yes, the Macron Apology.

Between this and the WotC/D&D licensing scandal, companies ought to think twice about changing terms for things that rely heavily on the more mathematically/scientifically inclined portion of the population.

They tend to be a bit more vocal about this kind of bullshit.

Too late, shit waffle.