• d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz
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    1 year ago

    Even that transcript was a bit too long, so here’s a < 150 word summary by ChatGPT:

    Unity Technologies, known for its Unity game engine, has been facing severe backlash for its recent decisions. Unity adjusted its fee structure, now charging game developers per install with retroactive terms of service changes. This move is expected to negatively impact numerous game projects. In addition, Unity removed their transparency GitHub repo and reversed previous community-centric commitments, leading to widespread industry anger. The CEO’s past decisions to maximize revenue raise eyebrows. Unity rejected a $20 billion acquisition offer from AppLovin in favor of a $4.4 billion merger with Iron Source, a mobile game development monetization company. Tomar Bar Ziv, CEO of Iron Source and a Unity board member, has notably sold around $20 million in Unity stock following the merger. Recent aggressive pricing models seem to mirror those adopted by Twitter and Reddit. Unity’s shift seems aimed at promoting Iron Source’s Level Play service and could significantly harm developers, especially in the mobile sector. Companies like Azur, Voodoo, and Century Games have retaliated by disabling Unity and Iron Source ad monetization. Unity’s recent closure of two offices due to threats from its own employee underscores the depth of its internal and external crises.

      • Titanious
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        1 year ago

        Makes sense considering the current Unity CEO is a former EA CEO who pushed hard for micro transactions.

      • Derin@lemmy.beru.co
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        1 year ago

        They’ve been all in for about half a decade. If you don’t work in mobile, or play a lot of mobile games, you might not have noticed - but basically the most played games on planet earth are made in Unity, and are on mobile.

        It’s sad to say this, but their actions this past week have kind of shown us that the folk at Unity don’t even seem to care about other platforms anymore; to the point that they did not even consider them on a basic level while working on their new pricing policies.

        They should just either rebrand to a mobile first company, or at least split their products such that those making pc/console games can argue for their own price points and features.

        Ridiculous to lump indie devs and mobile companies like hyper casual devs (who can have 5 million+ installs a game, thanks to their low CPIs and marketing optimizations) into the same category.