[HN Gopher] John Riccitiello steps down as CEO of Unity ___________________________________________________________________ John Riccitiello steps down as CEO of Unity Author : AndrewKemendo Score : 341 points Date : 2023-10-09 20:46 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (venturebeat.com) (TXT) w3m dump (venturebeat.com) | Pulcinella wrote: | Direct link to the Unity press release: | https://investors.unity.com/news/news-details/2023/Unity-Ann... | justinclift wrote: | That's unexpected. The new CEO is a guy who led Red Hat | (successfully) for many years. | | Not sure how he'll turn the Unity ship around, but his outlook is | likely to be 100% in the opposite direction to the previous | (dodgy) CEO. | andrewedstrom wrote: | It makes sense the CEO would either step down or be forcibly | removed by the board. | | Unity's mishandling of the Runtime Fee policy announcement has | caused permanent damage to their reputation. It was a perfect | case study in how to undo decades of trust-building in one day. | | I follow a lot of game developers online. Every single one that | uses Unity today is planning to switch engines for their future | games. | lofaszvanitt wrote: | Nah, this was mass hysteria. | bigstrat2003 wrote: | It's not "mass hysteria" to observe that your business | partner is willing to attempt to retroactively change the | terms of your arrangement with them, and therefore decide | they aren't trustworthy as a business partner. The actual | monetary cost to developers is actually quite inconsequential | compared to the lack of integrity Unity showed in trying to | make this apply to games which were already released. | starburst wrote: | Nah, people in position of picking the engine for the next | project are not going to pick Unity. | sbarre wrote: | At least one publisher jokingly (but not jokingly) said | "developers: make sure you include which engine you're | using next time you pitch us a game!"... | readyplayernull wrote: | When they tell you that you have to report your installs and | sales each month just like you do your taxes, that's when you | notice there are other free engines. | sorenjan wrote: | > I follow a lot of game developers online. Every single one | that uses Unity today is planning to switch engines for their | future games. | | Will all of them switch to Unreal, or are there other viable | options? | slikrick wrote: | most of the 2d ones are looking to Godot | ClimaxGravely wrote: | I use Unreal professionally but on the side when I make | smaller 2D games I am using Haxe/Heaps currently (although | haxe/heaps can do 3d perfectly fine I'd probably stick with | Unreal in that case due to experience). | | Godot seems to be the way people are going right now though | (I haven't tried it). | starburst wrote: | The biggest share of Unity is 2D mobile games, something | Unreal is not particularly suited for and I very much doubted | that segment of the market will switch to Unreal. | Luc wrote: | Doesn't really matter if they're mostly indie game devs that | weren't contributing major revenue to Unity anyway. | drusepth wrote: | In my spheres (full-time game dev), I've already seen ripples | down to teachers/professors switching from Unity to Unreal in | their courses. Many of the content creators I've enjoyed in | Unity are also either switching or considering switching to | another engine for their videos. Brackeys allegedly even said | he might come back and start a Godot series. It's a long tail | of ripples that reduces the number of "Unity devs" at every | stage of their lifecycle (learning, starting out, graduating | to small studios, etc) which doesn't bode well for Unity | long-term. | | Most A/AA devs I follow are planning to switch to another | engine when they can (e.g. not mid-project), but I know a few | who immediately started porting to Unreal/Godot. Most AAA | devs I know already don't use Unity. | delecti wrote: | Indies aren't limited to single-digit sized teams, and even | if they were, devs "graduate" out of indie studios into AAA | ones (through growth or migration). The skillset of the next | decade of new indies deliberately excluding Unity will | influence the decisions made by the AAAs that they move to. | Anybody too small to be negotiating custom license terms with | Unity just learned that they can't be trusted. | paxys wrote: | Remember that executives are never fired for bad decisions, they | are fired for bad press. The Unity business model & strategy | changes/price hike were most definitely approved by the board. | The CEO's job was to make it digestible to the general public, | and he failed at that. Don't expect the new one to pull a 180. He | will simply hire better PR firms and do better sugar coating. | drewcoo wrote: | > The CEO's job was to make it digestible to the general | public, and he failed at that. | | No. It was to either do that or be the scapegoat and take the | golden parachute. Either way it's wins all around. | | Now he can be blamed for the board's decisions. Meanwhile it | remains to be seen how much anything will change. After all, | the cause of the problem is gone now, right? /s | alexpetralia wrote: | But who proposed those changes? Ultimately the CEO is | accountable. | paxys wrote: | Unity has been hemorrhaging money, and the shareholders want | to see profits. The board and the CEO have no choice but to | execute on their demands. | dboreham wrote: | The board | AlexandrB wrote: | I'm not an expert on corporate governance, but does a board | of directors get into the nitty gritty of pricing models? I | can totally believe they told the CEO to "bring in more | revenue, or get replaced", but I have a hard time imagining | they got too involved in the details how that would happen. | Many board members sit on multiple boards or are CEOs of | other companies. Do they really have time to do the kind of | market research you'd need to propose such a change? | otteromkram wrote: | Board members aren't doing research, bud. Lol | | Research and information is compiled for them, which they | then review. | | What're your thoughts on politicians who are in multiple | subcommittees? Not smart enough? | hiatus wrote: | Having been in board meetings where members went in on | the nitty gritty of our _salesperson_ compensation | structure, I would say yes. | airstrike wrote: | Public company boards? | airstrike wrote: | I'm an expert on corporate governance and I can say that | no, boards do not get involved to the degree of making | any market research -- they don't "initiate" initiatives | such as a pricing model change (if you will pardon the | redundancy). Public company CEOs come up with these | plans. Boards do vet the executive's team business plan | at the time of budgeting and during quarterly updates, | but it's the CEO who is in charge of ideation and | execution. | airstrike wrote: | Negative, it's the CEO. | mvdtnz wrote: | It is not the role of the board to make executive decisions | like this. That's what the 'E' in CEO means. | majani wrote: | And it will fail again. Companies that target indie creators | really don't fit into the VC model. Their customers will riot | every time they try to maximize profits. | theogravity wrote: | Stock price is down 22% in the past month: | | https://www.google.com/finance/quote/U:NYSE?sa=X&sqi=2&ved=2... | chx wrote: | This is it. Bad press? Developer feedback? These, by | themselves, are no concern to the board. | | But my man here lost three billion dollars of investor money | and for that he needs to go. | j_maffe wrote: | what else would someone expect board members to care about? | It's naive to expect otherwise, really. | beigeoak wrote: | I doubt this will end the scummy money grabbing thinking. | | https://old.reddit.com/r/unity/comments/16j23ci/i_know_peopl... | | The actual people who should be removed is probably the | incompetent board of directors who signed on in 2020. | cojo wrote: | I have to say, the only thing more surprising to me than seeing | the board actually hold Riccitiello responsible for this (with | consequences) is seeing that their interim replacement / | transitional CEO is someone with a pedigree that, on the surface, | seems even more management consulting / investor / revenue | focused than Riccitiello was himself. | | To be clear, I know essentially nothing about James M. Whitehurst | other than what is readily publicly available (IBM / Red Hat, | advisory roles, etc.). | | But my read on a lot of the Unity crisis, as a long-time game | industry veteran myself, was that one of the increasingly common | "management consulting" / investor- & revenue-focused type of | gaming executives (e.g. Riccitiello, Don Mattrick [Zynga | replacement CEO when Pincus stepped down], Kotick [Activision- | Blizzard]) had finally overstepped their bounds and let revenue | goals drive decision-making just a bit too far without customer | consideration. | | So, I had assumed that if Unity did make a leadership change | here, it would be in a direction away from that - i.e. a more | industry-seasoned executive with less of a pure revenue / | "business" focus. | | I think I clearly misjudged the situation here in light the | Whitehurst pick; while it's possible that is truly just an | interim role and they will still pivot to this in the final hire, | or that I simply misjudge "the label on the tin" and Whitehurst | is very culture / customer focused, I don't think I would bet on | it. This seems like the board actually "doubling down" on driving | revenue results - and fast. | rapfaria wrote: | Isn't Riccitiello stepping down a standard operation procedure | in a situation like this? | jmull wrote: | I don't think you can really draw conclusions from an interim | pick like this one. | | It's who they choose after the search that will tell you | something. | | But things don't look good no matter who they choose. Unity | _has_ to become sustainable... that, or go out of business. | Their fundamental problem is somehow getting revenue and costs | in line with each other. | | Here are some general ways that could be done... | | * Squeeze a lot more money out of existing customers * Get a | lot more paying customers * Cut spending on things that impact | revenue a lot less than the cut saves | | The first one is what the last CEO tried with that cockamamie | licensing scheme. You could go at it in other ways but in the | end the impact on customers is the same so I don't think the | reaction would be a lot better. | | Is there any clear way to accomplish the second, at least | without an even larger negative impact on revenue? | | For investors, cutting cost is the least desirable -- they want | to grow, not shrink. And customers also don't like to get less | for the same price. But perhaps there is a way to cut costs | that would spare what provides the core value to customers, and | perhaps a business guy could get shareholders to accept that it | is the only way. | ChuckMcM wrote: | I concur with this, their interim CEO is the person who can | do the needful things with respect to cutting executive pay, | laying off people, and outright firing others. Once the | organization has been pruned, the "real" new CEO comes on | board and is given a shot at rebirth with a new point of | view. | Sakos wrote: | I don't understand how their cash burn rate is so high that a | billion in revenue isn't enough to stay in the black. What | are they spending so much money on? | HillRat wrote: | I'd argue that what Unity needs is someone who's got a | background in enterprise software, because selling to game | _developers_ is very different than selling games. No one with | (successful) executive experience in enterprise software would | have signed off on Unity 's original revenue plan, simply | because the number one rule in enterprise is "don't fuck with | the customer's business model," which the "pay per download" | model certainly did. Hiring a game industry CEO who pioneered | predatory monetization models and was responsible for | horrifying managerial practices within and between studios was | a terrible choice for Unity, and his evident contempt for | developers showed through often. | | Whitehurst, on the other hand, has a history of strong | execution across multiple industries, and built a reputation as | someone who protected Red Hat's culture against attempts from | within IBM to "Big Blueify" it (possibly to the detriment of | his own role within IBM). Even as an interim, having him | onboard is a good sign for how Unity is looking to repair its | relationships with developers. | doctorpangloss wrote: | > simply because the number one rule in enterprise is "don't | fuck with the customer's business model," | | On the other hand, the continued growth of gaming revenues, | for both developers and services providers, compared to all | other creative industries, is all attributable to innovations | in business models. I suppose if people rocked the boat as | little as you suggest, the only software being sold to game | developers would be Denuvo. | jzb wrote: | I was at Red Hat while Jim was CEO. He's very culture focused | and is an excellent choice for restoring faith there. He got | great results while at Red Hat, but they plucked him out for a | non-CEO role at IBM after the acquisition. IMO that has been | IBMs greatest sin in its handling of Red Hat. | | Jim was active on memo-list and seemed to listen to people. | That doesn't mean he's perfect, but I'd give him very high | marks and I think that he had a lot of goodwill among Red | Hatters as CEO. | linuxftw wrote: | I also worked under Jim. He managed to under perform the rest | of the tech sector by an order of magnitude. He completely | mismanaged the company with regards to the virtualization | boom, just compare VMWare's revenues to Red Hat's. Red Hat | OpenStack was and is an absolute awful product all the way | around. | | What Jim did do successfully is destroy the actual FOSS | spirit within the company. Everyone has Mac Books now. All | the standard corporate welfare initiatives for liberal arts | majors (Chief Diversity Officer and their ilk). | NegativeK wrote: | > Everyone has Mac Books now. | | I don't even work there and I know that this is, at the | least, hyperbole. | dralley wrote: | I do work there and it's total BS, certainly as far as | engineering goes. Maybe in marketing / sales / HR the | story is different, but the overwhelming majority of | engineering, support and QE (including the management | chain) use Thinkpads with Fedora or RHEL. | KerrAvon wrote: | We can see the racism through the codewords. How about | keeping it to yourself? | gorjusborg wrote: | What codewords would those be? | fyrn_ wrote: | GP doesn't exactly seem fun at parties, but calling them | racist seems pretty extreme | eraser215 wrote: | I spotted that too. By contrast I'd prefer this person | shouted it out loud without code so that everybody could | see them for who they are. | eraser215 wrote: | Almost everything you said here is complete garbage. | | Underperform the rest of the tech sector? No... 70+ | quarters of successive double digit growth until the | acquisition. | | Mismanaged the company with respect to virtualisation? | You're conflating mismanaging the company with possible | strategic errors in virtualisation. | | Destroy FOSS spirit? Absolutely the opposite. He is held in | the highest esteem by every red hatter I have ever spoken | to. Not only that, but he made the effort to do red hat | training to learn the tech in the early days. How has he | destroyed any FOSS spirit through his actions? Give an | example. | | Everyone has macbooks now? No. Sellers generally do, I'll | give you that, but technical staff are mostly using Fedora | or RHEL. Flexibility has always been a huge part of the | employee experience. | | Standard corporate welfare initiatives for liberal arts | majors? You sound like an angry white man who can't stand | that people other than yourself may have their disadvantage | recognised nowadays. Stop feeling so threatened. | | Why are you so bitter? | djmips wrote: | I feel it's unfair to include Mattrick in here - he came up as | a gamer, making games as a teen and rolling that into his own | company so at least he has roots as a developer and I feel a | dev/gamer connection but I respect your opinion. | cojo wrote: | I think yours is a fair opinion as well, to be clear - I | actually debated editing him out for a couple of minutes | after I first posted, because I do know that his background | was truly heavy on the gamedev side of things early in his | career. | | I have my reasons for thinking things changed later on, but | they are subjective / personal opinion based on personal | experience, so I respect anyone who would disagree and | exclude him from a list like this. | reactordev wrote: | If anyone can save the stinking ship that is Unity, it's | Whitehurst. | | This is said by someone who wants nothing more than to see | Unity die. | | Whitehurst was pretty instrumental in getting Red Hat sticky in | places where it was just RHEL. Open Shift, Open Stack, etc all | drove value-add for the business and for their customers. Cloud | is fickle though so selling tools to studios and trying to | compete with Unreal in the VFX space is how Unity moves | forward. Take your lashings from the game devs. Shore up your | presence in VFX, Movies, Film. Evolve. | | The tsunami has squarely landed on Godot's doorstep. It will be | up to them on how they manage the swell. | doctorpangloss wrote: | While I don't think you deserve to be downvoted for this, | your comment is full of opinions that, as a game developer, | sound 200% wrong to me. For the sake of curiosity... what are | you talking about? | reactordev wrote: | I'm talking about Jim Whitehurst taking Unity in a | different path and leaving us game devs the f#^k alone. | We're done. Go sell to movie studios, VFX shops, Video Wall | Warehouses, digital twin and construction. Sell enterprise | software subscriptions. | | I think we both agree that small indie studios will not be | returning no matter what promises are made, who is CEO, or | what new shiny monetization idea they come up with next. | | I wish him the best of luck. | doctorpangloss wrote: | > I think we both agree that small indie studios will not | be returning no matter what promises are made | | One thing I agree on: more often than not, behind an | interesting piece of art lies an interesting personality. | | To advance the conversation based on some substantive | facts, based on my conversations with creators of large | free to play Unity games, all were already using | IronSource and were not impacted by the changes anyway. | As a game developer who publishes himself, I do not plan | to migrate away from Unity, and I wasn't really impacted | either. I can't speak for the 30 or so studios who posted | pleas to revert the changes, but based on what happened, | I believe they got what they wanted. So if their | decision-making is rational / based on facts, I don't | think they're migrating either. | | This is all to say that when you have no budget, so you | value your time at zero and you have no visual art you | didn't author yourself, it's easy to put 100% of the | personality into the product, and make that The Thing. | There are people I know who turned 20,000 followers on a | TikTok about games into a $1m check for a game studio! | This is a viable strategy, it is uniquely suited to | people to have opinions about game engines. But my facts- | informed opinion is that this isn't representative of | most game developers, and that they are actually really | happy with Unity and relieved that the pricing changes | found a middle ground that is less emotionally charged. | airstrike wrote: | RedHat customers and Unity customers make for two very | different types of beasts... | | It will be interesting to see how his Whitehurst's pedigree | translates to this smaller-scale, higher-touch sales motion. | | Forgoing the core Unity audience of game developers and | gunning for studios / VFX when Unity is clearly not the | graphically superior engine sounds risky at best, reckless at | worst. | reactordev wrote: | >"RedHat customers and Unity customers make for two very | different types of beasts..." | | You misunderstand. They have different verticals but Jim's | mission is the same. Sell them tools at enterprise | subscription prices. Per seat, per project, per shot if | they can. Forget the indie game devs and their small | studios. That bridge is burned beyond recognition or | reconciliation. | airstrike wrote: | I'd rather fix that bridge than bank on an non-existing | bridge to enterprise customers with an inferior offering | and no cash flow to meaningfully fund R&D to outpace | competitors. | Willish42 wrote: | "doubling down" indeed... | | One possible interpretation of events is that he was ousted not | for the initial proposal and backlash but precisely for how he | backtracked after the fact -- perhaps the board gave a clear | mandate and Riccitiello was unable to successfully change | pricing structure to match financial expectations. That would | explain the replacement. | | Things aren't looking great for Unity right now... | cojo wrote: | Yeah, I think this could definitely be one explanation. | | Other commenters in the thread have also given good thoughts | / potential scenarios in similar veins - essentially that | this was actually a failure of messaging, sticking to the | plan, and / or both, plus some other combination of "no, | seriously, we need to make money and become profitable, | nothing else matters as long as the boat still floats, make | it happen and keep this ship going." | | And I do suspect that Whitehurst will likely be a better fit | for that. A seasons gaming industry executive (regardless of | investor / revenue focus) may actually be a negative if | that's the goal right now... I'll be very interested to see | how this all turns out. | strgcmc wrote: | I think that's reading too much into, what is fundamentally a | very normal and common way of dealing with CEO turnover -- | appoint a safe, business-friendly steward of a CEO, while you | stabilize the crisis and decide who the real long-term leader | should be. | | The word "interim" was clearly used, and there's no hint in | the PR statement about this being a permanent appointment. So | I don't think it's reasonable to equate this to a clear | doubling down of anything. | | At the same time, a guy like Whitehurst is a safe, relatively | unimpeachable medium term choice, not like someone you'd use | for a truly short interim 30-90 days while you execute an | executive search quickly. If you need him for 1-2 years of | just don't rock the boat leadership, it'll probably work out | fine for the company and the board would be satisfied. | jameshart wrote: | I'd be careful drawing too many parallels between running Unity | vs running a game publisher. | | Unity is a developer platform/tooling company. They don't care | about hits or franchises - they need service, stability, | community, and technology innovation. | | Game publishers are creative industry plays, like movie | studios. Completely different business. | | Of course Epic confuses things by being in both camps but I | don't think Unity is confused that they are competing with Epic | in the sense of needing to outmatch Fortnite. | joecot wrote: | I think back to Ellen Pao at reddit. Ellen was brought on as | CEO, and was the face of a number of very unpopular decisions. | All those decisions had one purpose -- jettison the things that | made the site rough around the edges, and find ways to | monetize, so they could make investors happy and work on going | public. | | The backlash was staggering, and much of what they tried was | rolled back. Ellen Pao took the blame for it, but it wasn't | actually her fault. The founders just scapegoated her in order | to make changes they needed for investors -- and depending on | how cynical you are, they picked an asian woman so that they | could channel internet racism and sexism as part of the | distraction. Years later, they did the same thing, making | multiple unpopular monetization changes, but this time the CEO | taking the backlash is Steve Huffman himself, not a scapegoat | put in front of him. | | CEOs don't make decisions on their own, not really. This | pricing change was the direction the company wanted to go in, | and they got put on their heels, but only temporarily. They're | still going to try to find ways to aggressively monetize. | tekla wrote: | > they picked an asian woman so that they could channel | internet racism and sexism | | Prove it. | mvdtnz wrote: | That is some incredible revisionist history. | ribosometronome wrote: | Elaborate? | mvdtnz wrote: | What is there to say? The decisions that OP says were not | hers, were hers. And the claim that they chose an Asian | woman for the intended purpose of setting a racist mob | against her is completely unfounded and frankly racist | itself. Believe it or not, there are some Asian women out | there that have qualities other than being the target of | racism. | dralley wrote: | Most of the decisions Ellen Pao made, especially the | banning of the FPH subreddit, was genuinely for the | better. She bent over backwards, IMO, to avoid the hate - | and should not have. | Waterluvian wrote: | "with consequences" | | Depends how many millions he's accepting to walk away. | ethbr1 wrote: | Right now, I'd imagine Unity is more concerned about placating | their investors that the company isn't going to fall off a | revenue cliff. | | Appointing a "developer-friendly" candidate would have caused | more uncertainty. | | As a temporary pick, I'd guess Whitehurst is intended to | message "We realize we screwed up, but there won't be any | sudden changes." | | The reaffirmed guidance for current quarter is hilarious | though, given any changes would play out in future time (e.g. | developer flight for next project). | cojo wrote: | Agreed - the reaffirmation of guidance almost felt to me like | a "seriously guys, why are we down 22% up front, you know | this doesn't impact short-term revenue..." which... | definitely misses the point. | | It's interesting that after-hours / future trading doesn't | seem to have responded positively (yet). Maybe that's just | another symptom of lost trust as well. | hackerlight wrote: | > board actually hold Riccitiello responsible | | It could also just be a PR move. Riccitiello is disliked among | Unity customers, so you get goodwill by firing him. | airstrike wrote: | Interim CEOs generally tend to be either a board member or a | C-level executive that take on the role just to manage day-to- | day CEO duties while the board searches for a more permanent | replacement. | | In this particular instance, Whitehurst isn't a board member, | but per the press release[0] he is a "Special Advisor at Silver | Lake". Silver Lake is one of Unity's largest shareholders | (~10%) and Egon Durban is on the board. | | EDIT: Also worth noting Silver Lake, along with Sequoia, | committed an additional $1Bn into Unity at the time of the | IronSource acquisition in the form of convertible notes with a | conversion price of $48.89 / share[1], which is at a slight | premium to the price at which Unity's stock traded then | (7/15/2022) and at a meaningful discount to their current share | price of $29.70 -- which supports the (admittedly speculative) | argument that SLP's voice on that particular board is all the | more prevalent today. | | -------------------- | | [0]: | https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231009494331/en/Uni... | [1]: https://investors.unity.com/news/news-details/2022/Unity- | Ann... | cojo wrote: | This is helpful context as well, in addition to doomlaser's | explanation of his background re: IBM and Red Hat. Thanks for | sharing it. | | I wonder to what extent Silver Lake drove this overall | decision (vs. others on the board potentially initiating it) | Spoom wrote: | Ah, Silver Lake, of Skype acquisition and zeroing-out | employee equity fame. | | https://www.wired.com/2011/06/skype-silver-lake-evil/ | 1-6 wrote: | The most famous Interim CEO was Steve Jobs. | readyplayernull wrote: | He was also employee #2 and #0 at the same time, so Quantum | CEO? | hn_throwaway_99 wrote: | Given the information posted about Whitehurst in another | comment, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37825689 , I | strongly disagree with your assessment of him. | cojo wrote: | I agree! | | I posted before that comment, which was definitely helpful - | that context (and some other helpful replies here and | elsewhere in the overall thread) have changed my assessment | as well. | rat9988 wrote: | "interim replacement / transitional CEO is someone with a | pedigree that, on the surface, seems even more management | consulting / investor / revenue focused than Riccitiello was | himself. To be clear, I know essentially nothing about James M. | Whitehurst other than what is readily publicly available (IBM / | Red Hat, advisory roles, etc.)." | | To me, it seems he has plenty experience with managing | companies. | cojo wrote: | I agree - this may be unclear phrasing on my part. | | What I meant in my original comment was, "wow, this seems | like a hire that is _only_ focused on finding someone with | lots of experience managing, and not at all on the gaming | industry / customer goodwill". | | So I think you're right - and I also think this shows how I | misjudged how I originally thought a scenario like this would | have played out. | beebmam wrote: | Bring back engineer CEOs. I'm sick of this trash. | amitmathew wrote: | Wow...I wrote up a whimsical account of what could happen after | the price increases. I got the timing wrong (I thought it would | take several months for the CEO to step down), but some of it is | starting to come true: https://quiver.dev/blog/stepping-into-the- | unity-ceos-calfski.... | fyrn_ wrote: | Didn't they only give some minor concessions, not actually roll | back the pricing changes? | crunkykd wrote: | spending $4B for ironsource ads and $1B for weta authoring stuff | was expensive and took lots of their more indie-friendly choices | off the table. maybe the ipo path they took made these things | inevitable. anyways, their choices are behind them now. godot and | elsewhere are where the parade will move on to | GoofballJones wrote: | I'm just amazed it took this long. | CoastalCoder wrote: | I'll be curious if they can unring this bell. | | If nothing else, this reminded small developers how vulnerable | they are in terms of negotiating power. | eps wrote: | If they bring back Unity's original co-founder and CEO (David | Helgason) and restructure/debloat the company, they might have | a chance of reacquiring some of the goodwill. People still want | the "old", pre-IPO and pre-Riccitiello Unity back. | jjoonathan wrote: | They can restructure the company, but they can't restructure | their incentives. | doomlaser wrote: | James M. Whitehurst is new CEO, previously at IBM, but originally | CEO of Red Hat. He joined IBM after they acquired it. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Whitehurst | | He wrote a book about open source software while running Red Hat, | _The Open Organization_ : https://www.redhat.com/en/explore/the- | open-organization-book | | He _is_ an MBA, but he got his undergraduate degree in CS from | Rice. | leviathan303 wrote: | His wikipedia article says he got his BS in CS from Rice. | Thorrez wrote: | Has the comment been edited? That's exactly what doomlaser | said. | badRNG wrote: | Whitehurst went to Rice University for Computer Science | eskatonic wrote: | "Unity would not be where it is today without the impact of his | contributions." | | something something damning with faint praise... | xyst wrote: | No mention of his "exit package" or "golden parachute". Dude is | going to be sitting pretty and then fuck over the next company. | | I'm surprised the board actually did something and held him | accountable. It's a small step but this is a stain that won't be | washed off. | dev_tty01 wrote: | Anyone else wondering if this was all planned? Maybe Riccitiello | was planning to retire and the board asked him to play bad cop | and announce the new fee structure. After he is gone they will | announce something slightly more agreeable that will look good in | comparison. Maybe I'm just too cynical... | j_maffe wrote: | I think you are, in fact, too cynical. They've already | announced the new fee structure which is a lot more sensible. | And before you go "that's how they wanted people to react to | the final structure", there's no way how this thing unfolded | came to the benefit of the company and they'd have been idiots | if this was in any way the plan. | pjmlp wrote: | Finally! | riscy wrote: | > The news isn't a surprise as Unity angered a lot of its loyal | game developers a few weeks ago after pushing through a price | increase based on numbers of downloads -- and then retracted it | after an uproar. | | I thought they only slightly adjusted the new pricing scheme due | to uproar, rather than retract it. | [deleted] | foobiekr wrote: | Amazing to see a CEO paying the price. I wonder if he got some | kind of golden parachute. | BackBlast wrote: | Probably an unpleasant conversation with the board. Resign, or | be fired. | | This is very likely covered in the contract to begin with so | there isn't much room for negotiation unless the board feels | he's breached some significant contract term. | | Nice to see a company really try to make it right. | boeingUH60 wrote: | He's sold over $400mn in Unity shares [1]. He'll be fine. | | 1- https://www.secform4.com/insider-trading/1193857.htm | bigstrat2003 wrote: | It's so messed up when you think about it. He made a decision | (or at minimum allowed it to happen) that will most likely | kill the company in the end. And he gets to profit handsomely | from being fired for that bad decision. | hotnfresh wrote: | The notion of consequences & responsibility at this level, | which is often used to justify high pay (see also: the idle | investor class--"oh, they deserve huge returns because of all | the _risk_ they're taking!") is so fake that the whole thing | would be funny if people didn't seem to think it's actually | real and meaningful. | | "Oh no, I had a terrible outcome and so... me, my children, | and my children's children, at least, will continue to live | among the oligarchs and attend oligarch schools and live in | oligarch places and go to oligarch parties, being incredibly | comfortable and wanting for nothing our whole lives." | | Please, give me those consequences. I promise it'll make me | take everything super-seriously and do a very good job. Lord | knows I don't want _that_ to happen to me. How terrible. | wslh wrote: | May be he doesn't know how to increase revenue without changing | the terms and conditions and leave the position to someone | else? | gofixurcode wrote: | If I were on the board I'd vote he gets a golden cannonball to | the nuts. | wkat4242 wrote: | The board are just covering their own asses. I'm sure they | were aligned on all the plans because the board represent the | shareholders and those have super short term vision these | days. It's a problem that plagues the whole industry. | Exuma wrote: | Or a golden parachute that's been slashed with a knife | throwawayunity wrote: | Unironically the best thing that could have happened to Unity. | | The dude is the definition of short-sighted management that | caters to short-term shareholder gains at the expense of long- | term value. | | Now if only they could undo their acquisition of IronSource... | orliesaurus wrote: | Well, what did you think was gonna happen...the stock tanked | hard!!! | wkat4242 wrote: | This is not bad news for once. A new CEO could really bring back | some goodwill. He was going about it the wrong way and with a | poor attitude (referring to the idiots incident), the malware | company acquisition etc. | yownie wrote: | I'm not familiar to the idiots incident could you summarize? | kevingadd wrote: | https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/18/23269218/unity-ceo- | john-r... | wkat4242 wrote: | Yeah I know the overall context was not as negative as | indicated. | | But someone who thoughtlessly refers to their customers as | "the biggest fucking idiots" really has an attitude problem | that goes deeper than he claims. | Ajay-p wrote: | What ...encouraged the initial decision to increase the price? | Because I can think of a few examples of discouragement, such as | the backlash against Reddit, that _should_ have given the | executives an idea of what _could_ happen as a result. Yet they | went through with it which makes me think: | | a) the company truly believed people would pay; | | b) _They believed_ that the fallout would not be _that bad_ ; or | | c) Worst case, they did not consider fallout at all and just said | raise it. | Macha wrote: | Honestly, Reddit just kind of sat out the backlash and at least | in the short term got their way. So it's one loss for wizards, | one win for Reddit, I could say them rolling the dice on 50/50. | | But they overestimated how locked in their customer base were | and how much more resourced game developers were to challenge | them on their shenanigans than third party Reddit app | developers. | nyanpasu64 wrote: | I've largely left Reddit since they backstabbed third-party | apps and frontends, and seized subreddits and banned | moderators protesting their decision. Checking | https://subredditstats.com, many subreddits (ranging from | smaller ones like CRTgaming, to larger ones like funny) have | had comment volume drop off by 75-90% in July 2023 with no | sign of recovering. So assuming Reddit isn't | throttling/blocking subredditstats from viewing comments (and | making itself look bad), I'd say people _are_ leaving Reddit, | but unfortunately I 'm not sure if any of the community-run | alternatives are as popular as Reddit is now (or was before | the user exodus). | bsder wrote: | > So it's one loss for wizards | | I'm not quite sure about that. | | A _lot_ of groups who defaulted to Reddit actually got off | their ass and set up a Discourse or Discord. I consider | Discord a huge step backward, but those who set up Discourse | groups are now in a much better place. | | So, a _lot_ of the technical people who made Reddit the "go | to" place for searching are now gone. As that half-life of | the knowledge of those groups kicks in, the usefulness of | Reddit is going to slide down. | moffkalast wrote: | For Reddit the alternative is non-existent so people had no | choice but to stay and Reddit knew this very well. It's also | something that's tied into the human reward system and | fosters a sort of addiction which makes any attempt to leave | even harder. | | Unity has none of those things. It's a stone cold tool | designed to make money for game developers and there are | clear alternatives in Unreal and Godot. Now sure there are | people who've based their entire career around knowing Unity, | but those skills are reasonably transferrable. | Hamuko wrote: | I imagine seeing money-printing machines like Genshin Impact | ("HoYoverse [2022] revenue was around 3.844 billion USD and | their overall net income was around 2.27 billion USD") run on | Unity was a great source of encouragement. | noirscape wrote: | Mihoyo specifically has a separate license for the Unity | engine and the source code of Unity itself IIRC, meaning that | Unity likely already struck a separate deal with them on that | matter. | | But yeah, the revenue on everyone else is likely what they | were after. | swatcoder wrote: | It's systemic. | | If you look around lately, _everybody_ is desperately | scrounging around for more revenue and fewer free tiers | /accounts/features/etc. Many of the strategies to do so will | falter or fail, as here, but they're being made all over the | place. | | Either a wave of greed culture happened to spontaneously wash | in, or an investment economy built around perpetual exponential | growth and potato-tossing is preparing for a bleak future. | noirscape wrote: | Gacha games and mobile games in general were the target. | Remember that all the install fee waivers that they announced | initially were dependent on developers using Unity's own ad | broker for mobile games. | | Fate/Grand Order is one of the most profitable games on the | mobile phone market, it literally makes millions and it's | written in Unity. As far as I'm aware, Lasengle (the | developers) don't actually have a Unity source license so | they'd fall under this deal. | | The console/desktop market just... was not a consideration. | mjr00 wrote: | > Fate/Grand Order is one of the most profitable games on the | mobile phone market, it literally makes millions | | Small correction: FG/O makes _billions_. Over 7 billion, in | fact. https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/09/11/fate-grand- | order-hi... | Kiro wrote: | How is it possible? The game looks horrendous. I can | understand Genshin Impact, Supercell games or even Candy | Crush but this? What am I missing? | bsder wrote: | Fate is part of the "Nasuverse" which has been around for | a _long_ time (Fate Stay /Night dates to 2004) and has | the exact kind of superfan whales that leave mobile game | developers salivating. | noirscape wrote: | To put it simply: really good writing, Fate in general | being a super-franchise in the audience of anime viewers | and a lot of whales willing to spend money for jpegs of | their favorite anime girls. | HDThoreaun wrote: | > What ...encouraged the initial decision to increase the | price? | | Probably money. You don't seem to have considered the | alternatives, one of which may have been mass layoffs or even | total failure. Asking for more money is never easy, but I don't | think that means companies just shouldn't do it. | bagels wrote: | Or, the alternative was somehow worse? Run out of cash and fail | to get more investment? | basisword wrote: | Companies can't just continue raising and burning money | forever. At some point they have to charge an amount that's | worth the value they provide. We're weirdly not used to that | concept after a decade or more of low interest rates, but | it's something we're going to need to get familiar with - | paying for things we use that save us or make us money. | bagels wrote: | I agree. People seem to imagine there's some evil cartoon | character twirling a moustache figuring out how to | comically oppress them, when the reality is usually a lot | more mundane. | endisneigh wrote: | I have to give it to them - who knows what they're thinking - but | the fact that they adjusted the pricing scheme and that the | leader is leaving at least suggests they're taking (and have | took) the feedback seriously. | | That being said, even before the drama, unity was a sinking ship | that was not profitable. Something will have to give eventually. | basisword wrote: | >> That being said, even before the drama, unity was a sinking | ship that was not profitable. | | Surely the new pricing is the solution to that? The fact that | we have these massive companies, creating complex software, | used by tens of thousands of people to build their own | companies, and they are unprofitable is insane. Their original | pricing scheme was a mess, but charging more generally and | becoming profitable is good for them and therefore good for the | tens of thousands of companies building their businesses using | Unity software (given that Unity doesn't die and they don't | have to retool their entire dev stack). | Nition wrote: | > Surely the new pricing is the solution to that? | | Not directly. | | $1,625,000,000USD spent buying Weta. | | $4,400,000,000USD spent buying IronSource (I think? It's a | weird deal). | | At 20c per install, every person in the world would have to | install four Unity games just to make back what was spent on | those two deals. At the lower 1c per install rate, everyone | in the world needs to install 75 Unity games. | | Plus salary for what is apparently 9000 employees. | | Conversely, let's say in reality everyone in the world | installs on average 0.1 Unity games per year, and that the | average rate earned per install is 1c (probably generous | because most Unity games won't earn above the revenue | threshold at all). That makes Unity $8,061,241/year.It would | take Unity 750 years to earn back what they spent on those | two deals. | | But it seems like the goal is the use promises of _not_ | having to pay the fee as leverage to get devs buying related | services. For instance, they suggest you might earn "credits | on the Unity Runtime Fee based on the adoption of Unity | services beyond the Editor, such as Unity Gaming Services or | Unity LevelPlay mediation for mobile ad-supported games." | KaoruAoiShiho wrote: | I mean John fucked up the delivery of the message, somehow | the cheapest pricing scheme I've ever seen was interpreted by | the customers as an example of dastardly extreme greed, and | the fix was to roll out a much more expensive pricing scheme. | Something was lost in the sauce and that was all John's | fault. | wkat4242 wrote: | The biggest problem was applying it to already released | products. You have to give the developers the chance to | pivot their business model to meet the new reality. They | can't do that for already sold products that they would | still be charged for under the new scheme. | Root_Denied wrote: | If they tried to enforce that on previous version they'd | get sued from all directions for contract violations. It | was never going to work like that, there's no way Unity | could have even afforded to defend themselves against | such a barrage of lawsuits. | | So the only question remaining is this: Did they announce | these changes with the intent to walk them back to | something else, or are they really that stupid? | | My bet is on the latter, honestly. | caffeinewriter wrote: | I know for me (as someone who would likely never have had | to pay a dime under either pricing scheme) the crux of the | issue was unilateral, retroactive changes to a license that | was supposed to be tied to the software version, as well as | the nebulous "we'll know what to charge you because of our | proprietary data model, trust us" messaging that they first | went with. | | That, combined with the fact that there was no safeguard | for the install fee to be capped at some percentage of | gross revenue made it so clear that they were trying to get | something out of their free to play market specifically, | which seems to have been to force their F2P customers to | use their Unity Ads service over Applovin or similar | competitors since they gave credits towards the runtime fee | if you vertically integrated with Unity. | dagmx wrote: | The issue also was that the lowest pricing tier was | horrible for a lot of the companies that were Unity's | forte. It was massively out of touch. | lofaszvanitt wrote: | Idiots... someone started the idiocy and the I eat everything | monkeys regurgigated it on Youtube. Conjuring all kinds of | nonexistent looming threats. JR did the right thing, and the | idiots crucified him for it. | | The changes only affected those who had ample revenue from | their games, so why is it frowned upon that they wanted a | miniscule share of their success? When Steam and Epic pockets | 30%? | 0l wrote: | FWIW Epic's cut is 12%, not 30%. | eropple wrote: | That wasn't at all why people got mad. The unilateral claims | (perceived or otherwise) on prior releases of the engine, | claiming that the platforms (e.g., Microsoft) would just pay | it--it was badly messaged, badly considered, and the initial | feedback from their customer base was blown off and | dismissed. | | None of it was handled well. | bluescrn wrote: | Steam could take 90% and the 'gaming community' would | probably defend it (and therefore developers don't want to be | seen criticising the almighty Valve) | | Epic got a lot of hate for merely trying to compete, to | weaken the Steam near-monopoly over PC game distribution. | | With Unity though, the outrage was over a loss of trust more | than the cost of the fees themselves. And it came at a time | when it seemed that the engine had been stagnating for years, | after they'd made significant redundancies and cancelled the | Gigaya project (their attempt to actually make a game | themselves with their engine - which could have been very | beneficial, creating internal pressure to fix/improve provlem | areas), and while the main competition seemed to be adding | exciting features at a much more rapid pace. | AlexandrB wrote: | Even _if_ you 're right about the pricing. Launching this | change with so many unanswered questions (like how they're | going to track "installs") was going to end in disaster. | Should have gotten their ducks in a row first. | hoc wrote: | Worst thing was that they had a collection of pre-made FAQs | that proudly confirmed all the worst ways to understand the | changes and actually left no real path for "misunderstood | what we meant". | | This whole stunt was a painful communications nightmare but | also the rude asymmetric breaking of trust that most people | saw in it. | | So, this final step was needed for cleaning up that mess | (and it still might need some detail work, if one looks at | that apology interview), no matter how deeply strategic one | wants to look at firing a CEO. | notpachet wrote: | Not to mention the loss of trust from having the new | pricing retroactively affect already-launched titles, as | opposed to giving developers advanced notice of a policy | change at some point in the future. No one wants that kind | of unpredictability from a critical dependency. | Nullabillity wrote: | They're still trying to roll out the new pricing scheme, they | only backpedaled on it being retroactive. They still haven't: | | 1. Actually scrapped the install fee | | 2. Scrapped their ads product that this bullshit was all | supposed to push | | 3. Made a binding commitment to not try this shit again in the | future | | 4. Fired the board that hired JR ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-10-09 23:00 UTC)