Unity? More Like Pootitty! (The Jimquisition) 

The goal of all businesses is to become landlords.

Saying "only a small amount of developers will get hit by this so it doesn't matter" is like saying "that serial killer only killed less than 1% of the population so why are they even in jail?"

This isn't even greed, this is bare naked avarice. Years of goodwill flushed in an instant.

Riccitello is the kind of person you hope goes on a maiden voyage of an experimental submarine to explore the ocean floor

I know EA isn't technically to blame for all this just because the guy who used to run the place is now running unity into the ground, but fuck it, I blame this on EA

When i lived in South Korea, i didn't have a computer and would go to a gaming cafe and download my games to play for a few hours a few times a week. It's wild to think someone in that situation could cost the developers more money than they spent on it by having to dowload it a ton of times

Wealth Gatekeeping. That's basically what it is. A way they can make even more money while simultaneously preventing otherwise successful people from being as successful as them, they're literally creating a gate and saying you can't pass, and if you approach, we'll charge you into poverty.

Always important to remember that anyone below the executive level should not be harassed for executive decisions. Managers are iffy - but even their bad decisions are often limited to harassing the workers. The workers have almost no say in anything, and are often punished for any public comments against anyone above them.

You gotta love how Unity's social media accounts tried to clear up the "confusion" surrounding Unity's decision, when no one was confused about it; everyone knew and understood what Unity was doing and thought it was shit. I honestly feel bad for the social media managers, though, who basically have no choice but to regurgitate this corporate dribble.

When Unity said they'll just know the difference between how a game was installed, my first thought was "What, so Unity is spyware?"

Today they had the sheer fucking gall to put out a "sorry you were confused" Sorry, not sorry 'apology' on Twitter. The sheer lack of self-awareness is bloody staggering.

Apparently the dude who came up with the runtime fee is a former EA executive. Wow, he never learnt any morality after getting the push from his last job, did he? Edit: And now I've just seen that 'The European Games Developer Federation is calling for the EU to step in to the Unity fiasco and implement new regulatory frameworks'. Imagine being such of a fuck up that they have to come up with new laws to stop it?

Apparently at some point, Unity pivoted and tried to say that instead of developers, platforms were going to have to pay the fees instead. Because of course the likes of Apple, Microsoft, Epic and Valve are just going to dole out millions of dollars without protest instead of simply banning any Unity-engine game from their platforms.

I was given a chance to learn Unity a couple years ago and turned my boss down. Never have I been so glad my laziness kicked in.

Among other similar situation, this reminds me of what happened with Wizards of the Coast in January. An unfinished idea to squeeze more money out of customers and developers get squirted out causing outrage at all levels. And much like then, even if these ideas for changes get fully backtracked on, the damage has been done. Devs and customers will have jumped ship to a more respectable alternative because the company has painfully reminded everyone that at ANY point in time, they will attempt to screw you over so long as they can get away with it.

The thing that really got me was the announcement where they said that to be "eligible" for this fee they would have to cross a certain threshold. If you're paying the fee, you're not "eligible" for it, you're "liable" for it. That choice of language highlights just how aware they were that this was a fuck up, and the extent they went to to sugar coat it.

Unity hasn't "stepped into it". Rather, it rented a backhoe, dug a big trench, and all their execs shit in it, then built an olympic diving board for a quarter billion dollars and then, finally, said executive took very artistic dives into their own shit.

I think the worst part is that the suits absolutely knew this was going down bad because the CEO sold several shares before it went down The bastards absolutely knew this was going to kill the company

Since Steph didn't bring it up, I feel like it's important to note that Riccitello and several other execs at Unity all sold large portions of their stock in Unity before this happened. This may well be another case of rich assholes planning to throw a company down the toilet and knowing well how bad of an idea the install fees would be.

Just like the OGL Wizard's of the Coast debacle, companies want the benefits of an open, passive, collaborative ecosystem, while having the control, 'recurrent revenue', and slice of the pie of a proprietary system. Just like how most of the internet ran on a little thing called Angular, one decision eradicated its use. Even if Unity gets its act together, it's over, the trust has been cashed out for a pittance.

I'm inclined to give Wacky Raceland a pass because the Flintstones comic that was part of the same line is genuinely one of the best comics I've ever read. "We participated in a genocide, Barn" coming From Fred Flintstone's mouth is both hilarious and sets up one of the realest looks at state violence I've ever seen.

And it's gotten even better: Apparently THEY (Unity) will decide what is considered a charity vs. a "political group" and included a freakin' children's hospital as a "political group" the devs from Orgynizer on Steam have noted. Doesn't matter whether it's federally registered as a charity or what. THEY will decide whether a charity is a charity, thus choosing whether they are exempt from the fees or not.

Being told that you're smarter than a game executive is the kind of reassurance perhaps best appreciated on a Monday. Deep down, you know it's true, but it feels good to hear at the start of a long week. Cheers.

I'm curious as to how the hell the Unity license agreement is written in the first place such that they thought a "We're going to retroactively make you give us more money because fuck you" clause tacked on afterwards is even enforceable.

Pretty much what we expect from executives. Pure rot

Sterling certainly called their shot, like a Babe Ruth of game journalism. And they’re all the more wonderful for it.

Unity is like that one kid in your group for a school project that did absolutely none of the work but still think they deserve to get the good grade that everybody else busted their butts for. This is Unity basically saying they're somehow entitled to the creativity in developer's own heads simply for using the technology. Imagine if canvas and paint companies started charging artists for every art project they work on just cause the artists didn't make the paint and canvas themselves.

Devs if you are reading this: if you're not almost done your project, ditch Unity. If you're almost done and Unity walks this back, then press on...but plan on ditching Unity for your next projects. Good coverage JS, as always.

I just...its so easy to just...not be greedy. Just make your normal profits like anyone else, it worked for years, there is literally ZERO reason for these companies to do this crap time and time again, only greed and delusion :/

gotta say: it's been fun to see people make tutorials going from unity to godot (an open source software). in the past week.

The Unity executives also sold off a ton of shares in the company in the months leading up to this. They should go to jail for insider trading. And I hope they're sued into bankruptcy for trying to retroactively apply this to existing business contracts.

It never ceases to baffle me that these """people""" (read: corporate scum) get to where they are. Gives new meaning to "failing upward"

I've been looking forward to this since the very minute the news dropped, never been so excited for Monday in my life

6 months of unity development and im now having to scrape everything and move to unreal and im one of the lucky ones

Until capitalism is destroyed, none of that mental health can recover fully. I feel for the indie devs, too.

Back when I was at the New York Film Academy's one year game design program we were taught to design in Unity. Yet another reason I'm still grateful that I never pursued a carrier in Game Design because if my portfolio of work was going to be used by Parasites like John Riccitiello to squeeze a single penny out of me I'd hunt them down like the animals they are and..well I'll leave the to your imaginations. Speaking of John I feel that Goichi Suda went too easy on him by making him the main villain of No More Heroes 3 and having Travis beating the tar out of him in Travis Strike Again.

As soon as a company says they need to "clarify" a policy because there's some "confusion" about it... you know that 1) they dun goofed 2) they know they dun goofed and 3) they're going to carry on dungoofing

Don't forget that we can't trust Unity anymore, but that former EA CEO no matter where he goes after this if he eventually is forced to leave. Whatever company or industry he goes to, if they are willing to hire him, stay away from that company

You know, as someone who doesn't follow executive movement news, I actually had no idea John Riccitiello had moved from EA to Unity, and knowing that now, this move makes SO much more sense.

Something about this reminds me of the extremely low income and asset limits placed on folks receiving government benefits in the U.S. There's a built-in tipping point where being too successful will send you right back into poverty because you'll make or (temporarily) have enough money to get your benefits cut off but not enough to afford the cost of living without those benefits.

The developer of Cult of the Lamb tweeted and said if this goes into effect they’re going to delete the game completely in response. So one of the best and most creative indie games of last year will be straight up gone because of Unity’s greed :/

I'm a previous dev in an AA studio that used Unity (left to do freelance), between that and school I've been using the engine for 7 years. This announcement made me learn UE5. Even IF they decided to fully retract, I will not use Unity going forward because they have proven to be untrustworthy. That's on top of them continuously refusing to fix bugs, not adding anything of substance compared to the competition, and regularly introducing half-baked "features" that they never finish while the already existing ones are left in a legacy state and may or may not break with any update.

All the regular Unity employees I've ever met have been nice people genuinely excited about helping people use the tools they've made. I wish they had any power over how the company they work for does business :/

I did think that a company could implode in a worse way than Wizards of the Coast did, but color me suprised

I wonder if we'll see developers throwing their game in a bundle for the same price when it gets near 200K and then raise their regular game price to something ridiculously high to stop regular installs before they hit the mark. . ..

I feel like charging retro-actively has to be illegal. How can I sell you a sandwich for $10 and then a month later charge you 20c for each slice of bread?

How would retroactively charging studios even be legal? They're changing the contract after it's already been signed and just expecting that it's binding.

if John Riccidildo is the CEO of course he gets the totality of the blame for this. There's no way Unity could do thgis without the approval of the CEO

Unity: "so, we're going to charge Microsoft for every single download of a game they put on Gamepass that uses Unity." Microsoft: "Really? Do you REALLY think that's going to happen? Do you REALLY think we're going to let you do that?" 🤣

Kinda was expecting the episode title to be "United We Fall" but this episode title checks out too hahaha.

Yeah, as soon as I saw this story I knew exactly what this week's Jimquisition would be.

I also found it amusing that a lot of people didn't know John Riccotello's (I don't respect him enough to look up how to spell his name) history. Some of these people are old enough to have known about him before. This is why the mutant power of remembering things is a power I wish more people had. We might be able to squash these things from happening in the future if people could remember the past. People that have the terrible mindset of infinite greed like Rickodicko should be watched and boycotted by the consumer base.

Here's my (probably crackpot) theory: Genshin Impact runs on Unity (or so I've read) and has been making frankly embarrassing amounts of dosh since it released back in 2020 and someone high up in Unity's dev team wanted a piece of that particular pie. Again, this is just a theory. A _GAME_ theo- _(gets shot)_

Now I want to see a Wacky Races movie done by the same people who did Mad Max Fury Road

Can the SEC please charge these monsters with insider trading already?! They literally sold their stock before announcing this change. This is clearly stock manipulation.

The only thing I don't agree with, insofar as developers reacting, is their promise to cut ties "unless" things improve. Given the current state of this industry, you absolutely need to have PERMANENT consequences to shit like this, otherwise the ONLY lesson execs are going to learn is to boil the frog more slowly next time.

Excellent...... i was so worried after a week of absolute fervor on all platforms about the ex EA president doing the most EA thing ever. Though i'm still indecisive cause i remember all those asset flipping con merchants you dealt with........... like *The Romaine Brothers* Also, Jim, you're eyeshadow game is fucking amazing

There's also the fact there have been suspicious stock trading activity in the leadup to the announcement.

When we are rid of CEOs, entitled investors and corrupt politicians the world over. The better off we will be. I say this as a disabled person facing homelessness because of the current UK government.

Unity just came out that the charity exception doesn't count for "political" charities.

Unity has been gradually chipping away at their good will for the past several years, but this just chucked whatever scraps of good will were left off a cliff

It should also be noted that a number of the executives at Unity recently sold off their shares right before the announcement. Definitely not suspicious timing at all. Also Wacky Raceland was part of a whole series of DC/Hannah-Barbera collaborations that 'updated' their old properties with new visions. Some were good (The Flintstones one is surprisingly well written). Others were Wacky Raceland.

Thank you for covering this. I've been watching the news unfold in real time as this week's gone on, and it's been such a frustrating situation all round. What's also concerning is that, if Unity were to do this successfully, other companies would follow it out of greed. Alternatively, even if Unity 100% backpedalled and cancelled the new fee idea, what might they try to pull in the future? Trust has been broken.

Even if Unity's claim about '10% of developers' is true, that 10% includes basically every noteworthy indie game you've heard of.

My friend that's an artist asked me why I was using Godot instead of Unity for the game idea we're collaborating on, and this is a big part of it. I knew for profit companies will only ever alter the deal in their favor.

I'm not a game developer, but I am a developer, a good one to say without false humility. I "played" with game engines for like 20 years. Unity is... usable, for sure, but it is a clusterfuck code-wise. It doesn't know what it wants to be. I looked into Godot4 lately as it also has C# support and from what I saw it's pretty much Unity with seemingly clearer ideas. And it's truly free. Also, the void in the market will be filled. Expect many new engines popping up or gaining popularity as people look for new outlets for their creativity. I wrote a game in XNA that Microsoft sadly killed (sidenote: Stardew Valley was written with it!), I wrote games in just pure C++, Unity can go suck a malformed one.

This feels very reminiscent of the OGL debacle with Hasbro and a very similar overreach by the company.

The DC/LooneyTunes/HannaBarbara cartoon crossovers were actually pretty good as a whole. The Flintstones and ElmerFudd was really good

its fuckin over lads. I legit haven't seen the entire industry collectively unite (hehe geddit) against a single issue like this.

EA never cease to impress

Steph serving us some good realness today

Anyone else think this will not survive professional scrutiny, or is that just me? Seriously...I suspect one charge of embezzlement from a lawyer who knows what he/she/whatever is doing, and Unity will CRUMBLE.

That Megacrit quote is deeeelisius, wow. I was looking forward to what you had to say about this clusterfuck, Steph, and you did not disappoint. It really smacks of Wizards of the Coast, doesn't it?

I feel bad for the workers on the ground floor, because it's really only the people at the top who believe this kind of scheme was going to work. They destroyed their company's trust and disrespected their user base, as if that was ever going to be any different. These kinds of actions destroy a company because once you lose trust, winning it back is nearly impossible.

The History of a Man (Riccitello, that is, if he is even worthy of the title any more, not in a toxic macho way, but more in the fashion of whether such actions still afford someone Human status) that never learned that gamers, developers, and the public at large don't want to be drained of their every last penny, much less to "enjoy" an escape from the pressures of the world. Although, more and more each day, we see that those who make the pressures of reality inescapable will make retaliation and organised action inevitable. As I write this, it's been a few days since Marvel VFX workers announced the decision to unionise. This is pertinent, as it shows that those who make our entertainment are demanding to be seen as human, and they are now organising to demand their humanity. And actually, I don't think that Riccitello and his ilk are going to continue to fail upwards, especially if they continue to ignore the mood music, ruin company after company, until their very names become toxic in not just Videogames, not just entertainment, but somewhere that their utter failure style would cause influential investors serious consequences, and/or actual pain, leading to a very satisfying moment for the rest of us. Or even if they try to force a union to blink, and end up out on their asses, possibly with a very costly lawsuit, or even class action, to worry about. Oh yes, one way or another, things are going to change, and the Koticks and Riccitellos of this world are going to feel the effects of it. And SOON. Thank Lonelygirl15 for Stephy Sterling, and all Avarice shall Burn!

Unreal should come up with an engine migration tool.

I've been looking forward to this video since this shit cropped up. Riccitiello is so out of touch he could have been in a Hall and Oates music video. Love you Steph!

This whole thing has made me seriously consider switching to Godot

Wizards of the coasts corpse isn't even cold yet and Unity execs really went and "I'll have a bit of what they are having"

I'm watching this at home recovering from a successful vaginoplasty last week. Thank God for Stephanie!

There was a whole series of weirdly dark takes on Hannah-Barbara cartoons as comics a few years back. I still have the Flintstones one on my "to-read" list (from friends genuinely recommending it), but I did rather like the Snagglepuss and Scooby-Doo ones (though the latter had more than its share of flaws, esp in the back half). I know that the lines were created from a weird choice by dumb execs, but I'm glad that some of them turned out to be genuinely good and/or fun reads.

Always love the return of the Cornflakes homunculus even if just for a moment

Again, Im just stunned by the amounts of crazy editing and clip usage. Well done!

"We're adding a fee, and MICROSOFT'S GONNA PAY FOR IT!" So, did Unity execs and lawyers sit down with the execs and lawyers of these other companies to discuss all this? Or were they going to spring it on them like they did with everyone else? I'm also wondering about their special "proprietary software" they can't talk about because REASONS. It's going to be some sort of cute little malware package disguised as "essential software" that fucks both the developer and the customer, isn't it? Wonderful video! Thanks for covering this one!

The distillation of every corporation is laid bare in the fairytail the Goose that laid the Golden Egg. Unity created an okay-ish developer suite once and then made passive income by effectively doing little more than keeping the lights on basically infinite near effort/cost-free profit but it wasn't enough they had try and squeeze out moregolden eggs faster.

Cassette Beast really nailed "the ultimate villains of all realities" 😂❤ F*cking landlords.

Rest in peace, Horrid Spider 3d asset. You were too beautiful for this world.

Imagine your studio going bankrupt, not because your game was bad, but because you game was too good. Fucking hell.

I hope this blows up in their faces so hard it sends a message to all other greedy executives in the game industry. It's disgusting that they pulled this shit.

Personal note: Hope you are being ans feeling better since your transition. You are a smart caring and honest person when it come to a topic you care and knows about. Thank You :)

I hope we get a recap of how all this shook out once the ripples ripple, snowballs snowball, fallout falls out, etc. This'll leave a mark on the industry.

What is the painting at 11:06 from?

Stephanie, you can't get me flustered with all that Mommy Dommy talk like that while I'm on lunch. Anyway, yeah, this has been a great laugh. Glad to see the Official Takedown from the Sterling themselves. Thank God for You 🤘

I was not expecting Steph to compliment me today. Even if being better than an executive in any way isn't a terribly high bar. Still got the warm fuzzies to carry me through Monday. Awww. Thank god for you!

12:45 Question: I think I saw or heard of a a game with limited ammo as part of the gameplay (emphasize head shot or planning WHEN to start shooting) Does anyone know if the game is actually out, or there's others like that?

Love your new editor, such great work that fits into your style effortlessly. Glad to tune in every Monday.

Also this fee is absolutely dumb because it can punish someone who made a surprise success for what was a casual project - imagine if the creators of things like Flappy Bird or Among Us made them on Unity after this went through.... utterly daft.

They've started walking it back, but only by saying "we're sorry that you misunderstood us in thinking that our Really Terrible Idea™ is actually really terrible" Too little too late. As long as the same prick is in charge, they can't ever be trusted not to pull the same shit again later

Let's not forget that Suda51 made Riccitiello into a villain in No More Heroes Travis Strikes again and NMH3. I WONDER WHY.

What is the Zim clip at 4:28 from?