Unity: An open letter to our community
Unity: An open letter to our community
An open letter from Marc Whitten to the Unity community in September 2023.
You're viewing a single thread.
The new term seems very... reasonable. They took the lesson to the heart and won't try to alter the deal again in the future, right? Right?
Also they fired the misguided VP who made that awful decision, right?
They obliterated most of the goodwill they had and long term this stupid greedy move probably will have cost them more than the change could ever have gotten them. This is what quick buck exec's van do to a company
Cost them more? I don't think people realize Unity's been working at a loss every year since the beginning, burning investor money. Just shutting down is quite frankly more profitable than continuing as is.
So they started with a completely stupid business model, then.
Almost every tech company functions in this manner today.
Modern tech cycle is basically keep operating at a loss to increase userbase. And then one of the 3 scenarios happen. 1. Most obvious, they run out of investor money and make drastic unpopular changes to make profit as seen here. 2. Sell company to an even bigger tech company, who will then most likely kill it too. 3. Become google/meta/etc. themselves, which is the least likely scenario.
It would have been perfectly fine if they did it this way to start. Tie the new licensing costs to a future engine version, give lead time before you start collecting data, and have the number be manageable.
But trust in such an absolutely critical vendor that your entire business relies on, and they told you they're perfectly fine trying to retroactively change contracts. The uncertainty of legal costs to protect your rights is a huge concern.