Unity exec tells Ars he’s on a mission to earn back developer trust

Interview: "It was not our intent to nickel-and-dime it, but it came across that way."

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[C.M. Allen]

You want our trust? It's going to be hard it earn it back, but ousting CEO John Riccitiello would be a great step in that direction.

He's just the company's figurehead. You'd just let him be used as a scapegoat to protect all the other people who helped put this stupid plan in motion. Yes, he's one of the people responsible, but just one among many. And they ALL have to go. Because they ALL thought this was a 'good idea.' This wasn't a 'misstep' or 'mistake' or however they try to frame it. This was showing everyone, in no uncertain terms, exactly how the people in charge of Unity see it and the developers who use it. Which means they WILL try again, all at once or a few baby steps at a time, to bring Unity to this exact same place eventually. Because that's what they want. That's how they think things should work.

 

[C.M. Allen]

Why do they "need to go"?
Fuck Unity. If they are so tone deaf, out of touch, and mustache twirlingly evil, there's but a single response I would consider.
Everyone out of the pool that the C suite just took a massive shit into.
Rest assured they will do this again.

Did they just stop teaching the fable of The Scorpion and the Frog???
"It's in my nature to do this"...
Unity already stung the community once, so you stupidly think they "learned their lesson"? It's not them that would have the lesson to learn, it's all of us.
#FuckUnity

Because the people developing Unity aren't the people in charge of its marketing and finances. One group needs to go. The other group had no say in the matter. Thus your hostility is misplaced, and very shortsighted. Unity isn't the metaphorical scorpion. Unity's leadership is. But if you kill off Unity, you just further cement Unreal's market dominance. And how long do think it'll be before Unreal's management starts pulling the same shit with that kind of power? Because they absolutely will. The capitalist economic system demands it in pursuit of infinite growth. Or have you forgotten that Tencent already owns nearly half of Unreal Technologies?

Let me be perfectly clear: Unreal's favorable terms right now are part of building an ecosystem to lock the industry in. They are doing the exact same thing Adobe did with Photoshop and others. Once they become the defacto industry standard, they have no reason to play nice with their customers anymore. They can (and will) start aggressively fleecing them, because they can't just pick up and leave anymore. The entire industry, from the training pipeline and up, will have invested too heavily to extricate itself from Unreal without massive loss of profits. Just like with Adobe's products.

 

[C.M. Allen]

Since they aren't finished updating their terms and contracts, that remains to be seen. The possibility exists off course. But passing judgement now, in the middle of a shitstorm, is uninformed.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time. There's no mistaking the actions of Unity's management, no matter how much they may or may not back peddle on it after the fact. They WENT there, eyes wide open. Nobody forced them. Nobody twisted their arm. They CHOSE this stupidity. This is exactly what the folks in charge of Unity are like, PR smokescreens removed. They're arrogant. They're ignorant. They're shortsighted. They're greedy. They're shitty people who deserve no respect and no quarter. Grovel and snivel at their boots if you want, but that only makes you pathetic.

 

[C.M. Allen]

That's one way to view life.

I subscribe to a different view: "The opportunity to get wiser is for everyone. When they do we should praise them for their progress; not ridicule them for their past ignorance".

This isn't the first time Unity's 'leadership' has pulled these kinds of asinine stunts. And the level of stupidity on display with this stunt is inexcusable. Nobody with any sense couldn't see this disaster coming from miles away. But Unity's leadership still chose to go there. Because they're arrogant. They're ignorant. They're shortsighted. They're greedy. They're shitty people who deserve no respect and no quarter.

 

[C.M. Allen]

If they got wiser last time, then they can be afforded the opportunity to do so again.

If they don't, I'll queue up with the mob. But I'll wait until there is actual knowledge to support it.

Get wiser? Are you kidding me? This is even MORE asinine than their previous stunts.

Once again, when someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.

 

[C.M. Allen]

But Apple buying it doesn’t really solve the trust problem. Apple is notorious for eventually making an acquired piece of software macOS/iOS-only or losing interest and letting it wither altogether.

Apple also has a troubling track record of supporting gaming for a hot minute and then just...not supporting gaming at all or 'supporting it' in a passive-aggressive destructive manner that nobody wants to engage with.

 

[C.M. Allen]

Um, right. The only way GIMP will Photoshop behind in the dust soon is if you redefine the word "soon" to be the one Elon Musk was using when he described the time schedule for Tesla's FSD. Back when Adobe launched the subscription model, photographers and graphics designers cried bloody murder...and dejectedly went back to using Photoshop, because it was the only viable solution out there. Life hasn't changed today. GIMP doesn't even register for most non-Linux users. Don't believe me, go look at DPReview's forums. Searching for "photoshop" returns 180K results while "gimp" returns 9800 results, and the first two threads to hit are from people saying they found GIMP too hard.

GIMP's problem is GIMP's developer. They've gone out of their way to make everything as different from Photoshop in every way possible that transitioning TO GIMP is a nuisance right from the start. It defies all conventions of virtually any other image editor out there today just for the asinine sake of being 'different.' And let me tell you -- when a developer is that deliberately obtuse, it does NOT say good things about their priorities. Because a SMART developer makes picking up and using their software as easy and seamless as possible, and that means building around industry and user conventions and expected standards. Not ignoring them 'just because.'

By comparison, Paint.net is MS Paint but with a whole bunch of bells and whistles added to it, in ways that follow pretty much all the industry-standard conventions, which makes picking up and using Paint.net virtually seamless, regardless of what other image editor you usually use.