Unity Boss John "Devs are F-ing Morons" Riccitiello gets "Retired"

[PocketNerd]

(first time doing this, hopefully I did good!)

Summary

 

Unity3D's CEO, President, and guy-that-loves-to-pissof-gamedevs John Riccitiello has retired, effective immediately from the company.

 

Quotes

Quote

today announced that John Riccitiello will retire as President, Chief Executive Officer, Chairman and a member of the Company’s Board of Directors, effective immediately. James M. Whitehurst has been appointed Interim Chief Executive Officer, President and a member of the Board. Roelof Botha, Lead Independent Director of the Unity Board, has been appointed Chairman. Mr. Riccitiello will continue to advise Unity to ensure a smooth transition.

 

My thoughts

Good, maybe Unity can finally move on and repair the damage dealt (doubt it, cause IronSource probably gets to put in someone they want now). Let's hope they bring the Gigaya project back.

 

Sources

https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20231009494331/en/Unity-Announces-Leadership-Transition/?feedref=JjAwJuNHiystnCoBq_hl-d2-_-DMJyMm3uYmtOy2XFwcvlLbwpKQTgkxGMXSeZO97dI9_69nqXXndEkzoNy31peBvhKXN8xoKDPrCnMXhC58cMd5Jhr97vTYoLZQbGkSxJ0LM3ryl-yrNKrvMa0Wtg%3D%3D

[hishnash]

I expect what will happen is like Epic they will end up laying off a load more staff members and end up pushing up the prices trying to milk as much as they can from the few existing very profitable games that have already used the engine, games were the publishers more or less no longer have any devs working (so have no choice but to stick with it).  The big in app purchase, lootbox mobile games that make millions of $ a day in revenue. 

Right now investors are not lining up to bankroll these engines and as they are they do not pull in enough money to cover the current R&D spend they feel they need to put in to remain relevant long term. 

[Brooksie359]

Honestly they broke the trust on something super important in the relationship between them and devs. I mean if you potentially mess with people's ability to make money and then take it back nobody is going to want to risk it especially if the stakes are so high. If they broke trust on something minor I could see them making a comeback. I mean who would choose unity knowing that you are basically rolling the dice on them changing the pricing of the engine when there are plenty of alternatives that don't have the same risk. The only thing I can think of is maybe devs having more experience on unity. Even then is the experience worth the risk of your game not being profitable or even costing them money? Honestly I can't imagine who was the one who signed off on such a monumental bad decision. 

[Brooksie359]

9 minutes ago, hishnash said:

I expect what will happen is like Epic they will end up laying off a load more staff members and end up pushing up the prices trying to milk as much as they can from the few existing very profitable games that have already used the engine, games were the publishers more or less no longer have any devs working (so have no choice but to stick with it).  The big in app purchase, lootbox mobile games that make millions of $ a day in revenue. 

Right now investors are not lining up to bankroll these engines and as they are they do not pull in enough money to cover the current R&D spend they feel they need to put in to remain relevant long term. 

Isn't Unreal engine a flat percentage of revenue? I mean I think the main reason why Unitys new model was so upsetting was because it was incredibly unpredictable. I mean from what I understand the revenue share model of Unreal is very straightforward and I don't think it's and unfair model for what you get tbh. 

[SorryBella]

1 hour ago, PocketNerd said:

Good

 

Unity has a Board of Director, this changes nothing.

 

I fully expect the future policy to still pass.

[Xijit]

Please look into exactly how bad the people replacing John are:

 

Jim Whitehurst, the interim CEO, was the guy who decided it was a great idea to sell Red Hat to IBM & also the guy who oversaw the sale of Tumblr to Yahoo ... but in good news he was the guy who navigated Delta out of Bankruptcy. So while he lacks any form of experience with the video game industry, he is likely the perfect choice to guide Unity through the wonderful journey it is going to have next year.

 

Roelof Botha, the new permanent chairman of Unity's board, is the principal board member that that pushed Unity to spend $4.4 billion to buy IroinSource, the Advertisement delivery platform that was at the center of the the recent install fee blunder ... the same IronSource that has been repeatedly flagged by cybersecurity providers as malicious malware. He made his way onto Unity's board by being a senior partner at Sequoia Capital, an investment firm very well known for taking over companies that are popular with consumers, running them into the ground with drastic management changes and belligerent cash grabs, then offloading the brand name for a larger corporation to use like a sock puppet lovingly crafted from the taxidermied corpse of a beloved family pet.

 

Source: go to unity's home page, click on the "about us" link, then scroll down to the section that names all of unity's top level managers & board members ... then start plugging those names into google, it is like the VIP section of a "everything wrong with the world" convention.

[Kisai]

5 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Isn't Unreal engine a flat percentage of revenue? I mean I think the main reason why Unitys new model was so upsetting was because it was incredibly unpredictable. I mean from what I understand the revenue share model of Unreal is very straightforward and I don't think it's and unfair model for what you get tbh. 

Unreal's flat percentage makes it a bit less viable for indies since it basically requires you to sell everything at $20 or more to make only a few dollars. Where as Unity's previous terms were not entirely unreasonable, but it did essentially let you make F2P games without needing to pay Unity anything.

 

So yes, the target of these license's is to kill the F2P+microtransaction/gacha/lootbox business model. A F2P game meanwhile under the Unreal model costs nothing to sell the "game", and any money made from lootbox nonsense goes into the calculation of how much you have to give Unreal.

 

But these business models change over time. Install fees essentially turn Unity into a software rental platform, and people don't like that.

 

[Doobeedoo]

Oh they definitely f'ed though. Personally don't care about Unity at all though. I can think of maybe few games that were good even that were using it. But hey, there are few alt os engines no and also UE anyway.

[Wh0_Am_1]

Unity is a big company, I doubt that this is really going to stop them this is likely just another PR move to hold over the masses until the outrage settles down. Hopefully we see decent alternatives soon.. no time like the present to bring a new or more likely update an old game engine to market for competition. I am sure that a lot of indy devs will flock to a new competitor at this point.

[leadeater]

11 hours ago, PocketNerd said:

John Riccitiello has retired

I'm not good with spelling but I think they misspelled 'fired'

[Taf the Ghost]

Unity had a 17 Billion USD buyout offer last year.  They really, really should have taken it.

[demonix00]

11 hours ago, Xijit said:

Please look into exactly how bad the people replacing John are:

 

Jim Whitehurst, the interim CEO, was the guy who decided it was a great idea to sell Red Hat to IBM & also the guy who oversaw the sale of Tumblr to Yahoo ... but in good news he was the guy who navigated Delta out of Bankruptcy. So while he lacks any form of experience with the video game industry, he is likely the perfect choice to guide Unity through the wonderful journey it is going to have next year.

 

Roelof Botha, the new permanent chairman of Unity's board, is the principal board member that that pushed Unity to spend $4.4 billion to buy IroinSource, the Advertisement delivery platform that was at the center of the the recent install fee blunder ... the same IronSource that has been repeatedly flagged by cybersecurity providers as malicious malware. He made his way onto Unity's board by being a senior partner at Sequoia Capital, an investment firm very well known for taking over companies that are popular with consumers, running them into the ground with drastic management changes and belligerent cash grabs, then offloading the brand name for a larger corporation to use like a sock puppet lovingly crafted from the taxidermied corpse of a beloved family pet.

 

Source: go to unity's home page, click on the "about us" link, then scroll down to the section that names all of unity's top level managers & board members ... then start plugging those names into google, it is like the VIP section of a "everything wrong with the world" convention.

You forgot about Tomer Bar Zeev who was the founder of Ironsource and Egon Durban who is the founder of Silver lake who along with Roelof Botha pledged 1 billion dollars to unity if they bought out Ironsource (a company that was at the time circling the drain because they had been dumped by everyone in the industry because of their practices).

 

 

[PocketNerd]

7 hours ago, Kisai said:

So yes, the target of these license's is to kill the F2P+microtransaction/gacha/lootbox business model. A F2P game meanwhile under the Unreal model costs nothing to sell the "game", and any money made from lootbox nonsense goes into the calculation of how much you have to give Unreal.

5% after $1million (project specific) for Unreal wouldn’t kill F2P, and hasn’t killed that genre either.

 

Unitys current model requires you to sub to Pro if you’re making $100k/year. Which definitely didn’t kill F2P, the new model likely would have before it was changed.

[hishnash]

17 hours ago, Brooksie359 said:

Isn't Unreal engine a flat percentage of revenue? I mean I think the main reason why Unitys new model was so upsetting was because it was incredibly unpredictable. I mean from what I understand the revenue share model of Unreal is very straightforward and I don't think it's and unfair model for what you get tbh. 

They are starting to introduce per install pricing (not for games but for other tools that use the unreal engine) these prices they have said will be inline with other high end creative applications so I would not be shocked by $500+ per install fees (makes sense if you a care design software vendor that sells the software for XXX or an in-house engineer at Industrial light and magic making tools to use on a multi billion $ film set)

 

[Kisai]

4 hours ago, PocketNerd said:

5% after $1million (project specific) for Unreal wouldn’t kill F2P, and hasn’t killed that genre either.

 

Unitys current model requires you to sub to Pro if you’re making $100k/year. Which definitely didn’t kill F2P, the new model likely would have before it was changed.

I think you misread what I said.

 

Unreal a % of 0 is still 0. You can effectively make a free game. If you add gacha creep into the mess, you are still paying the same % even if that is 200,000$ or 2,000,000$

Unity an install fee means you can't make a free game. Ever. That means F2P games (eg genshin impact is often mentioned) that are glorified slot machines, no free games, or if you want to make something free, you have to charge for a subscription. 

 

The fact that Unity even thought it could get away with this, is quite asinine. People are going to drop Unity forever. New devs will be told to use Unreal, or Godot, or even beg Valve for access to Source2.

 

[PocketNerd]

5 minutes ago, Kisai said:

Unity an install fee means you can't make a free game. Ever.

That’s actually a misconception regarding both the crappy model and the one that’s actually coming.

 

You have to satisfy BOTH the revenue and installs threshold. So F2P with no mx would have been fine.

 

The shitty version would have fucked F2P for sure. The actual model lets you choose between installs and % of revenue

[Kisai]

2 minutes ago, PocketNerd said:

That’s actually a misconception regarding both the crappy model and the one that’s actually coming.

 

You have to satisfy BOTH the revenue and installs threshold. So F2P with no mx would have been fine.

 

The shitty version would have fucked F2P for sure. The actual model lets you choose between installs and % of revenue

The fact that they didn't walk it back to the pre-2021 license terms tells everyone that they are just going to bring this garbage back later. You can not trust Unity to not try again. So just don't use Unity, the writing is on the wall. They've done this before.

 

[StDragon]

3 hours ago, Kisai said:

The fact that they didn't walk it back to the pre-2021 license terms tells everyone that they are just going to bring this garbage back later. You can not trust Unity to not try again. So just don't use Unity, the writing is on the wall. They've done this before.

 

10% to 20% inflation, globally depending on what you read and whom you ask.

 

Basically, this is all a song and dance to hide the numbers. But numbers will get paid for one way or the other.

[williamcll]

They just put the blame on him and then they will raise the prices again while nobody's looking.

[Mark Kaine]

ok, who?

 

seriously ya'll need to lay off the predatory low quality"AAA" games.... i never heard of this guy and never will again (hopefully) 

 

good luck to him in his future endeavors tho ~

 

5 hours ago, williamcll said:

They just put the blame on him and then they will raise the prices again while nobody's looking.

precisely,  as usual,  that's the plan, my guy!

 

 

[Mark Kaine]

12 hours ago, PocketNerd said:

That’s actually a misconception regarding both the crappy model and the one that’s actually coming.

 

You have to satisfy BOTH the revenue and installs threshold. So F2P with no mx would have been fine.

 

The shitty version would have fucked F2P for sure. The actual model lets you choose between installs and % of revenue

ok, but serious question,  why do you care? Are you a game "dev"?

 

 

12 hours ago, PocketNerd said:

That’s actually a misconception regarding both the crappy model and the one that’s actually coming.

also again,  i know what unity is, that's why i don't understand why anyone would play a game made with it... its like the "crappy seal of no quality at all, guaranteed"... highly perplexing lol. 

[Thaldor]

9 hours ago, StDragon said:

10% to 20% inflation, globally depending on what you read and whom you ask.

 

Basically, this is all a song and dance to hide the numbers. But numbers will get paid for one way or the other.

The inflation in itself isn't the problem, the interest rates are the main thing. Pretty much every business running mainly on loan money is currently shitting themselves because interests on loans are rising, suddenly the $10M loan for a game project isn't free budget for years with 0.something% interest but suddenly there's 5% interest rate even on good loans and banks are really counting them every 6 months. Before you could kind of surf on funding for free as long as you could show that you have a product that will turn into profit in the future and you can give at least something back to the investors, now it's whole new season of Shark Tank and free money is no more on the table.

 

While this is bigger hit for startups and small companies without almost any own capital, it's also disaster for bigger firms that have played with investor funding keeping the lights on. Even the recent announcement of Unreal going per-seat licensing for industry use is telling that the Fortnite money isn't covering everything and fixing that with couple "this is a cool thing and it will bring you a shitload of money in the future"-presentations aren't going to cut it.

[Kisai]

58 minutes ago, Mark Kaine said:

 

also again,  i know what unity is, that's why i don't understand why anyone would play a game made with it... its like the "crappy seal of no quality at all, guaranteed"... highly perplexing lol. 

Not every Unity game is a shovelware 'enshittening' of a genre/knockoff of something more popular. Sometimes it's also the original.

 

Like let me point something out. So there is a really hot game right now on the Japanese Nintendo store called "Suika" which means "Watermelon", since it's not available in english or on english devices, people go through lengths to get it. Just based on the visual style, it feels very much like something made in Unity.

 

Or, you can play a knock off version made with Cocos on the web full of ads. Or another knock off on itch.io made with Godot exported to html. Considering the switch game has been out for only like a week, and knockoffs are popping up everywhere, It would not surprise me if all the app-store knockoffs on iOS and Android are made with Unity.

 

The more simple something is, the more likely it's made with Unity because that is the easiest way to get it on to game consoles and mobile devices.

 

But I will say, it's the "template game" that you reskin on Unity's store that is where most of the fake game/shovelware comes from in the first place. This is nothing really new, back in the late NES/mid-SNES era every anime property with a video game had to have it's own knock off of Puyo-puyo or match-3 game.

 

To put it bluntly "PROPERTY(TM) GAME-GENRE" is an active thing. You're selling a crappy game with some popular thing in it just because collectors are idiots, and these are cheap to make. No story, just pay someone $500 for new art and you're good to go. If you actually enjoy this game genre, you can usually get much better versions that actually have leaderboards or some kind of 2-player co-op/vs mode.

 

Point being, the association of Unity being for crappy games is not an un-earned title, but that's due to how easily garbage is sold on the Unity store. Unreal is not really any better here, but because Unreal is actually hard to develop for, you don't see it nearly as much.

 

The most popular game engines for Japanese games are actually RPG Maker MV (games will usually not be voiced), KiriKiri (which is a really OLD) and Nscripter before Unity. You can usually tell when a game is Unity because it will lack any ability to change the screen size. But the big advantage to Unity, is that it will run on ALL operating systems without any AppLocale garbage. You can also mod most Unity games to be auto-translated due to a quirk of how Unity doesn't protect managed code. So many of these Japanese games are made with Unity with the intent of being console/mobile games. Not PC games. The ones that are PC titles first are usually doujin titles that later get watered down so they can be sold on Steam and Playstations. Still, you almost never see a localization of a Japanese indie game, let alone most story-rich games.

 

License-wise however a lot of these free and cheap games would just not exist if they had to pay any money to Unity. For similar reasons, certain libraries are rarely used (Live2D being one of them, and has 8 different licenses, geez) because the cost to actually license it exceeds any amount of money that can be made with a cheap game.

 

 

[05032-Mendicant-Bias]

Unity has a two billion yearly revenue, and is earning one billion something a year. It's not a sustainable businness.

Unity can:

• Increase efficiency of the businness keeping quality of the product constant
• Decrease costs of the businness decreasing quality of the product
• Increase the customer base (very hard, unity is already everywhere)
• Increase the price of the product

To me, what the board was dooing seemed like pushing all Free To Play developers to implement Pay To Win so they would pay Unity, which didn't go over well at all. I don't know what Unity can do to right the ship, maybe it just cannot be done and Unity is destined to go bankrupt.

 

Over and over again, we see Silicon Valley's businnesses that burn through VCs money to subsidize the product, and when they have no more cash to burn and/or got their dominant market share, make a "surprised pikachu face" when their clients are not ok with their product when it's no longer subsidized. 

 

Unity's Board brought this on themselves. Just remember that if Unity goes under, another company can come in and pick up the IP and source code, and spin up a new company, one that is perhaps more efficient and is profitable to run.

[PocketNerd]

8 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

its like the "crappy seal of no quality at all, guaranteed"... highly perplexing lol.

While Unity tends to be “devs first engine” for a large number of projects. It is most certainly not a “crappy seal of no quality”. You can achieve that same “low quality” with any game engine. It’s just that Unity has had such a low barrier to entry for much longer than Unreal.

 

Also…

 

> Anything Mihoyo makes, Hearthstone,  Rust, Cuphead, Hollow Knight, Fall Guys, Cities Skylines, Subnautica, Kerbel Space Program. All enter the chat

 

As for why I care? Because I am a game developer. And while Unity itself is not my primary engine I know that a large number of devs are and can use some empathy to understand that this is a big deal for them.