Unity issue an apology on Twitter for "confusion and angst" over the runtime fee policy.

While this is going to be difficult for Indy developers, they really only have themselves to blame

In the same way that underpaid workers are to blame for not "just" finding and getting a better job or "learning skills". Fuck off with that pro-corporate victim blaming.

You're actually making some valid points here, in regard to the trend of companies losing money as a strategy to obtain market dominance and then turning to monetization after. It's exactly how Uber and AirBNB got where they are, and it's a strategy that people need to get more wise to. You're right, and you should say it.

But for the love of God, say it better than this. The "users only have themselves to blame because they got hoodwinked by a pack of liars and thieves who are very good at being liars and thieves" angle kills any chance of anyone listening to the actual point you're making because you went and wrapped it up in a giant dose of victim blaming.

If you cook an absolutely perfect hamburger and then spit in it right before serving, you can't act surprised when no one wants to even try a bite.

"They should have researched that thing the company hadn't done and given no signals that they would do."

Dear God, do you listen to yourself talk? I hope no one else fucking has to.

they really only have themselves to blame [...] research your vendor’s financial strategy - that’s basic due diligence

Really? They really only have themselves to blame for Unity suddenly making a drastic and poorly thought out change to their pricing policies? Researching with what, a crystal ball?

Something something Stallman was right (about this specific thing, anyway).

If they were so hard up than they should have left Parsec alone instead on lobotomizing it by killing Arcade.

Yep, that has a better tone. There's a limit to how good a statement you can make when at the core you really plan to do enshittification one way or another, but they could have thrown in a smidgeon of accepting blame also. E.g. "We were unable to provide clear and unambiguous answers to questions that came up" costs them nothing.

Jagex is respectful not the company I'd look to for inspiration in terms of correcting past mistakes 🙂 For the uninitiated, they legally gaslit the community when they made their first major controversial change roughly a decade ago by "removing the feature" then "adding" the same feature with a different coat of paint.

And just like, the movies, we play out our last scene.

The Unity execs thought they were being smooth criminals, instead they came in too rough and got busted.

Stupid voice typing... fixed :{

Trust is hard to build and easy to break and even harder to rebuild.

To truly rebuild trust, they'd need to commit to never doing this again. That would mean 1. a change to the legal TOS that a developer who licenses for a project at a certain pricing level may remain at that price level for that project / that generation of Unity for as long as they wish, 2. a public commitment to never require per-install pricing, and ideally 3. the resignation of whoever came up with this brain dead idea.

Yeah, this 100%.

To truly restore trust, it should be 'we're sorry, our mistake, it won't happen again, our new TOS will guarantee the right to remain at a current license price structure for a given generation of the engine, we hereby promise to never ever require per-install pricing, and the person responsible for this change is no longer with the company'.

It's IMO a sign that the current financial bubble is about to burst and it's going to do so in a very violent way despite greedy bulls still pushing the "it's different this time, we have AI now" bullshit.

Investors have their money trapped in these companies, and when they see what riskless treasury bills yield, they naturally start losing their minds because their money is instead in companies that fail to make significantly more than that riskless benchmark. So those investors then pressure those companies to do whatever they can to produce a good enough return on investment in a short period of time as they run out of patience and they themselves know that hell is coming in the financial markets so their shares might lose an even more significant amount soon.

The end result of CEOs and executives under pressure by investors, and engineers stressing out because they understand the financial situation and that they have to either be yes-men and agree with whatever changes the executives propose or be laid off (because another way to reach the target set by investors is to reduce costs by firing people), is obviously the enshittification that we witness today.

microsoft making ux worse, google fighting adblock with drm, not to mention all sorts of non-tech catastrophe

somebody is gonna make a 'we didnt start the fire' about 2023 called 'we started the fire'

That's how it is once the free money dries up. The profits must rise, no matter the long-term damage this causes - so they try to bleed the existing customer base dry to keep things rising for one or two more quarters. What does it matter to them if all the employees who have worked hard for years will lose their jobs due to their mismanagement?

The conventional wisdow is that in time of economic turmoil, companies should lower their profit margins and weather out the storm.

However, in today's capitalism, this is not not acceptable. Shareholders demand ever increasing profits and anything short of that is considered a failure. If you don't keep your margin, you are to be scolded and discarded.

Now, the loans that many of the companies have cost a lot more money than 2 years ago. So the enshittification is used to enable the continued growth to keep the profits growings.

That was my first impression. I suppose it could be an honest mistake (especially since they apparently fired all the PR people a while back, too, heh) but it doesn't look great.

Remember Blizzard when they released Warcraft 3 Reforged? "We're sorry you didn't get the experienced you thought you deserved". Gold mine, that one. It wasn't phrased like that exactly but that was what they meant.

The advice was practically free!

https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/tutorials/platform/consoles.html

They're not licensed, and they don't even have templates for anything but steam deck.

Unity has the cash and manpower to jump through those hoops and keep them up to date.

There’s no official implementation for console. I think there’s a third party extension(?) in the works to allow godot to work with console though

Not nothing.

People will drop Unity as an engine at a huge rate.

More like the limit will be decreased to $100,00 and the fee will go up to 0.4 (0.35 for pro). You don't get it, you just was confused and angsty, this is a better proposal!