Unity top leaders selling stock before the announcement
they proposing “special” deal to not get the per install fee applied if the devs opt in to use only Unity’s advertising plaform in order to kill competition.
I can’t wait till the threats turn into promises. I’m so sick and fucking tired of the “elites” getting away with doing whatever they want. I’m hungry; let’s eat.
If it’s own employees are giving death threats, chances are high that it’s aiming up. Unless their CEO is threatening to kill those below him to save a buck?
Unity Technologies, known for its Unity game engine, has been facing severe backlash for its recent decisions. Unity adjusted its fee structure, now charging game developers per install with retroactive terms of service changes. This move is expected to negatively impact numerous game projects. In addition, Unity removed their transparency GitHub repo and reversed previous community-centric commitments, leading to widespread industry anger. The CEO’s past decisions to maximize revenue raise eyebrows. Unity rejected a $20 billion acquisition offer from AppLovin in favor of a $4.4 billion merger with Iron Source, a mobile game development monetization company. Tomar Bar Ziv, CEO of Iron Source and a Unity board member, has notably sold around $20 million in Unity stock following the merger. Recent aggressive pricing models seem to mirror those adopted by Twitter and Reddit. Unity’s shift seems aimed at promoting Iron Source’s Level Play service and could significantly harm developers, especially in the mobile sector. Companies like Azur, Voodoo, and Century Games have retaliated by disabling Unity and Iron Source ad monetization. Unity’s recent closure of two offices due to threats from its own employee underscores the depth of its internal and external crises.
Even that transcript was a bit too long, so here’s a < 150 word summary by ChatGPT:
Unity Technologies, known for its Unity game engine, has been facing severe backlash for its recent decisions. Unity adjusted its fee structure, now charging game developers per install with retroactive terms of service changes. This move is expected to negatively impact numerous game projects. In addition, Unity removed their transparency GitHub repo and reversed previous community-centric commitments, leading to widespread industry anger. The CEO’s past decisions to maximize revenue raise eyebrows. Unity rejected a $20 billion acquisition offer from AppLovin in favor of a $4.4 billion merger with Iron Source, a mobile game development monetization company. Tomar Bar Ziv, CEO of Iron Source and a Unity board member, has notably sold around $20 million in Unity stock following the merger. Recent aggressive pricing models seem to mirror those adopted by Twitter and Reddit. Unity’s shift seems aimed at promoting Iron Source’s Level Play service and could significantly harm developers, especially in the mobile sector. Companies like Azur, Voodoo, and Century Games have retaliated by disabling Unity and Iron Source ad monetization. Unity’s recent closure of two offices due to threats from its own employee underscores the depth of its internal and external crises.
They’ve been all in for about half a decade. If you don’t work in mobile, or play a lot of mobile games, you might not have noticed - but basically the most played games on planet earth are made in Unity, and are on mobile.
It’s sad to say this, but their actions this past week have kind of shown us that the folk at Unity don’t even seem to care about other platforms anymore; to the point that they did not even consider them on a basic level while working on their new pricing policies.
They should just either rebrand to a mobile first company, or at least split their products such that those making pc/console games can argue for their own price points and features.
Ridiculous to lump indie devs and mobile companies like hyper casual devs (who can have 5 million+ installs a game, thanks to their low CPIs and marketing optimizations) into the same category.
The part that confuses me a bit is that it’s a mod that removes functionality from a single player game. Usually features get added, not removed. When something is removed it’s usually to improve stability or performance. Or to rebalance the gameplay. This change falls into none of these categories.
Well I guess if the mod author did it to garner attention or make a point he/she/they succeeded.
That really applies on both sides. This is such a nothing issue - it defaults to what you’d expect for a cis character, so you can literally ignore it if you aren’t going to play a character whose pronouns and body type do not align.
But, someone modding their game doesn’t effect anyone else playing it, whether that’s removing the pronoun selector in Starfield, adding a pronoun selector to Skyrim (even supporting multiple pronouns with different frequencies for each), turning every hold banner in Skyrim into a pride flag, removing pride flags from Spiderman, turning Skyrim dragons into Thomas the Tank Engine, or adding the ability to fuck Skyrim dragons. All of those are mods that exist, BTW.
And this only makes the claims that “this is not a political statement” more absurd. There may be room to argue that the original decision to let players select their pronouns is not political, but both the mod that removes it and the removal of that mod from Nexus are just pathetic attempts to get back at the other side. Can’t get more political than that.
Of course this is political - because bigots made trans people’s existence a target of their politics. Defending them against that hatred and abuse is not somehow equally wrong, compared to that hatred… and abuse.
GTA Online was the best part of V (the campaign is just meh, especially compared to IV and San Andreas) so as long as they don’t make it too grind-y (and actually give solo players something fun to do in free mode) then I’m sure it’ll turn out fine.
What do you like about online? Because honestly I have never been able to accomplish anything because some asshole frags me before I have time to pick a lock or look at my map real quick. It gets super boring. I wish they added mechanics where fragging other players became a more risky thing to do. Like your a police informant for a while and if someone kills you they automatically get four stars. Or I wish they focused more on stealing from other’s business. So you need to put more work into defense.
Idk, maybe those things exist once you get some money. But it’s nearly impossible to progress in the game as a noob without friends in the same server.
Rule of thumb - if there are two sides to the issue, but one side is only supported by heartless idiots, and these heartless idiots happen to be identified with the political camp you oppose - then it’s a political issue.
I really really liked ME1 and 2. Sure, there are some nits to pick, especially with the act 2 gameplay (stupid mako, silly scanner), but they are great games.
ME2 is a good game in isolation, but I think it played a big part in getting Bioware where they are now.
ME2 saw them move far, far more into the action-RPG direction that was wildly popular at the time, with a narrative that was in retrospect just running in place (ME2 contributes effectively nothing towards the greater plot and zero major issues are introduced if it is excised from the trilogy). I feel the wild success ME2 saw after going in this direction caused Bioware to (a) double down on trend chasing, and (b) abandon one of their core strengths of strong, cohesive narratives. ME3 chased multiplayer shooter trends, DA:I and ME:A both chased open world RPG trends, Anthem chased the live service trend, and the first try at DA3 chased more live service stuff before Anthem launched to shit and they scrapped the whole thing to start over.
All while, of what I saw first hand (of those I played) or read about secondhand (of those I did not play) none of those games put any serious focus on Bioware’s bread&butter of well written narratives. ME3 in particular is a narrative mess, with two solid payoffs (Krogans + Geth-Quarians) and the rest being some of the worst writing I’ve seen in a major video game.
ME2 was great. ME2 also set Bioware on a doomed path.
ME2 vastly expanded the universe of mass effect from the very bare bones level of the first game. It makes the reapers into more than vague robot threat that kills the universe every so often. It established other races as more than basic caricatures. You can keep the basic narrative intact without it, but you lose the sense of payoff in 3 without seeing krogan as a dying race, geth as a sentient race that deserves equality, and the truly desperate nature of the nomadic quarians.
3 was pretty good until the final ending that was clearly rushed in establishing the full reasoning behind each choice. Yes it had multi-player tacked on, but it was clearly a rushed effort and cutting it wouldn’t have fixed the story. The multi-player is also the best coop gameplay I’ve ever played and nothing has came close to the feel. You’re problems with 3 and other Bioware releases seem directly related to the broad direction EA was forcing everyone down.
Ah that’s true, I realize it now that you put it your finger in it: ME2 is really a “let’s tour the universe” kind of story fleshing out the background of known races (and adding new ones) and places.
This is very true. And it’s ironic because when I saw BG3 I thought that bioware paved the way for it. They had everything to make a BG3 since kotor and nwn2, they successfully kick-started their own IP with ME and DAO, but they went on the path of ME3 and DAI instead.
They mistakenly thought the kotor and neverwinter nights ways were different. And then they failed at adapting to the openworld era.
How are these people not seeing that they are actively trying to censor shit with the shyte excuse “keep politics out of my games”, and then turn around and yell censorship as soon as people ignore their bigoted crap.
The rhetorical question highlights the complex nature of the debates around modding and game customization. The term “censorship” can indeed be used selectively to further one’s viewpoint, whether it’s calling for the removal of political elements from games or protesting the removal of a mod.
However, maybe it’s worth considering that people may hold these opinions without necessarily harboring bigoted intentions. The desire to keep politics out of games, for some, might stem from the view that games should be an escape from real-world issues. Conversely, concerns about censorship could arise from a belief in preserving the open nature of modding communities.
What we’re really grappling with is how to balance the broad spectrum of user needs and societal responsibilities. Accusations of bigotry or censorship often serve to shut down dialogue rather than facilitate a nuanced discussion about these complex issues.
So while your question is rhetorical, it does bring to light the need for more open and honest conversations about the competing values that are in play here.
In my opinion this entire debate is not political at all but is simply made to be a political statement because people don’t understand it.
Having someone forbid the use of cheese in video games because that person doesn’t like cheese is just never going to happen. If cheese comes out to be an extreme health hazard like smoking it can become political but if the only argument is “because I don’t like it” you are always going to be wrong.
Your arguing about taste and feelings. There is no point to it, as there is nothing to convince. At that point you are just telling someone their taste or feeling is wrong.
But for some reason people think they can influence someone else’s own feelings about how they feel when they get addressed as their birth gender. And for some reason it is made into a political problem because of how strongly people think they have to have control over this. It doesn’t affect them, and the only possible outcome is that a minority will suppress their emotions. There are no competing values in any way.
I don’t like cheese, but you won’t hear me bitching about people eating cheese next to me in a restaurant even if I don’t like the smell. And you especially won’t see me making this political, because that is so incredibly selfish and ignorant that it wouldn’t even be something I’d ever consider.
I would pay good money for a stand-alone ME3 Multiplayer remake with all the bugs fixed, new maps, and less BS grind. I think I put almost 2000 hours into the multiplayer and still don’t have all the guns unlocked/upgraded
Nowadays everything seems newsworthy… I would not be mad about it if Bethesda did not include a pronoun setting, i am not mad someone made a mod to remove said option, i am not mad nexus keeping its sovereignty to decide what they host…
What is everyone mad about? Just let ppl do whatever they do.
Ok, how am I against pronouns now? I agree with the fact that people should have personal preference whether they agree with having the pronoun feature in the game or not. It’s not about being against pronouns, it’s about freedom of individual choice.
Now, I’m not forcing them to reupload the mod. But, if a moderator just solely removes the mod based on their own political idealogy, then you’re stripping the freedom away from everyone else. We can have a kill children mod but god forbid we have a remove pronouns mod.
I’ve used Nexus Mods for the past 6-7 years, I’m honestly just sad to see them take this route.
Nah man I totally agree, I just mean when you said “it’s a game, not real life”, some people could take it wrong. Nothing against you but I guess my message came across wrong too
I am, like, mildly upset about it being removed, at most. Seems like moderation team is going a bit overboard, deleting something that seems extremely mild.
Lets worry about real homophobic/ transphobic problems please. I won’t go into whether the author of the mod was giving a middle finger to ppl or just always wanted the pronouns of the perceived gender for their game. Without reading the description, it is pure speculation. Even with the description, it will likely be a good amount of speculation.
In my opinion, we should worry about things that are not argumentative. Because that muddies the pool and makes future arguments harder…
Horseshit. It targets a feature right-wing cranks are frothing about, and it has exactly the same effect as ignoring the option. Stop feigning ignorance about what diet Nazi trolls openly despise.
Nobody cares about your willful apathy on this topic. If you don’t care, stop talking.
Look i am about done arguing here, so don’t expect further comments here from me.
You and I probably have similar political interests. However, at least to me, your aggressive approach is off-putting and does not invite for discussions. It reminds me of what is happening in Germany: The far right crazy party is being excluded by a ‘firewall’. Whatever the right extremist party wants is categorically rejected, even in the rare case that it is nothing stupid (like rise funding for a public theater). It does not solve the problem, but further radicalised the members and even gave them a boost in voters. What they are presented with, is that they have to achieve more than 50%. Otherwise those far rightists wont achieve anything. Politics is about discussions and finding the path that is the most agreeable for the largest amount of people possible.
Mind leach above made an extremely good point so I’m just gonna copy paste it.
Trolls escalate. They keep pushing until they get smacked down, then cry and scream and pretend they’ve been proven right. Being ignored doesn’t just embolden them, it bores them, and tells them they need to get worse to get attention. No matter what happens - no matter what anyone says to them - they get to use it in their stupid little word game.
The nature of bad faith is that there is no right answer.
You have to simply get rid of it, and the sooner, the better.
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