The Unity pricing debacle has taken an unfortunate, dangerous turn. In a new report from Bloomberg, the company has reportedly canceled a town hall meeting due to what the publication called credible death threats. According to Bloomberg, Unity CEO John Riccitiello was set to address employees Thursday morning, but the companywide meeting was canceled and two of Unity’s offices were closed because of the alleged threats.
He was the CEO of Electronic Arts when the controversial loot box monetization was added to FIFA 09. He made news when he called developers “fucking idiots” over some developers’ reluctance to introduce monetization schemes earlier in the development process. There’s also the infamous clip of Riccitiello talking during a shareholder call about charging Battlefield players a dollar to reload their guns.
Look at this guy...I couldn't read all of the Bloomberg article due to paywall, so I don't know if this jackass actually provided proof of these "death threats."
While I don't condone them, it seems awfully convenient that an executive who's known to stir controversy with his monetization strategies received "alleged" death threats. I have a hard time believing it without proof because this guy is a sleaze ball greedy mofo.
First off: Disagree over death threats. They’re not warranted unless someone’s voice directly threatens people’s lives - not their entertainment.
On that note, I’m wondering if the threats may be more from game developers - studios that are reliant on income through the Unity engine, and may have their whole livelihood threatened by the pricing changes. (Doesn’t justify the threats, still)
There are terrible people in the gaming community who make empty death threats over any perceived slight. These people are to be reprimanded and dealt with accordingly.
That said, corpo suits and politicians have definitely started using this as a PR stunt to play victim and garner sympathy to lessen the negativity towards their wildly unpopular decisions.
I’m beyond caring anymore. Especially so for that slimy ceo. If you get death threats, report them to the proper authorities. Don’t report them over the nearest bullhorn. I’m not going to say he deserves it, but I won’t shed a tear over it either.
In any group of people there will always be a tiny subset of the population who will pull this unhinged bullshit. It's unfortunate, but now the CEO gets to play the victim, and anyone who's against his bullshit gets to be painted with the same brush as the unhinged guy.
I never understand freaking out about death threats. If someone actually wanted to murder you, they’d be quiet and methodical about it, not grandiose. To be fair, I’ve never received a death threat so perhaps I’m not theeeeeeeeeeeee
I mean you are assuming the person who is trying to murder you is a rational actor but you can't really be a rational actor if you are threatening death to someone because of their shit monetization policies on your entertainment. Hell some people throw "Death threats" at people because they decide to change a reload speed by a fraction of a second. So yeah "gamers" can be quite unhinged. Hell you had idiots in Jan 6 who loudly stated their intention and beat a cop to death. Hell we have seen situations of weirdos getting close to celebrities (in their heads) then trying to kill them, and I imagine cases like that will only get worse with parasocial relationships getting a bit out of hand with modern influences and streamers.
That's the fallacy of trying to understand criminal acts. For the most part, if someone were as smart, logical, and thoughtful as you are when you imagine the best way to commit murder, the kind of person to actually try and commit the murder would not be as smart, logical, or thoughtful to have gotten into that situation in the first place.
There are exceptions, of course, but it's enough of a possibility that it's probably better to take them seriously than not.
Edit: typed all that, scrolled down, some other dude already said it
You should sort of expect to get some strong reactions when things are difficult economically and you make a statement saying, “sorry peasants, I need a shareholder bonus so your livelihood has to go. Also, fuck you.”
If the threats are to him, dunno, he’s done amazing harm. I’ll just say jury is out on how appropriate they are in his case.
Unfortunately, Unity has no way to tell legitimate installs from pirated installs, as far as I have read. This means someone with a massively pirated game who has just broken the $200,000 revenue barrier could potentially be on the hook to pay Unity more money per install than they've even made.
The average pirated install is blocked by the pirate from network access so there’s no way for it to dial home to be approved or denied, or for them to know it was installed to begin with.
edit: The main exception would be GOG pirated installs since they’re usually the original installer with no DRM to be bypassed, but they can still be blocked from contacting home if you don’t care about cloud saves or online features.
There’s always a way to screw over company plans like this.
edit2: actually GOG cloud saves aren’t even possible with offline GOG installs, legal or not, you have to install them through the GOG store and launcher for it to be an option.
It was a joke. The dev said if you buy their game, don’t install it. Come over to their house and play it on their computer, they’ll make you some food while you’re at it. Sounds like it’s been decontextualised beyond understanding
Unity is done for. Nobody is going to start a new project with their product. Devs are risk adverse. Making a game that is original is already a big enough risk for any studio. Why add an infinite amount of risk but building your game on an engine with unstable management. It is even worth retraining people to use a different engine.
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