Shitty Executive: “Oh shit, our terrible idea turned out to be wildly unpopular and we’re getting massive negative feedback! Quick, play the death threats card to make us look like the victim!”
Unity temporarily closes offices amid death threats following contentious pricing changes
Submitted 1 year ago by Namahanna@lemm.ee to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
StarServal@kbin.social 1 year ago
Bye@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’m sure there’s a PR playbook somewhere with a flowchart that says, did you screw up really badly and you look like the villain? - yes - There’s public outrage? - yes - say there’s death threats
Robaque@feddit.it 1 year ago
Unsurprisingly, it’s likely that this “death threats” situation was made up by the ceo: reddit.com/r/gamedev/s/mLv9uIQ1vO
It’s a reddit link, ik…- here’s a copy of the post:
The truth behind the Unity “Death Threats”
Unity has temporarily closed its offices in San Francisco and Austin, Texas and canceled a town hall meeting after receiving death threats, according to Bloomberg.
Multiple news outlets are reporting on this story, yet Polygon seems to be the only one that actually bothered to investigate the claims.
Checking with both Police and FBI, they have only acknowledged 1 single threat, from a Unity employee, to their boss over social media. Despite this their CEO decided to use it as an excuse to close edit:
all2 of their offices and cancel planned town hall meetings. Here is the article update from Polygon:Update: San Francisco police told Polygon that officers responded to Unity’s San Francisco office “regarding a threats incident.” A “reporting party” told police that “an employee made a threat towards his employer using social media.” The employee that made the threat works in an office outside of California, according to the police statement.
Polygon also contacted Police in the other cities and also the FBI, this was the only reported death threat against Unity that anyone knew of.
This is increasingly looking like the CEO is throwing a pity party and he’s trying to trick us all into coming.
TheEighthDoctor@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Everyone blaming “people” in the comments and they just fell to the CEO charade to get trick points.
Medatrix@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah if I were the CEO I would be avoiding a town hall like the plague.
He essentially just called a bomb threat on his highschool before a final he was going to fail. Then came home to his family crying about how scary it all was.
Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yep it doesn’t surprise me, I’ve seen many people claim “death threats” to get out of responsibility for doing or saying something that was not respectable, or that was flat out evil.
They do this because it works very well, death threats are so serious and so scary that if somebody said they got them you would immediately give that person a pass (unless they’re a Nazi then they deserve it, you don’t give Nazis a pass for anything) no proof required, though it also would be incredibly easy to forge proof of such an event for anyone skeptical and it would be enough for 99% of people, the remaining 1% of dissent would then be written off as crazy people.
I’m willing to bet that this will continue to happen and people will continue to go along with it because there are enough cases of people making real death threats to innocence cover up the false ones and make them seem more real than they actually are.
Intralexical@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That just redirects to thread
16j21jg. They’re generating opaque unique IDs so they can track permalinks now?Robaque@feddit.it 1 year ago
Damn, that’s scummy as fuck. I’ll try to get the proper permalink.
Blamemeta@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Whatcha wanna bet there aren’t any death threats? Seems to be a good to for “we’re assholes, but look at these imaginary assholes instead!”
iHUNTcriminals@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Don’t underestimate that shit. I’ve personally got death threats before. People are dumb as fuck.
I don’t say that in Support of unity though.
Kichae@kbin.social 1 year ago
Yeah, not only will people send death threats, but they'll send them to random people they see on LinkedIn who happen to have the company in their bio.
Instead of, like, to the CEO's house.
Because too many people are both angry reactionaries, and also cowards.
breakingcups@lemmy.world 1 year ago
You’ve seen people follow through on death threats?
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
I was thinking this. A way to demonize the counter movement
DoucheBagMcSwag@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 year ago
Hmm seems like we called it:
xchino@programming.dev 1 year ago
I will absolutely take that bet. Given both how unpopular the decision is combined with it being even tangentially related to the gaming community I would be astonished if they didn’t receive death threats.
StarServal@kbin.social 1 year ago
Knowing how despicable the worst of the gaming community can be, I have no doubts that death threats were real.
I also have no doubts that the despicable CEO, like others of his ilk who receive entirely justified negativity for their stupidity, will milk it as an excuse to water down the negative feedback and shift to victimization.
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I don’t doubt for a second they are real. There are some really scary sycophantic gamers out there.
sadreality@kbin.social 1 year ago
This guy fucks
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
So, the leadership of Unity is a complete piece of shit, but death threats (or really, any other threat of violence) are just straight up idiotic. It’s a game engine company. There are much more fun and interesting (and, you know, legal) ways to kill the company in a commercial sense.
TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I feel bad for the regular workers there who can’t choose the direction of the company and need that job to live.
But frankly if they were all directed just to the CEO, I couldn’t be less bothered. Wealthy assholes don’t have empathy, don’t listen to reasons, aren’t bound by rules. Even lawsuits today are decided more by who has the most money than who is in the right. Maybe it’s not so bad if folks put some fear in him, specifically.
Sure, there are more worthy causes to direct that sort of outrage to. Then again there’s the livelihood of a large number of smaller creators to consider. This isn’t just about a fictional thing not being the way someone wanted.
ultratiem@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Wild. Murica lol.
The one guy working on a PS2 emulator also quit because death threats.
Why not make sustainable laws to prevent shitty companies from doing things like this instead of “social justice”
HawlSera@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Because the most successful senior citizen daycare facility is the US Senate. A lot of these people still think of computers as being Commodore 64s.
SCB@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Companies are allowed to make bad decisions bro.
Uniquitous@lemmy.one 1 year ago
Well, they are idiotic, yes. In the sense that if you mean to kill someone, telling them beforehand is wildly counter-productive.
ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 1 year ago
This shouldn’t be a distraction from the core issue, but obviously people should cut this shit out.
You can’t sneeze online without some sociopath threatening to slit your throat.
Honytawk@lemmy.zip 1 year ago
THAT IS NOT TRUE AT ALL!
I SHOULD SLIT YOUR THROAT FOR SAYING SUCH OBVIOUS WRONG STATEMENTS!
ChaoticEntropy@feddit.uk 1 year ago
One day you’re going to sneeze, and then you’ll get yours.
madmax666@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I take it you don’t use the engine
HRDS_654@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Talk about blowing shit out of proportion. People need to realize that making death threats is a good way to make the bad guys look like the good guys.
Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Which is probably why the CEO made it up using the single death threat from an employee as an excuse to close the company for the day and probably also get pity from people for it (see my other comments for more details).
I bet it probably won’t stay that way though, he’ll probably realize people are onto his lies and make some death threats from sock-puppet accounts and claim “No 4 reAl pEopLe arE sENdiNg m3 deAth tHreAts” I wouldn’t put it past him if people keep the heat on him.
sugarfree@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The overreaction to online death threats is so stupid. An anonymous 0 follower Twitter account allows organizations and people to instantly turn the PR situation around and become the victims and act like they are personally being hunted down by Mossad.
Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Death threats are the background noise of the internet, always have been. It’s just part of the PR manual now.
Slwh47696@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I remember someone telling me they were going to hunt me down and kill me on StarCraft back in like 2001. Shit hasn’t changed
londos@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Hey! Don’t threaten people! Don’t hurt anyone! Just move to Godot. That’s it. Abandon ship, peacefully. These people care more about money than employee lives anyway.
whoisearth@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
I find this and other comments like this hilarious because you’re 100% correct and yet at the same time lemmy is a cesspool of people on every post about an owner, or landlord, or millionaire/billionaire about killing them, or beating them, or bringing out the guillotine, or eating them, etc etc.
Again, you’re right. It’s amazing how tone deaf people are here though to not be aware their behavior reeks of the same extremism.
It’s why I’m very much on the fence about continuing here outside of the memes. The people here are disgustingly naive and not healthy quite frankly.
stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Rich choking and killing or planet knowingly with no regard for human or any other life = unity devs
500 IQ
tsz@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Idk why the downvotes. It’s seriously off putting to be surrounded by people that clearly have no idea how the world works. It was funny before Trump. Now I take these meme waves with a grain of salt. Idiots in large numbers are dangerous. At least reddit was easy enough to use that the cesspool was diluted with less intense morons.
dannym@lemmy.escapebigtech.info 1 year ago
join a community with your values, lemmy is federated, if you don’t like your community join another :)
Hazdaz@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Pretty amazing how a small group on Lemmy can make Reddit look almost sane.
Haywire@lemm.ee 1 year ago
[deleted]pinkdrunkenelephants@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
Because developers totally saw something like this coming. 🙄
dannym@lemmy.escapebigtech.info 1 year ago
I hate humanity sometimes, why would they send death threats? Just don’t use their engine; this is the way you actually make a change – switch to something else, threatening people does not help you prove your point. I hate their new pricing changes too, but death threats are never warranted
greenskye@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Im some cases I could see how this could destroy someone’s livelihood and people have killed over that sort of thing before. But my guess is that the people sending the death threats probably aren’t even developers.
mint_tamas@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Looks like it’s bullshit. feddit.it/comment/2515772
CryptidBestiary@lemmy.world 1 year ago
While I’m not defending those who sent these death threats or justifying these actions, I’m sure a lot work and progress will be lost for many companies because of these outrageous changes. It should be no surprise that many if not all of their clients are gonna angry. Switching another engine isn’t like switching from reddit to the fediverse.
lolcatnip@reddthat.com 1 year ago
They’re changing pennies per install, and only after the publisher is receiving a certain amount of monthly income. I don’t understand why people are so pissed about them wanting such a tiny cut for providing the software that does so much heavy lifting for game developers.
hornedfiend@sopuli.xyz 1 year ago
What’s more curious to me is what kind of people are those that resort to such lows?
I mean they might have mental issues,yes,but it’s scary to see that people seemingly intelligent and able to create games (asset flipping not included) can have such low morals and problem solving capabilities.
MJBrune@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I absolutely agree. I’d want to say those threats are people outside of the industry. People in the industry have received death threats themselves so they understand that it’s real shitty, right? I hope so.
Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
One of the issue here, and I am in absolutely no way defending Unity, is that legally an executive team works for the shareholders. They must ensure shareholder return no matter what as they are in the hook for it.
Unity’s biggest issue is that they like many successful companies stopped innovating and have moved from a company run by technical people to one run by sales and marketing. Sales and marketing only know how to extract more out of the product they already have and not how to improve the product to make more in honest ways. I would (have) gladly given Unity more money if they offered tools that truly helped me get to market faster as then my win would be their win. Instead their product has become stagnant, slower not faster since 2019 and more expensive. I am getting less for more and it is unacceptable. Unity is a horrible business partner. But I can see why as they are a sales and marketing company now. Steve Jobs says it best in this 2 minute video. He got it. Why are so many other not getting this?
DarkWasp@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That doesn’t mean making decisions that can ultimately hurt the business or their partners though. You can be greedy while not alienating the developers who drive the company’s profits. Decisions like these could make them lose millions or even go out of business.
malloc@lemmy.world 1 year ago
is that legally an executive team works for the shareholders. They must ensure shareholder return no matter what as they are in the hook for it.
Not an excuse for just blatantly fucking over the customers. By implementing this hostile pricing model, company is alienating their customers. Big game studios may or may not cough up the money (or just delay that payments and take Unity to court if threatened). Small companies will just not pay up and either kill their projects or redesign from the ground up using a diff engine. Indie devs will likely just use another engine all together.
It’s a clear money grab that will backfire on them (losing trust of an already small community, and thus money will slowly stop rolling in). Fucked by the loss of sales. Fucking over the shareholders and creating new bag holders. Only winners here are the insiders that dumped their shares before announcement.
C-level execs at Unity smoking crack.
Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I agree. I think the issue is though that Unity (like many successful companies) have become their own worse enemies. Steve Jobs in this 2 mins video really explains it well. It will resonate what is going on at Unity and why they pulled such a stupid move. Wrong people are in charge and they have no means to make money honestly. Intellectually and creatively bankrupt. youtu.be/tGKsbt5wii0?si=v8_A2jW5uLewhbVS
HawlSera@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I am usually against such and still am, you should never send anyone deaf that’s, that is a felonious offense.
That said I don’t feel sorry for the victim. You can’t blackmail every game developer in the world simultaneously and expect nothing to happen.
PostmodernPythia@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This, like cancel culture, is a direct result of a justice system that pretty much never delivers justice to the victims of the rich and the powerful. Fixing that is the only thing that can stop this escalating cultural phenomenon.
Fantomas@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That 4chan sure is a wild dude.
mo_lave@reddthat.com 1 year ago
This is partially what “eat the rich” rhetoric meant when acted on.
Clbull@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Somehow I get the feeling that this may not just be some unhinged internet troll throwing out online drivel from his mom’s basement. Unity’s pricing changes are posing an existential threat to smaller studios that meet the minimum income threshold and are placing the livelihoods of countless thousands of smaller game studio workers at stake. This is one of those changes that is going to impact whether you can continue to put food on the table.
John Riccitello has pissed off a lot of people with his disgusting levels of corporate greed, to the point where even the fourth circle of Hell may not be enough to punish his avarice once he pops his clogs. This move may even be worse than the crap Martin Shkreli pulled.
FoundTheVegan@kbin.social 1 year ago
This is a reminder that there are crazy people on the internet.
But this is NOT a reason to have sympathy for Unity.
greavous@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This is a reminder that paying for a subscription means t&cs can be changed. You aren’t buying the engine etc just a license to access/use it for a period of time. Stop buying subscriptions!
Eezyville@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Well looking on the bright side. If death threats are starting to become common for the decisions that companies make then maybe WFH should also be common to protect employees. Can’t target employees at an empty office. The employees will have to be careful with social media however.
Tischkante@discuss.tchncs.de 1 year ago
All because Amongus sold so many times…
Buffalox@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Starting on January 1, developers will be charged a fee every time someone installs a game built in Unity after they reach certain revenue or install thresholds.
Obviously death threats are not ok, but for fucks sake, that change is insane. People may install the same thing many times for many reasons, like switching drives, computer, OS or debugging, or corruption, or because they go back to it after not playing for a while.
How is it a good model to charge for repeated installs? Or is it just insanely poor wording?
The decision sparked an astonishing backlash against Unity from across the gaming industry,
I bet, this will threaten some people on their livelihood, and if you are 90% finished on a project, it’s an insane reason to have to switch to another engine, and could kill several projects.
I hope Unity will see a massive dive in customers on these policies. This is the kind of decision a company deserves bankruptcy for. And the CEO deserves to be fired without benefits, and never hired as CEO again.
Dick_Justice@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Mm, I’m curious as to what the threats actually were. I’ve seen people claim they got death threats because someone tweeted “kys” at them in response to their homophobic bullshit.
alienanimals@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Oh no, the poor rich corporate executives who were just trying to fuck over their usebase made up some death threats! Time to lick some boots - many of the people in this thread.
Ozymati@lemmy.nz 1 year ago
One threat, from and employee. Sigh.
More realistic outcome - some game loving tweenage hacker does something fantastically destructive in whatever part of their infrastructure they can get into.
Immersive_Matthew@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Unity is the sort of company Steve Jobs called out in this 2 min video clip. youtu.be/tGKsbt5wii0?si=v8_A2jW5uLewhbVS
sirico@feddit.uk 1 year ago
Come on people glitter bombs and ddos is so much funnier
stevedidWHAT@lemmy.world 1 year ago
ITP: Internet dumb fucks do internet dumb shit and send to death threats.
Comments feign an argument for hypocrisy ala “eat the reach is just as bad”
Save yourself some brain cells and move on
captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Dude…Just stop using the software and let the business fail. That’s all you’ve got to do. Unreal engine, Godot, Gamemaker Studio, Source 2, QBASIC, use something else.
sadreality@kbin.social 1 year ago
Rich people love "death treats" start to think they pay other to call them in to appear like victims haha
DocBlaze@lemmy.world 1 year ago
nobody who makes public death threats is gonna do shit. why would you announce and make a public record of a crime you are about to commit? another joke of a corporate move, unless it’s a lie to get sympathy.
avater@lemmy.world 1 year ago
okay the pricing changes were stupid as fuck and should be discussed and criticised, but death threats are on a completely other level and not accetable. So calm the fuck down whoever is posting them…
stevestevesteve@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I’m not one of the maniacs making threats of any kind, but honestly it really seems like death threats are the only thing that gets any attention anymore, so I can understand why it’s done…
Is “eat the rich” not a death threat in its own right?
dual_sport_dork@lemmy.world 1 year ago
It is, and here’s the thing: All of society, laws, and legal recourses ultimately just boil down to “might makes right, but with extra steps.” We all love to act like this isn’t the case in a civilized society, but it is. That might usually rests with the police, the military, some governmental organization, or some megacorporation. Violence both literal and metaphorical is inflicted on the common person continually by those at the top. Who are the police after all? Just guys with guns. Who are judges and politicians? Just guys with access to the police. Who are megacorporations? Just guys with access to judges and politicians, and so on down the line. So when someone says they have the law on their side, and you don’t, what they’re really implying is that they can call the guys with guns, who if you don’t do what you say (no matter how ridiculous) they can literally kill you. And we treat this as normal and proper and reasonable, because we’re stupid.
These motherfuckers want to act like their violence or threat of violence is justified, and that’s a one way street.
Well, it ain’t. Nobody’s invulnerable.
Maybe it’s “just” video games. (Or “just” a cell phone app, or “just” a predatory subscription, or “just” an apartment with exorbitant rent, or whatever.) But big corporations are fucking with people’s livelihoods, here. There’s a reason we colloquially call such a thing “a living.” These are assholes taking food off of someone’s table, just for greed, just because they can, because they think they’ve above reproach. Because the whole teetering facade is lopsided. It doesn’t matter who the fuck they are at that point.
TwilightVulpine@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Yeah, it’s not like voicing disagreement and concerns amicably is listened to. It’s not like these executives negotiate with the users before making decisions that can ruin their livelihoods. As the avenues for civilized protest close, as people are left powerless towards the decisions of the wealthy, what else can they be expected to do?
It might seem much when it comes to games, but it’s also a matter of worker’s rights. Sometimes it seems like people today are a bit too passive and overly concerned with civility as their rights are undermined. Comes to mind the other news about the Australian CEO saying that he thinks more people should be unemployed and feel pain to be reminded who they work for. What is the appropriate response to that?
Steeve@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Well here I thought it was a metaphor, but if you’re down for literally eating the rich I guess us steves gotta stick together
PeckerBrown@lemmy.world 1 year ago
That’s the idea. Here’s hoping they get it.
zaph@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Maybe it is but I always took it as “let’s take their money and redistribute the wealth.”
snek@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Put the bite on the son of a bitch
sadreality@kbin.social 1 year ago
That's a warning tbh
Buffalox@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Death threats are not OK, but this can destroys years of work for people, and it can threaten their livelihood. I’m guessing this has pushed some people into a sense of desperation. And these threats are acts of desperation, not threats that have a huge chance of being carried out.
John Riccitiello needs to be fired, if he isn’t Unity deserves bankruptcy for this move.
Letstakealook@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I’d be willing to bet it wasn’t developers sending death threats but “gamers.”
HawlSera@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Oh I’m willing to bet that Disney and Nintendo are getting their most expensive lawyers. Keep in mind, there are a lot of Marvel and Star Wars games out there, the mouse doesn’t like to share his cheese.
CriticalMiss@lemmy.world 1 year ago
it’s just edgy teens saying that they’re gonna go murder them, it’s not really going to happen but they have to take safety precautions
holycrap@lemm.ee 1 year ago
You have to take those seriously unfortunately.
avater@lemmy.world 1 year ago
still stupid and those people should end up in jail for some time.
Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Not even, it was a single employee (probably for reasons not even related to this change) and CEO used that as an excuse to close for the day and probably to make people feel pity for him and therefore more likely to give him a pass for these awful decisions.
sadreality@kbin.social 1 year ago
You got a lot of faith in bad actor's claims...
Draconic_NEO@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Which is why he probably used it as an excuse to close the office, when the only known death threat to occur was from one of his employees.
I don’t know who that employee is and I don’t really care point is he’s using that basically to get pity from other people and distract from the bad things that his company is doing right now.