Game musings and news

[Thad]

I'm not an expert but per this article at Investopedia I gather that:

Not all insider trading is illegal.
If you disclose your trading to the SEC and don't use your insider knowledge to your own personal advantage, you're probably good.

I do think that your hypothetical would probably be illegal, because it's still someone making a trade based on knowledge that's not available to the public.

While Bar Zeev's trades are, by definition, insider trading, I don't think they're likely to be illegal insider trading, because he's been making the same kinds of trades at regular intervals for the past six months, and disclosing them to the SEC. I don't think this behavior is unusual for somebody who's recently become a major shareholder through a buyout.

It's not impossible that he knew this was coming and has been intentionally offloading stock before it happens, but if that's the case it seems like he chose the smartest, most difficult-to-prove way of doing it possible.

[Grath]

What is the threshold to prove insider trading? If you know your company is about to make a decision that they think will increase profits, but you don't agree and sell stock before it falls, does that still count?

At that level of ownership, your stock sales are planned out 8-12 months in advance. They might have waited to announce this stupid decision until shortly after their execs' latest stock sales went through, which may or may not be (but probably isn't) illegal.

[Thad]

Man oh man I bet the Godot devs are thrilled that they chose today to announce the Godot Development Fund.

[Thad]

Like, there's the ideological Free Software philosophy, and the pragmatic Open-Source Software philosophy, and this is one of those reminders that even if you're only looking out for your own self-interest and don't care about all that "greater good of the community" shit, there are still very good reasons to use open-source tools.

It's not that owners of open-source projects don't pull shit like this. It's just that when they do, the devs are like "nah", fork the project, change its name, and keep doing what they were doing.

XFree86 went from ubiquitous to dead practically overnight over a lot less than this.

[Thad]

Tom Coxon, tech lead on Cassette Beasts, has a Mastodon thread talking about the current state of Godot, including middleware that adds console support.

[Mongrel]

So the current CEO of Unity is John Riccitiello. Now, not only did he used to be a senior exec and then CEO at EA (QUEL SURPRISE!), he was in fact the exec who at one point "joked" that they should be charging per bullet fired in Battlefield.

The exact commentary was in a 24 min video that's not loading for me right now, but here's the transcript:

"Now what causes higher margins with digital, a couple of things... [skip a line]... The second thing and this is a point that I think might be lost on many, is a big and substantial portion of digital revenues are microtransactions.

When you are 6 hours into playing Battlefield, and you run out of ammo in your clip, and we ask you for a dollar to reload, you’re really not very price sensitive at that point in time (laughter in the background). Um, and for what it’s worth the cogs on the clip, really low, and so, um, essentially what ends up happening and the reason the play first, pay later model works so nicely is a consumer gets engaged in a property they might spend 10, 20, 30, 50 hours on the game, and then when they’re deep into the game they’re well invested in it, we’re not gouging, but we’re charging, and at that point in time the commitment can be pretty high.

As a personal anecdote I spent about $5000 calendar year to date on doing just this thing, this type of thing, on our products and others, um, I can readily attest to how well it works, um, but it is a, it’s a great model and I think it represents a substantially better future for the industry…"

EDIT: The backpedaling has begun. Unity rushes to clarify price increase plan, as game developers fume (Axios)

After initially telling Axios earlier Tuesday that a player installing a game, deleting it and installing it again would result in multiple fees, Unity's Whitten told Axios that the company would actually only charge for an initial installation. (A spokesperson told Axios that Unity had "regrouped" to discuss the issue.)

- He hoped this would allay fears of "install-bombing," where an angry user could keep deleting and re-installing a game to rack up fees to punish a developer.
- But an extra fee will be charged if a user installs a game on a second device, say a Steam Deck after installing a game on a PC.

[Brantly B.]

Everybody's focused on what a boulder in the pond this is for indie devs but I'm waiting with bated breath to hear from the larger developers. There's this little freemium game you might have heard of, called Pokemon Go? Runs on Unity, has like I dunno over 500 million downloads and depends on a wide and active install base to actually work? They might get a little bit mad about this.

Oh and there's this other little game, uhhh Kenshin Impact or something, they also rely almost solely on the Unity freemium model and I hear they've got a little money and a couple of lawyers.

Oh and I hear Disney likes to use Unity to make freemium games sometimes too! Ah, but you know, it's loveable ol' Disney corp. They'll be cool about it I'm sure.

As far as evil plans go this is right up there with trying to use the radiation cannon on Captain Sunshine.

[Thad]

Yeah, this definitely feels like one of those times C-suite execs refuse to listen to their lawyers.

"Look, it says right there that we can change the terms any time!"

[Grath]

Bonus: The current rumor for their solution to "indie devs getting financially obliterated by 25m installs of a Unity game on Game Pass" is "oh, lol, we'll just bill Microsoft for those installs" and I think Unity's best outcome to trying to send that bill will be if they get left on read with an unpaid bill.

[Brantly B.]

It's already irrevocable damage at this point. I was chatting with a dev who claimed they had spent 5 years on a Unity project and were too ass-deep into it to change engines - which, you know, there but for the grace of ADHD. But that conversation ended entirely with a single question that didn't really need an answer: "If not now, then when?"

You can backpedal the decision, maybe, but you can't backpedal the intention behind it.

[Thad]

It's already irrevocable damage at this point. I was chatting with a dev who claimed they had spent 5 years on a Unity project and were too ass-deep into it to change engines - which, you know, there but for the grace of ADHD. But that conversation ended entirely with a single question that didn't really need an answer: "If not now, then when?"

Yeah, I don't see a whole lot of people porting games that are already in development (much less ones that are already released) to another engine, but they're not going to forget this when it comes time to build their next game.

You can backpedal the decision, maybe, but you can't backpedal the intention behind it.

If some other company were to buy them out and then fire the whole board that might do it, but I don't see that happening until after their value is already tanked, and by then it'll probably be too late.

[Mongrel]

Those big players don't just have lawyers, they have Lawyers, with a capital Fuck-You-I'm-a-LAWYER.

[Brantly B.]

Yeah, I don't see a whole lot of people porting games that are already in development (much less ones that are already released) to another engine

If the numbers are what some devs are quoting then porting in some cases may not be just desirable but actually necessary to not end up making negative revenue.

It's not entirely theoretical either. The Amogus devs have already stated they will drop everything and rebuild the entire game in another engine if they have to: HOWEVERTHEFUCKYOUVIEWTHEHELLSITE/InnerslothDevs/status/1701731398498013575

Also the fucking military uses Unity engine for some of its simulation work, which was probably a bad idea for both sides in the first place, but God only knows how this kind of licensing strategy is going to work out for them. They're probably exempt. I've had the feeling for a while that Riccitiello wants to cut the "game engine" identity out of the product, and totally obliterating the entire industry's interest in using it may be his big-ass genius plan to do that.

[Thad]

Yeah, I don't see a whole lot of people porting games that are already in development (much less ones that are already released) to another engine

If the numbers are what some devs are quoting then porting in some cases may not be just desirable but actually necessary to not end up making negative revenue.

Assuming these terms ever actually go into effect, which I wouldn't bet on. I think Unity will implement some kind of pay-per-download scheme (that's what they bought ironSource for), but I expect it to be pared way back from the initial announcement by the time it actually goes into effect (and I'm not so sure it will go into effect on January 1 as announced, either).

They've already got a wave of bad press and a dipping stock valuation. Next come the legal threats, assuming they haven't already. They'll either back down voluntarily or because the courts made them.

YMMV if you're a solo dev or a very small team, but any bigger than that, I think you're going to be looking for a legal solution right now and a technical one for next time.

[Mongrel]

[Grath]

Also the fucking military uses Unity engine for some of its simulation work, which was probably a bad idea for both sides in the first place, but God only knows how this kind of licensing strategy is going to work out for them. They're probably exempt. I've had the feeling for a while that Riccitiello wants to cut the "game engine" identity out of the product, and totally obliterating the entire industry's interest in using it may be his big-ass genius plan to do that.

The statement so far (after digging through several pages) is:
"The Unity Runtime fee does not apply to our film, gambling, or education subscription plans at this time. Industry customers who have questions about the Unity Runtime Fee or deploying and monetizing the Unity Runtime should reach out to their account manager or contact sales."

Edit 10:08 PM EDT:

Bonus: The current rumor for their solution to "indie devs getting financially obliterated by 25m installs of a Unity game on Game Pass" is "oh, lol, we'll just bill Microsoft for those installs" and I think Unity's best outcome to trying to send that bill will be if they get left on read with an unpaid bill.

Unity is, indeed, doing the dumb:

Edit 10:44 PM EDT:
Microsoft's terms of service USED to cover this, but that section was removed in May 2022.

[Brantly B.]

in this case the developer is not distributing it

Ohhhhh.

Ohhhhhhhhhh.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I see where this is going.

[Thad]

Slay the Spire devs respond to Unity's new fees: 'you fucked up'

The Mega Crit team has been hard at work these past 2+ years on a new game. But unlike with Slay the Spire, the engine we have been developing it in is Unity.

The retroactive pricing structure of Runtime Fees is not only harmful in a myriad of ways to developers--especially indies--it is also a violation of trust. We believe Unity is fully aware of this, seeing as they have gone so far as to remove their GitHub repository.

Despite the immense amount of time and effort our team has already poured into development on our new title, we will be migrating to a new engine unless changes are completely reverted and TOS protections are put in place.

We have never made a public statement before. That is how badly you fucked up.

AFAICT this is the first prominent developer to threaten to port an already-in-progress game to some other engine.

I still think the likeliest outcome is that Unity blinks and few existing projects get moved to other engines (but future projects sure as hell do). But this is a volatile situation and it could snowball quickly. Mixaphorically speaking.

[Mongrel]

"Actually we're just gonna make it all up"



hahahahahahahahaha

[Yoji]

So, we're gonna charge you based on some funny math we won't explain to you?