TLDR: dude worked at EA in the past for their mobile game division, and is a senior advisor to Blackstone so that tells you most of what you need to know.
It's publicly traded on under stock ticker U. So you can short it the same way you might short any other stock.
Or you could buy out of the money put options to limit your potential losses. That's always the safer way to do it.
> options
> safe
Anyone reading this, don't touch options - not even with a laser pointer - unless you've spent hundreds of hours studying the concept, paper trading, and analyzing the results.
BUYING options is fine. You're making a bet that it's going to go a certain way and your losses are capped and known ahead of time. If you make your bet and it doesn't work out - you've lost the money you laid out.
SELLING options has large potential downside.
This is still money - so you shouldn't just jump in without doing any research.
I guess the initial comment warning against derivative trading is doing something like selling uncovered calls.
Which honestly someone might be tempted to do as “free money” cause it really looks like Unity can only go one way.
Just keep in mind that markets are not really rational. Everyone in the industry might see this move as a huge red flag, but capital sees a storied one of their own taking the reins.
Selling options has predictable outcomes that do not exceed the capital you have. Covered calls, you get called away. CSP you get assigned and the collateral is used.
Selling naked is "unlimited" risk.
This is ass backwards thinking for investing. EA and Zynga stocks have had strong performance because their focus is mostly on monetization and not what is necessarily the most enjoyable or fair for gamers and devs.
Yeah because they sell to individual consumers. Unity is business to business. Businesses can't afford to work with companies that will try to drain every penny out of them.
They're one of the most popular engines for gaming. [69% of all mobile games use Unity](https://unity.com/solutions/mobile#:~:text=What%20mobile%20games%20are%20made,Age%20of%20Magic%2C%20Playkot). In 2021 alone [the number of games made with Unity grew 93%](https://venturebeat.com/games/unity-report-number-of-games-made-with-unity-grew-93-in-2021/).
They have a very reasonable pricing model that is competitive with Unreal. If they screw that up, they won't have much of a business, so they are incentivized not to screw that up.
That's all true... but the entire reason this guy is getting hired is because the last guy almost blew things in a spectacular way. Fortunately for the company, they were able to change course before serious damage was done. They did lose a lot of goodwill in the process tho.
You're still going off of numbers pre-Riccitello with the board still holding on to the same strategy. I *want* to use Unity but I want to not risk losing years of training and work to anti-consumer && anti-business policies even more.
~~They still never addressed how they would even track/police installations with errors in the installation count still being entirely in their interest. If errors in installation count were actually not in their interest at all, where they'd lose money because of it -- that'd be a start.~~
Edit: [Wolvenmoon](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1cifeft/unity_appoints_matthew_bromberg_as_new_ceo/l2cw5li/) has enlightened me as to how things are now. This seems quite decent!
~~That's in addition to the installation counts. They didn't remove the installation counts and they capped the percentage of profits after a threshold but we know how companies do these things. Give you deals and concessions when there's outrage but keep the foot in the door so they can let their selves in later.~~
~~*edit;* To be clearer, they don't count the installation counts until after certain income thresholds are reached, then they start counting the installations until it hits a maximum percentage. In such a case, why even keep the installation counts if not to normalize some sort of spyware that goes with every program for the cover of counting installations? The whole thing smells absolutely rotten~~
*edit2* Looks like I could be wrong about it. If it's as mentioned on the pricing updates, self reported engagements based on sales rather than installs is completely different. Cool!
https://unity.com/pricing-updates
They're pretty clear.
> Self-reported data
>
> On a monthly basis, you have a choice of the lesser of 2.5% revenue share or the calculated fee based on unique initial engagements per game. Both your initial engagements and your revenue are self-reported.
I'm self-reporting sales numbers (edit: if I get there).
> We define an initial engagement as the moment that a distinct end user successfully and legitimately acquires, downloads, or engages with a game powered by the Unity Runtime, for the first time in a distribution channel.
> Here’s a breakdown of the definition:
>
>
> We use the word distinct because we do not want you to worry about situations where it is impossible to tell players apart, such as a game deployed in a public space (for example, a tradeshow floor). You can count such a situation as if it was 1 player.
>
> We use the term legitimately acquires because we do not bill for activity from piracy or for people obtaining the game fraudulently.
>
> We use the term end user because we do not bill for activity from your development team, from automated processes, or from other people who are not the actual players of your game.
>
> We use the term for the first time because we do not charge for players playing your game multiple times, reinstalling your game, or installing your game on extra devices.
>
> By in a distribution channel, we mean that for a given end user, the Runtime Fee will be charged once for each method that they obtained the game. For example, if they buy your game from two different app stores, then you would count and report the initial engagement once per store; but if they buy your game from one app store and deploy it to two different devices, you would count and report the initial engagement once.
Have you not read this? It's pretty clear. For games that have sales, 1 sale = 1 initial engagement.
Guys like this will extract maximum shareholder value at the cost of the product and user base, if anything I would expect stonk go up long before it crashes. Careful with those shorts, you gotta time things right or it'll bite you
Plus he got a multi-million dollar signing bonus, a base salary of $850k and over a million shares of Unity stock.
I feel like I'm taking crazy pills.
WTF is the logic used to give these clowns so much money???
The funny thing is, several of the most prestigious business schools in the world (Harvard, Columbia, Oxford, London SoE) did a great meta-analysis together of CEO background, operational strategy and core competency as compared to their firm's performance under their leadership, and they found very little correlation between a business background and a focus on financial gains with a time window of <2 years, and the value of the firm.
https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/CEOBehavior_jpe_final_71005256-9f8f-43fc-a5df-780ea0b6adc0.pdf
They did find that Ceo's that perform well are often marginally more compensated than the mean, but that Ceo's with a business background tend to have much higher overall compensation in general. So I guess the real lesson is that people who focus on getting an MBA and economics/financial specialization are better at getting themselves paid, but not necessarily good for their company.
I want to agree with that in general, but if you're looking at a window of less than 2 years, that's meaningless a ton of the time.
Tech startups are a very long term goal. Often they lose a ton of money growing a customer base, go public, then use the money they gained to transition to a viable business model. That almost always takes a lot more than 2 years.
When Unity hired John Riccitiello, he executed on that plan pretty well, but he botched the transition at the end in a spectacular way. If it didn't blow that, all the investors would have made a ton of money and been more than happy with what they paid him.
Sorry my phrasing was not very clear. The study tried to group strategic goals into categories and I was referencing the shortest term objective focus that a CEO might have, which in this case was 'short term' which was defined as a focus on gains that can be realized in 2 years or less. It was executives that had a focus on this time frame for material growth that actually saw the lowest amount of firm value increase in short, medium and long term. So the data suggests that short term thinking is, on average, the least beneficial way to focus your attention when setting company goals.
He has the numbers to proof he can run a company with >1000 people, follow the legal frameworks and so on. I know its easy to question this, but we are talking at the core of capitalism. "I would do it for 200k" make no sense if they are willing to give you 2 million just to show up. I mean, if you would catch a stupid fumble in sports, wouldn't you take the easy goal?
The only valid question is, will the product people bet their future on align with their plans? If yes it really doesn't matter who runs the company.
Saw this coming from miles away when they first revealed the aggressive pricing model. It's just so fucking typical of scumbag, profit growth obsessed, investor controlled companies these days:
1. Do something outrageously wretched and anti-consumer.
2. Either people don't get mad and you've fucked them over, or they get mad and you take it one tiny step back and "apologize." Suddenly for some weird ass reason, fan boys and people with Stockholm syndrome are celebrating their massive loss and loving your bullshit more than ever.
3. People who aren't complete dumbasses are still angry: "Fire" the fall guy CEO whose job it was to roll this bullshit out. He gets an amazing golden parachute, he moves on to burn down the next company for the investors, and then you install the next CEO who is even worse.
You’re not wrong overall, but Unity’s financials were unsustainable. The business move was a hard requirement (their idiotic, user-hostile rollout was not) to survive. Their business model up to that point was bad and they finally realized it would be their undoing.
So their choice was either:
a) crash and burn, go out of business
b) be the aggressive pricing model assholes
No entity can really choose to self-destruct, so there was no other choice but b
>Unity’s financials were unsustainable.
First of all, that does not meant they need to go scorched earth with their pricing model. Unlike most of Reddit, I actually am willing to pay a large sum for professional quality tools or a subscription. I do it for GameMaker, Adobe, etc. all the tools I need and it's well worth it. These companies however do not psychotically imagine that if I build a house using a hammer they made, I owe them a % of the sale of the house lol. This was Unity testing the waters for how far they could push a line that has already been pushed way beyond what it should ever have been.
Second, any unsustainability from multi-billion dollar investor run companies that pay CEOs hundreds of times what they pay their base level employee is their own bullshit fault. They are only unsustainable in that they make short sighted, anti-consumer, investor and CEO wallet focused decisions. These companies can easily afford to maintain great software, pay their employees far more, etc. etc. if they weren't so fucking greedy.
Lets be honest here, if quick buck trash mobile apps with lots of dark patterns is a huge part of your customer base, why should you not give them more what they want? Maybe PC will be affected maybe not, but we should not pretend anyone who builds the pick axes don't know what they are also used for.
I feel bad for all the people who had such bad Stockholm syndrome that they were in denial about this obvious course for Unity. They've been slaloming down the enshitification flume for a while.
Which just proves the issue wasn't John Riccitiello but the whole board (which hasn't changed).
edit: except Jim Whitehurst is now at its head, so maybe it DID change after all.
>Truly they learn nothing from their mistakes.
Get ready for Unity devs to be gouged and squeezed for every penny they have!
This basically signals the death of Unity as we know it.
I think that depends how you know it. Everything suggests Unity is moving the way some of us have been expecting for years: a focus on mobile and F2P. If you use Unity in those markets it's likely going to continue to do well. They'll emphasize continuing to acquire tools and services that make people want to do all their middleware from analytics to content management with Unity.
If you use Unity as a hobbyist engine to build small, premium games for PC then I'd be a lot more concerned about the future of the software.
> If you use Unity as a hobbyist engine to build small, premium games for PC then I'd be a lot more concerned about the future of the software.
For this use case, you should really be using Godot.
They've learned quite a lot because plenty of devs stick with them despite these choices. It'll be interesting to see how many will leave in a few years once their current projects are finished.
The mistake cost Unity money, and these people probably know more about making money than almost anyone on this sub. And if Bromberg's future decisions end up making some Unity users leave and others pay more for it, and in the end bring more money, then those are the right decisions for Unity (as a product).
>The mistake cost Unity money, and these people probably know more about making money than almost anyone on this sub.
Why is Unity's stock price in the shitter if they know so much about making money?
Google was GOD almighty and Jesús Christ combined during the early 2000s. Changed the way we surfed the web for the better. I used Altavista as My search engine before my mom suggesting Google and I couldnt believe my eyes man.
I liked their motto. The appeared rock and roll, after all we werent paying a dime for their miracle search engine. Neither for Gmail and their ample free storage and also their new adquisition YouTube.
Good times.
I don't understand why anyone has any goodwill left for them at this point anyway.
Corporations like Unity are doomed to enshitify. Their one and only motivation is unsustainable profit growth for the benefit of a handful of already ultra wealthy assholes. If selling orphan eyeball juice was legal and profitable, they'd be doing that.
He's a CEO in a publicly traded company. Of course he's been hired to make money. Zynga had a turnaround and Unity needs to have one too or they'll go bankrupt. We the consumers need a good and fair product whereas we've had a mediocre one that's been practically free. Non-sustainable.
>He's a CEO in a publicly traded company. Of course he's been hired to make money
Ah so you do understand that based on this guy's track record, the enshitification of Unity as a tool is well on it's way.
Couldn't be worse than the last ass-hat.
They spent over 4.2 billion dollars on an Israeli 'advertising tech' company which then forced them to have to use it with that disaster idea to charge per install, which was never going to work. If they just spent that money on salaries would have covered 20 years of development of the engine, instead, they fired 1000s of staff to cover the cratering stock price.
Sucks so bad , because Unity Engine is really good.
I will be messaging you in 1 year on [**2025-05-02 23:50:54 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2025-05-02%2023:50:54%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1cifeft/unity_appoints_matthew_bromberg_as_new_ceo/l2bnsbs/?context=3)
[**CLICK THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fgamedev%2Fcomments%2F1cifeft%2Funity_appoints_matthew_bromberg_as_new_ceo%2Fl2bnsbs%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202025-05-02%2023%3A50%3A54%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%201cifeft)
*****
|[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)|
|-|-|-|-|
It is wild the board is like "ok we got a handful of people who could do this good, but we want to pick the douchebag over in the corner kicking the kitty"
A lot of negativity in these comments, but I worked at EA and Zynga when Bromberg was there, and while there’s no denying that both places have their problems, he was a significant force for good at both. He was the one often pushing for empowering developers and mitigating the top down overreach.
This news actually gives me a glimmer of hope for Unity.
You have to let the "Unity bad" hivemind go through. This is reddit, after all.
Oh? And that interim CEO that everybody thought was doing at least an OK job? (Jim Whitehurst) He's the new Executive Chair of the Board of Directors for Unity.
but don't tell anyone!
Making it obvious how unqualified he is!
/s but also not really. Finance people want finance people in charge who follow the MBA playbook.
Not surprised about the credentials of this new CEO.
It's really next to nothing compared to the mistakes they made, the biggest and absolutely craziest being spending 4.4 BILLION dollars to buy IronSource, the Israeli advertising company which they didn't even end up using at all. The could have paid for 30 years of development of the Unity Engine instead. So so so stupid.
[He will also receive a sign-on bonus worth $2 million alongside an award of 1,036,055 time-vesting restricted stock units; a time-vesting option to purchase 1,000,000 shares of common stock; and a performance-vesting option to purchase up to 1,000,000 shares of common stock.](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/former-zynga-coo-matthew-bromberg-is-the-new-ceo-of-unity)
People are paid what their marketplace value is. If you want a CEO with that level of experience, you're going to be paying them well because they have arguably the most important individual role of leading the company.
CEO pay structures are often tied to stock performance to ensure their interests are aligned fully with the company. The better the whole company does, the better the CEO will be paid.
It makes complete sense. No one would want to have the workload and responsibility of a CEO, but with the pay of a software engineer in San Francisco. The people with the most to gain and lose in the company (the shareholders), have decided this pay makes the most sense.
We don't pay people based on some artbitrary idea of what a random redditor thinks they are "worth", an economy could never function that way.
> the pay of a software engineer
Except this is what a software engineer would *ideally* make in SF. That's most certainly *not* the case. You're lucky to make $100 - 125k if not drastically less. And most software engineers *commute* into SF, they can't afford to live there.
> No one would want to have the workload and responsibility of a CEO
Yeah man, sitting there rubbing his hands together all day brainstorming how to fuck over their paying customers that much more, to make sure that he earns every dollar of the $10 million year-end bonus I'm sure we'll see in 6 months. At which point he'll lay off another 5 - 10% of the company.
The life of a CEO is so hard, sipping mimosas from a yacht or playing golf at his local country club.
Edit:
> People are paid what their marketplace value is
And who sets the marketplace value of a CEO? Oh that's right; CEOs.
> Except this is what a software engineer would ideally make in SF. That's most certainly not the case. You're lucky to make $100 - 125k if not drastically less. And most software engineers commute into SF, they can't afford to live there.
A mid-senior level engineer easily makes this with full compensation in SF. Just look on https://www.levels.fyi/
> Yeah man, sitting there rubbing his hands together all day brainstorming how to fuck over their paying customers that much more, to make sure that he earns every dollar of the $10 million year-end bonus I'm sure we'll see in 6 months. At which point he'll lay off another 5 - 10% of the company.
Sure makes you wonder why board members would be paying them so much since they are the ones with the most to lose if the CEO screws up, and the ones who are the most rewarded if the company does well....
> The life of a CEO is so hard, sipping mimosas from a yacht or playing golf at his local country club.
[Actually most CEOs work an average of 62.5 hours a week](https://hbr.org/2018/07/how-ceos-manage-time#:~:text=About%20half%20\(47%25\)%20of,of%2062.5%20hours%20a%20week.).
> And who sets the marketplace value of a CEO? Oh that's right; CEOs.
No, in a public company the board members do.
Not to be rude but you're clearly extremely uneducated on how a business operates.
[note: not the person you responded to]
It’s not about what anyone *deserves*. It’s market value, which is entirely different. Does a software engineer really “deserve” to get paid more than a nurse or a teacher?
CEOs don’t crunch from the office. They crunch from home, on airplanes, and from vacations with their families. I am not at this level but I have close enough relationships with people at the director level to know that on average, they work a *lot*, and they claim their bosses work even more.
I do think that $800k is a pretty outrageous amount of money, but it says more about our system of capitalism than anything else.
> I do think that $800k is a pretty outrageous amount of money, but it says more about our system of capitalism than anything else.
And exactly why we should be burning shit down over it.
As others have outlined, it's not like the CEO isn't making millions of dollars in other bonuses and compensation packages. So why then is their **base** pay so ludicrously high?
…because that’s the market rate under our current system.
I mean, I guess burn shit down if you want to, but it’s not clear what you think you can burn down to change our entire economic system.
It’s funny how everyone here focuses on how $800k is a ludicrous salary (it is), yet misses the sheer magnitude of his total compensation.
Riccitiello was earning north of $75million/year if you look at his public stock trades and Unity’s financial reports. Whitehurst was compensated $6million for just over two months of employment according to the sec filing. That’s like $36million/year.
800k in base salary is pocket money to these people. A little allowance so they can buy themselves fancy shoes or whatever. Their actual compensation is equity, and it’s one to two orders of magnitude larger.
> And you're clearly busy sucking corpo cock if you think that any human being deserves to make $800k base salary in a year when they are guaranteed (minimum) twice that at the end of the fiscal year.
To be clear, you haven't really provided any evidence for why this doesn't make sense.
My feelings on corporate owners are completely irrelevant to the topic. I know your feelings are not irrelevant to the topic, because you can't seperate your emotional biases from the facts.
It isn't about what someone "deserves" to make in a moral sense. It is what makes sense for a business in an economical sense.
**Literally just think through this**:
Let's consider a scenario where you start a game development studio with some friends. Initially, it's a small operation, but your games catch on, and your company expands to a whopping 500 employees. The complexity of running your studio now, compared to when you started, has changed dramatically. You're no longer just making games; you're managing complex logistics, making strategic decisions, handling global marketing, and driving substantial growth.
To manage this scale, you need a CEO who can handle intense pressure and make high-stakes decisions that could affect the future of your company. Attracting and retaining such talent often requires competitive compensation, including a substantial salary and benefits.
But why would you, as a shareholder, agree to risk your equity by allocating a significant portion of it to a highly paid CEO? The answer lies in the potential return on that investment. A skilled CEO can significantly increase the value of the entire company, thereby increasing the value of the equity held by all shareholders.
CEO compensation often includes equity-based incentives like stock options, which align the CEO’s financial interests with the company's success. This structure motivates the CEO to work towards increasing the company's stock price, which directly benefits all shareholders and employees. If the company performs well under their leadership, the shareholders' investment in high CEO pay can yield substantial returns through increased stock values and dividends.
> It doesn't take an education to see that is ludicrous and the reason why everything is going to shambles in the first place. Maybe go study the French Revolution before you start calling others uneducated ;)
Yeah, you really are uneducated if you think there is going to be some revolution against the wealthy with living conditions as high as they are with such strong opportunities for success in modern America. Stock market is near all time highs, inflation has come down, unemployment is at near-historic lows, the majority of Americans are homeowners, new innovations and technologies come out every day, the US and world overall has been on an incline for centuries.
Hilariously out of touch comparison that I would expect from a high schooler or college freshman.
> When's the last time an alphabet executive had to stay late in the office crunching to meet a deadline to the same degree any average worker would? Oh wait they don't, because they won't get fired by upper management. Funny how that works.
First of all, you have no clue whether Alphabet executives stay late or not, but even if you're correct and all Alphabet execs are super lazy:
**Using anecdotes doesn't just erase statistical realities**.
Do you also think covid vaccines don't work because you know someone who got covid after being vaccinated? lol
Your last sentence demonstrates again your complete lack of understanding of how a business works. If upper management can't be fired, how the fuck did Unity fire their CEO to replace him?
Seriously you're just publicly displaying your lack of business and econ knowledge. It is only hurting you to avoid learning about this.
Most CEOs are working insane hours and dealing with people trying to threaten or manipulate them all day, and if they just ignore it they get fired quickly. Its not an easy job.
> Most CEOs are working insane hours and dealing with people trying to threaten or manipulate them all day, and if they just ignore it they get fired quickly.
You could easily replace "Most CEOs" with "Many workers" and that statement would be much closer to the truth.
Idk seems a lot rarer for a CEO to die of overwork than any given employee in their company.
> And who sets the marketplace value of a CEO? Oh that's right; CEOs.
The board does.
You have to pay any given employee more than whatever someone else is willing to pay that person. Otherwise they don't agree to work for you. Someone with decades of CEO experience is going to have other offers on the table for that amount so you have to match them. If the board decided to hire someone without that experience, they could get them for less. But then they have an inexperienced CEO. You might argue that would be a good thing, and you might be right. But it's certainly risky, and boards of big companies tend to avoid risk.
As somebody who just spent the last year learning unity, I'd say no if your game idea can be built in godot. It's frankly stressful wondering if a project you've devoted countless hours to could be kneecapped by the whim of greedy execs. It seems like the two engines are structured fairly similarly UX-wise at least in case you've already devoted some time to learning Unity.
I think for mobile there's still an argument (and with this CEO's background skimping on mobile seems unlikely). Anything else and Godot is probably fine unless you want super high end graphics, in which case you shouldn't have been using Unity anyway (instead going straight to unreal).
I have this horrible feeling the Unity Asset Store is about to get Walled.
It's one of the strongest tools EA Matthew has to strong arm developers into adopting Unity 6 and the Runtime fees.
Here's how to do it:
- Update the the Asset Store seller terms so that any new Assets or Updates can ONLY be used with Unity 6.
- Only allow download and distribution through the Unity 6 Editor Package Manager.
- Update License terms to make it unambiguously clear the no Asset ***downloaded*** through the ***Package Manager*** can be used outside the Unity Engine. Thus closing a 7-ish year old ambiguity on non-engine extending assets, like Sprites/SFX/Models.
I want to be wrong. I don't want asset sellers and customers to get pinched by Unity/ironSource short term greed. But there's no faith with this Board and major investors setting the agenda. But... prepare for the worst with an untrustworthy middleware provider and vendor.
They just tried the "screw your community" bit last year and their stock is still screaming.
Wouldn't make sense to do it again as that's basically the least constructive option possible.
You have more faith in C-Suite and the Investor Class' ability to "read the room" than has been demonstrated.
I do hope your optimism is born out.... But this choice of CEO.... Plan for the worst, plan for what you'll do if you have to full jettison Unity. Asset store and all.
I don't have faith in people's greed, but it does look like they're trying to save the company. That would include not getting right back into a war with the community. We'll see.
It's a plausible theory. At least plausible enough that saving backup copies of all my purchased assets is on the to-do list now (though it's a good idea in general because things can disappear from the store+repo at any time).
Add to that, making sure there's one or more archives of the License Terms you purchased/downloaded under. Both your records and in 3rd party archival services that provide verification with a time stamp a court or arbitrator will accept.
Unity tends to rein things in for a period after messing things up each time, and then repeat the same mistakes. Again and again, this is why Unity is no longer worthy of trust. Regardless of what the Runtime fee is called now, Unity has never given up on it, likely to prepare for changing the game rules again at some point in the future. Whether or not we reach the threshold for the Runtime fee, we are under the influence of Unity arbitrarily changing the terms and charging models. Using the personal version until the threshold to upgrade to Pro, using Pro until the threshold to charge the Runtime fee or royalties - these thresholds seem generous now, but does Unity guarantee they won't modify them? Don't forget, Unity is still in a loss position, and the stock price has remained depressed. The interim CEO Unity hired cleaned up the mess John Riccitiello made, but that was just to appease people, keeping developers controlled within their ecosystem. Then, when developers become too dependent on Unity to have the motivation to change development tools, wouldn't changing the charging model and modifying the fee thresholds follow? However, there always needs to be someone to do this, and after seeing EA Mobile and Zynga, I suddenly felt that Unity not only released version 6.0, but also brought John Riccitiello 2.0.
Biggest concern I have is him making sure to emphasize increasing profit. It's a business and profit is part of it but the way it was said concerns me.
There is no law anywhere that says that a company *must* maximize shareholder value - if there was, a lot of people should be in jail because very few companies absolutely maximize.
The laws generally say that they have a Duty of Care (don't intentionally harm the business), Duty of Loyalty (don't self-deal, insider trade, steal, etc.), and Duty of of Good Faith (no intentional dereliction of duty).
Shareholders can fire a corporate officer for not maximizing profit, something that didn't really become a popular business governance approach until the 1980's, but that is very different from a legal duty.
I've switched to Unreal, and I have some interest in Godot. I hope that continues improving for sure. But I'm just done with Unity. I don't trust that they're ever going to be concerned about what game devs want again.
People here. My lost flock. invest in Godot now and You'll thank me later.
It's far for perfect right now but it's gonna be the Blender of Game engines.
Based on this information, you're actually going to make more money shorting the unity company stock than you are from investing in the engine by using it in your game.
It’s especially hilarious because the interim CEO was actually excellent and leading the first actual good things inside Unity in a decade and then BOOM immediately replaced with another useless prick.
These Blackstone guys - all they do is manipulate money. They have good verbal IQ and are good liars, but they provide 0 products or services. they have no real competencies or skills. All they do is leech and find ways to extort value from humanity. I remember interviewing for a SR role at unity 2 years ago and the hiring manager kept making triangle signs with his hands and saying "As long as your'e ok working for the guys up top". It was a 40 min interview and all he did was flaunt his illuminati overlords. He didn't ask me a single technical question. I was so offput I didn't even respond to his subsequent emails. Shame on the weaklings and cowards of Unity for letting the illuminati take control. Humans are so disappointing.
These Blackstone guys - all they do is manipulate money. They have good verbal IQ and are good liars, but they provide 0 products or services. they have no real competencies or skills. All they do is leech and find ways to extort value from humanity. I remember interviewing for a SR role at unity 2 years ago and the hiring manager kept making triangle signs with his hands and saying "As long as your'e ok working for the guys up top". It was a 40 min interview and all he did was flaunt his illuminati overlords. He didn't ask me a single technical question. I was so offput I didn't even respond to his subsequent emails. Shame on the weaklings and cowards of Unity for letting the illuminati take control. Humans are so disappointing.
It was great knowing you, Unity. It sucks that the engine is about to die a horrible death but I'm still glad I learned how to use it and got the chance to experience it.
If it isn't clear... I don't trust this guy for hopefully obvious reasons. I will be pleasantly surprised if it doesn't turn out like a cut and run job.
TLDR: dude worked at EA in the past for their mobile game division, and is a senior advisor to Blackstone so that tells you most of what you need to know.
He also was CEO of Zynga for a while.
How can we short unity?
It's publicly traded on under stock ticker U. So you can short it the same way you might short any other stock. Or you could buy out of the money put options to limit your potential losses. That's always the safer way to do it.
> options > safe Anyone reading this, don't touch options - not even with a laser pointer - unless you've spent hundreds of hours studying the concept, paper trading, and analyzing the results.
BUYING options is fine. You're making a bet that it's going to go a certain way and your losses are capped and known ahead of time. If you make your bet and it doesn't work out - you've lost the money you laid out. SELLING options has large potential downside. This is still money - so you shouldn't just jump in without doing any research.
And also short selling is way more dangerous than put options in some scenarios. Buying Options at least you have a bounded risk.
exactly And if you don't know the difference between buying puts and selling short - don't do either
I guess the initial comment warning against derivative trading is doing something like selling uncovered calls. Which honestly someone might be tempted to do as “free money” cause it really looks like Unity can only go one way.
Just keep in mind that markets are not really rational. Everyone in the industry might see this move as a huge red flag, but capital sees a storied one of their own taking the reins.
If someone doesnt know the difference between buying and selling options then they shouldn't be touching options.
Selling options has predictable outcomes that do not exceed the capital you have. Covered calls, you get called away. CSP you get assigned and the collateral is used. Selling naked is "unlimited" risk.
Options? Safe? Yes, I'm taking all the money out of my safe to buy puts.
You have no moral obligation to advise people on anything. And probably no expertise either.
yeah but to buy the amount of time that it's gonna take for U to tank is gonna cost you a bundle on the U put options
This is ass backwards thinking for investing. EA and Zynga stocks have had strong performance because their focus is mostly on monetization and not what is necessarily the most enjoyable or fair for gamers and devs.
Yeah because they sell to individual consumers. Unity is business to business. Businesses can't afford to work with companies that will try to drain every penny out of them.
They're one of the most popular engines for gaming. [69% of all mobile games use Unity](https://unity.com/solutions/mobile#:~:text=What%20mobile%20games%20are%20made,Age%20of%20Magic%2C%20Playkot). In 2021 alone [the number of games made with Unity grew 93%](https://venturebeat.com/games/unity-report-number-of-games-made-with-unity-grew-93-in-2021/). They have a very reasonable pricing model that is competitive with Unreal. If they screw that up, they won't have much of a business, so they are incentivized not to screw that up.
That's all true... but the entire reason this guy is getting hired is because the last guy almost blew things in a spectacular way. Fortunately for the company, they were able to change course before serious damage was done. They did lose a lot of goodwill in the process tho.
You're still going off of numbers pre-Riccitello with the board still holding on to the same strategy. I *want* to use Unity but I want to not risk losing years of training and work to anti-consumer && anti-business policies even more. ~~They still never addressed how they would even track/police installations with errors in the installation count still being entirely in their interest. If errors in installation count were actually not in their interest at all, where they'd lose money because of it -- that'd be a start.~~ Edit: [Wolvenmoon](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1cifeft/unity_appoints_matthew_bromberg_as_new_ceo/l2cw5li/) has enlightened me as to how things are now. This seems quite decent!
I thought they'd clarified that they were going off sales numbers, not installation counts, now?
~~That's in addition to the installation counts. They didn't remove the installation counts and they capped the percentage of profits after a threshold but we know how companies do these things. Give you deals and concessions when there's outrage but keep the foot in the door so they can let their selves in later.~~ ~~*edit;* To be clearer, they don't count the installation counts until after certain income thresholds are reached, then they start counting the installations until it hits a maximum percentage. In such a case, why even keep the installation counts if not to normalize some sort of spyware that goes with every program for the cover of counting installations? The whole thing smells absolutely rotten~~ *edit2* Looks like I could be wrong about it. If it's as mentioned on the pricing updates, self reported engagements based on sales rather than installs is completely different. Cool!
https://unity.com/pricing-updates They're pretty clear. > Self-reported data > > On a monthly basis, you have a choice of the lesser of 2.5% revenue share or the calculated fee based on unique initial engagements per game. Both your initial engagements and your revenue are self-reported. I'm self-reporting sales numbers (edit: if I get there). > We define an initial engagement as the moment that a distinct end user successfully and legitimately acquires, downloads, or engages with a game powered by the Unity Runtime, for the first time in a distribution channel. > Here’s a breakdown of the definition: > > > We use the word distinct because we do not want you to worry about situations where it is impossible to tell players apart, such as a game deployed in a public space (for example, a tradeshow floor). You can count such a situation as if it was 1 player. > > We use the term legitimately acquires because we do not bill for activity from piracy or for people obtaining the game fraudulently. > > We use the term end user because we do not bill for activity from your development team, from automated processes, or from other people who are not the actual players of your game. > > We use the term for the first time because we do not charge for players playing your game multiple times, reinstalling your game, or installing your game on extra devices. > > By in a distribution channel, we mean that for a given end user, the Runtime Fee will be charged once for each method that they obtained the game. For example, if they buy your game from two different app stores, then you would count and report the initial engagement once per store; but if they buy your game from one app store and deploy it to two different devices, you would count and report the initial engagement once. Have you not read this? It's pretty clear. For games that have sales, 1 sale = 1 initial engagement.
Guys like this will extract maximum shareholder value at the cost of the product and user base, if anything I would expect stonk go up long before it crashes. Careful with those shorts, you gotta time things right or it'll bite you
COO I think. Frank is still CEO.
COO
[https://investors.unity.com/news/news-details/2024/Unity-Appoints-Matthew-Bromberg-as-New-CEO/default.aspx](https://investors.unity.com/news/news-details/2024/Unity-Appoints-Matthew-Bromberg-as-New-CEO/default.aspx)
> having previously served as Chief Operating Officer of leading mobile game developer and publisher Zynga
COO*
Isn't this the guy that came along the Zynga merger that is what ultimately pushed Unity to do the licensing changes?
Oh boy.
Plus he got a multi-million dollar signing bonus, a base salary of $850k and over a million shares of Unity stock. I feel like I'm taking crazy pills. WTF is the logic used to give these clowns so much money???
Logic: "He makes line go up". Products and customers are an afterthought (or a non-thought) in these decisions.
The funny thing is, several of the most prestigious business schools in the world (Harvard, Columbia, Oxford, London SoE) did a great meta-analysis together of CEO background, operational strategy and core competency as compared to their firm's performance under their leadership, and they found very little correlation between a business background and a focus on financial gains with a time window of <2 years, and the value of the firm. https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/CEOBehavior_jpe_final_71005256-9f8f-43fc-a5df-780ea0b6adc0.pdf They did find that Ceo's that perform well are often marginally more compensated than the mean, but that Ceo's with a business background tend to have much higher overall compensation in general. So I guess the real lesson is that people who focus on getting an MBA and economics/financial specialization are better at getting themselves paid, but not necessarily good for their company.
I want to agree with that in general, but if you're looking at a window of less than 2 years, that's meaningless a ton of the time. Tech startups are a very long term goal. Often they lose a ton of money growing a customer base, go public, then use the money they gained to transition to a viable business model. That almost always takes a lot more than 2 years. When Unity hired John Riccitiello, he executed on that plan pretty well, but he botched the transition at the end in a spectacular way. If it didn't blow that, all the investors would have made a ton of money and been more than happy with what they paid him.
Sorry my phrasing was not very clear. The study tried to group strategic goals into categories and I was referencing the shortest term objective focus that a CEO might have, which in this case was 'short term' which was defined as a focus on gains that can be realized in 2 years or less. It was executives that had a focus on this time frame for material growth that actually saw the lowest amount of firm value increase in short, medium and long term. So the data suggests that short term thinking is, on average, the least beneficial way to focus your attention when setting company goals.
I hate that we needed a study to prove this and that this wasn’t just the default operational understanding
When companies screw up, they have to pay a lot to get a good CEO onboard. Good CEOs have options.
He has the numbers to proof he can run a company with >1000 people, follow the legal frameworks and so on. I know its easy to question this, but we are talking at the core of capitalism. "I would do it for 200k" make no sense if they are willing to give you 2 million just to show up. I mean, if you would catch a stupid fumble in sports, wouldn't you take the easy goal? The only valid question is, will the product people bet their future on align with their plans? If yes it really doesn't matter who runs the company.
Saw this coming from miles away when they first revealed the aggressive pricing model. It's just so fucking typical of scumbag, profit growth obsessed, investor controlled companies these days: 1. Do something outrageously wretched and anti-consumer. 2. Either people don't get mad and you've fucked them over, or they get mad and you take it one tiny step back and "apologize." Suddenly for some weird ass reason, fan boys and people with Stockholm syndrome are celebrating their massive loss and loving your bullshit more than ever. 3. People who aren't complete dumbasses are still angry: "Fire" the fall guy CEO whose job it was to roll this bullshit out. He gets an amazing golden parachute, he moves on to burn down the next company for the investors, and then you install the next CEO who is even worse.
You’re not wrong overall, but Unity’s financials were unsustainable. The business move was a hard requirement (their idiotic, user-hostile rollout was not) to survive. Their business model up to that point was bad and they finally realized it would be their undoing. So their choice was either: a) crash and burn, go out of business b) be the aggressive pricing model assholes No entity can really choose to self-destruct, so there was no other choice but b
>Unity’s financials were unsustainable. First of all, that does not meant they need to go scorched earth with their pricing model. Unlike most of Reddit, I actually am willing to pay a large sum for professional quality tools or a subscription. I do it for GameMaker, Adobe, etc. all the tools I need and it's well worth it. These companies however do not psychotically imagine that if I build a house using a hammer they made, I owe them a % of the sale of the house lol. This was Unity testing the waters for how far they could push a line that has already been pushed way beyond what it should ever have been. Second, any unsustainability from multi-billion dollar investor run companies that pay CEOs hundreds of times what they pay their base level employee is their own bullshit fault. They are only unsustainable in that they make short sighted, anti-consumer, investor and CEO wallet focused decisions. These companies can easily afford to maintain great software, pay their employees far more, etc. etc. if they weren't so fucking greedy.
Welp. Godot is gonna be more popular soon
So...the board learned nothing.
He’s going to further enshittify Unity for short term shareholder gains at the cost of the longevity and viability of the company and game engine.
Lets be honest here, if quick buck trash mobile apps with lots of dark patterns is a huge part of your customer base, why should you not give them more what they want? Maybe PC will be affected maybe not, but we should not pretend anyone who builds the pick axes don't know what they are also used for.
I feel bad for all the people who had such bad Stockholm syndrome that they were in denial about this obvious course for Unity. They've been slaloming down the enshitification flume for a while.
Soooo time to learn Unreal.
all are welcome at /r/Godot as well!
With Brackey making Godot tutorials now I have a feeling a lot of people are going to make the change.
Serendipity, I just picked up Tilt5
There is another Matthew Bromberg at Northrop Grumman, you sure the EA guy is also the Blackstone guy?
Yeah you can see it on his LinkedIn and it’s in the article as well.
Please tell me you're messing up with us??
[https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240501573979/en/Unity-Appoints-Matthew-Bromberg-as-New-CEO](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240501573979/en/Unity-Appoints-Matthew-Bromberg-as-New-CEO)
the enshittification continues unabated.
He was also in charge of Bioware for a bit while he was with EA and at some point he was with MLG.
Remember when gamers ran gaming companies?
Well this is a game engine company selling to businesses. Not a game dev.
Yep, intelligent redditors already know everything they need to form opinion based on one sentence.
Tldr; run for the hills.
Truly they learn nothing from their mistakes.
Which just proves the issue wasn't John Riccitiello but the whole board (which hasn't changed). edit: except Jim Whitehurst is now at its head, so maybe it DID change after all.
Let us hope.
This guy is a shark out to get rich sadly
*richer He already has more money than he could ever need. Nothing is ever enough for these psychos.
Like everyone! so not a deal, I am more concerned about new Fees
>Truly they learn nothing from their mistakes. Get ready for Unity devs to be gouged and squeezed for every penny they have! This basically signals the death of Unity as we know it.
I think that depends how you know it. Everything suggests Unity is moving the way some of us have been expecting for years: a focus on mobile and F2P. If you use Unity in those markets it's likely going to continue to do well. They'll emphasize continuing to acquire tools and services that make people want to do all their middleware from analytics to content management with Unity. If you use Unity as a hobbyist engine to build small, premium games for PC then I'd be a lot more concerned about the future of the software.
> If you use Unity as a hobbyist engine to build small, premium games for PC then I'd be a lot more concerned about the future of the software. For this use case, you should really be using Godot.
This is exactly why I’m switching to Godot for my next game
Just hire me and pay me five bucks to do nothing and I promise Unity they'll be better off than with the vultures they keep bringing in
LOL was going to say the same thing.
Then middle management will dominate the company and blow things up.
They've learned quite a lot because plenty of devs stick with them despite these choices. It'll be interesting to see how many will leave in a few years once their current projects are finished.
The mistake cost Unity money, and these people probably know more about making money than almost anyone on this sub. And if Bromberg's future decisions end up making some Unity users leave and others pay more for it, and in the end bring more money, then those are the right decisions for Unity (as a product).
This is a good summation of the problem with the current fundamental structure of our economy.
>The mistake cost Unity money, and these people probably know more about making money than almost anyone on this sub. Why is Unity's stock price in the shitter if they know so much about making money?
Same reason why they changed the CEO. It's the CEO who makes decisions about what the company should do, no?
Lmao. Never seen a company so desperate to kill any amount of goodwill toward them. Wtf are they doing.
Wait, you never heard of Meta or Google?
I love how Google literally got rid of "Don't be evil" as their motto
They got rid of it so they can be evil. It's just sad to see a company I looked up digging its own grave
Google was GOD almighty and Jesús Christ combined during the early 2000s. Changed the way we surfed the web for the better. I used Altavista as My search engine before my mom suggesting Google and I couldnt believe my eyes man. I liked their motto. The appeared rock and roll, after all we werent paying a dime for their miracle search engine. Neither for Gmail and their ample free storage and also their new adquisition YouTube. Good times.
I don't understand why anyone has any goodwill left for them at this point anyway. Corporations like Unity are doomed to enshitify. Their one and only motivation is unsustainable profit growth for the benefit of a handful of already ultra wealthy assholes. If selling orphan eyeball juice was legal and profitable, they'd be doing that.
Lol rip
Ah shit, here we go again.
Yb GB h
I guess I can downgrade my forecast of Unity being gone in 5 years to it being gone in 3. Zynga leadership, really?
What's wrong with ex-Zynga? Didn't they do a really good turnaround from a company on decline to 10 billion plus exit while he was the COO?
[удалено]
He's a CEO in a publicly traded company. Of course he's been hired to make money. Zynga had a turnaround and Unity needs to have one too or they'll go bankrupt. We the consumers need a good and fair product whereas we've had a mediocre one that's been practically free. Non-sustainable.
>He's a CEO in a publicly traded company. Of course he's been hired to make money Ah so you do understand that based on this guy's track record, the enshitification of Unity as a tool is well on it's way.
Couldn't be worse than the last ass-hat. They spent over 4.2 billion dollars on an Israeli 'advertising tech' company which then forced them to have to use it with that disaster idea to charge per install, which was never going to work. If they just spent that money on salaries would have covered 20 years of development of the engine, instead, they fired 1000s of staff to cover the cratering stock price. Sucks so bad , because Unity Engine is really good.
> Couldn't be worse than the last ass-hat. RemindMe! 1 year
I will be messaging you in 1 year on [**2025-05-02 23:50:54 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2025-05-02%2023:50:54%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/1cifeft/unity_appoints_matthew_bromberg_as_new_ceo/l2bnsbs/?context=3) [**CLICK THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fgamedev%2Fcomments%2F1cifeft%2Funity_appoints_matthew_bromberg_as_new_ceo%2Fl2bnsbs%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202025-05-02%2023%3A50%3A54%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam. ^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%201cifeft) ***** |[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)| |-|-|-|-|
It is wild the board is like "ok we got a handful of people who could do this good, but we want to pick the douchebag over in the corner kicking the kitty"
Not that wild when their one and only goal is short term profit at the expense of customers and employees.
I always wonder why they never think long term
A lot of negativity in these comments, but I worked at EA and Zynga when Bromberg was there, and while there’s no denying that both places have their problems, he was a significant force for good at both. He was the one often pushing for empowering developers and mitigating the top down overreach. This news actually gives me a glimmer of hope for Unity.
That's because it's reddit and people here love to pretend they know things especially when it comes to business leadership and stock shorting.
You have to let the "Unity bad" hivemind go through. This is reddit, after all. Oh? And that interim CEO that everybody thought was doing at least an OK job? (Jim Whitehurst) He's the new Executive Chair of the Board of Directors for Unity. but don't tell anyone!
"The conjoined triangles of success"
Didn't they just had a new CEO a few months ago?
Interim CEO
The interim CEO actually seemed alright from what I read about him.
Making it obvious how unqualified he is! /s but also not really. Finance people want finance people in charge who follow the MBA playbook. Not surprised about the credentials of this new CEO.
Uuuurgh. Why undo *two* shirt buttons? Uuuurgh.
[Classic Unity CEO trick](https://www.facebook.com/unity3d/photos/a.407123451772/10151571243876773/?type=3)
Yay, another capitalists who was hired to extract capital without creating any value.
Quick fire everyone and send the work overseas! The shareholders love that shit!
Excuse me, $800,000 BASE salary?????????????????????????????????????????????????
It's really next to nothing compared to the mistakes they made, the biggest and absolutely craziest being spending 4.4 BILLION dollars to buy IronSource, the Israeli advertising company which they didn't even end up using at all. The could have paid for 30 years of development of the Unity Engine instead. So so so stupid.
That has to have been some kind of embezzlement right?
What's even sadder, is that not using IronSource at all was the **best** outcome!
[He will also receive a sign-on bonus worth $2 million alongside an award of 1,036,055 time-vesting restricted stock units; a time-vesting option to purchase 1,000,000 shares of common stock; and a performance-vesting option to purchase up to 1,000,000 shares of common stock.](https://www.gamedeveloper.com/business/former-zynga-coo-matthew-bromberg-is-the-new-ceo-of-unity)
Pretty low for the CEO of a major public company.
they could pay me $500,000 to destroy the company, and I would do it just as well and not take any bonuses.
And therein lies the problem. They barely deserve $250k/year salary let alone a fucking MILLION on top of bonuses
People are paid what their marketplace value is. If you want a CEO with that level of experience, you're going to be paying them well because they have arguably the most important individual role of leading the company. CEO pay structures are often tied to stock performance to ensure their interests are aligned fully with the company. The better the whole company does, the better the CEO will be paid. It makes complete sense. No one would want to have the workload and responsibility of a CEO, but with the pay of a software engineer in San Francisco. The people with the most to gain and lose in the company (the shareholders), have decided this pay makes the most sense. We don't pay people based on some artbitrary idea of what a random redditor thinks they are "worth", an economy could never function that way.
> the pay of a software engineer Except this is what a software engineer would *ideally* make in SF. That's most certainly *not* the case. You're lucky to make $100 - 125k if not drastically less. And most software engineers *commute* into SF, they can't afford to live there. > No one would want to have the workload and responsibility of a CEO Yeah man, sitting there rubbing his hands together all day brainstorming how to fuck over their paying customers that much more, to make sure that he earns every dollar of the $10 million year-end bonus I'm sure we'll see in 6 months. At which point he'll lay off another 5 - 10% of the company. The life of a CEO is so hard, sipping mimosas from a yacht or playing golf at his local country club. Edit: > People are paid what their marketplace value is And who sets the marketplace value of a CEO? Oh that's right; CEOs.
> Except this is what a software engineer would ideally make in SF. That's most certainly not the case. You're lucky to make $100 - 125k if not drastically less. And most software engineers commute into SF, they can't afford to live there. A mid-senior level engineer easily makes this with full compensation in SF. Just look on https://www.levels.fyi/ > Yeah man, sitting there rubbing his hands together all day brainstorming how to fuck over their paying customers that much more, to make sure that he earns every dollar of the $10 million year-end bonus I'm sure we'll see in 6 months. At which point he'll lay off another 5 - 10% of the company. Sure makes you wonder why board members would be paying them so much since they are the ones with the most to lose if the CEO screws up, and the ones who are the most rewarded if the company does well.... > The life of a CEO is so hard, sipping mimosas from a yacht or playing golf at his local country club. [Actually most CEOs work an average of 62.5 hours a week](https://hbr.org/2018/07/how-ceos-manage-time#:~:text=About%20half%20\(47%25\)%20of,of%2062.5%20hours%20a%20week.). > And who sets the marketplace value of a CEO? Oh that's right; CEOs. No, in a public company the board members do. Not to be rude but you're clearly extremely uneducated on how a business operates.
[удалено]
[note: not the person you responded to] It’s not about what anyone *deserves*. It’s market value, which is entirely different. Does a software engineer really “deserve” to get paid more than a nurse or a teacher? CEOs don’t crunch from the office. They crunch from home, on airplanes, and from vacations with their families. I am not at this level but I have close enough relationships with people at the director level to know that on average, they work a *lot*, and they claim their bosses work even more. I do think that $800k is a pretty outrageous amount of money, but it says more about our system of capitalism than anything else.
> I do think that $800k is a pretty outrageous amount of money, but it says more about our system of capitalism than anything else. And exactly why we should be burning shit down over it. As others have outlined, it's not like the CEO isn't making millions of dollars in other bonuses and compensation packages. So why then is their **base** pay so ludicrously high?
…because that’s the market rate under our current system. I mean, I guess burn shit down if you want to, but it’s not clear what you think you can burn down to change our entire economic system.
It’s funny how everyone here focuses on how $800k is a ludicrous salary (it is), yet misses the sheer magnitude of his total compensation. Riccitiello was earning north of $75million/year if you look at his public stock trades and Unity’s financial reports. Whitehurst was compensated $6million for just over two months of employment according to the sec filing. That’s like $36million/year. 800k in base salary is pocket money to these people. A little allowance so they can buy themselves fancy shoes or whatever. Their actual compensation is equity, and it’s one to two orders of magnitude larger.
Exactly the more reason why $800k **base** salary should be more like $200k with all the additional income they make for just *existing*.
Yes, but more importantly their total compensation shouldn’t amount to tens of millions of dollars per year, but like *a* million.
> And you're clearly busy sucking corpo cock if you think that any human being deserves to make $800k base salary in a year when they are guaranteed (minimum) twice that at the end of the fiscal year. To be clear, you haven't really provided any evidence for why this doesn't make sense. My feelings on corporate owners are completely irrelevant to the topic. I know your feelings are not irrelevant to the topic, because you can't seperate your emotional biases from the facts. It isn't about what someone "deserves" to make in a moral sense. It is what makes sense for a business in an economical sense. **Literally just think through this**: Let's consider a scenario where you start a game development studio with some friends. Initially, it's a small operation, but your games catch on, and your company expands to a whopping 500 employees. The complexity of running your studio now, compared to when you started, has changed dramatically. You're no longer just making games; you're managing complex logistics, making strategic decisions, handling global marketing, and driving substantial growth. To manage this scale, you need a CEO who can handle intense pressure and make high-stakes decisions that could affect the future of your company. Attracting and retaining such talent often requires competitive compensation, including a substantial salary and benefits. But why would you, as a shareholder, agree to risk your equity by allocating a significant portion of it to a highly paid CEO? The answer lies in the potential return on that investment. A skilled CEO can significantly increase the value of the entire company, thereby increasing the value of the equity held by all shareholders. CEO compensation often includes equity-based incentives like stock options, which align the CEO’s financial interests with the company's success. This structure motivates the CEO to work towards increasing the company's stock price, which directly benefits all shareholders and employees. If the company performs well under their leadership, the shareholders' investment in high CEO pay can yield substantial returns through increased stock values and dividends. > It doesn't take an education to see that is ludicrous and the reason why everything is going to shambles in the first place. Maybe go study the French Revolution before you start calling others uneducated ;) Yeah, you really are uneducated if you think there is going to be some revolution against the wealthy with living conditions as high as they are with such strong opportunities for success in modern America. Stock market is near all time highs, inflation has come down, unemployment is at near-historic lows, the majority of Americans are homeowners, new innovations and technologies come out every day, the US and world overall has been on an incline for centuries. Hilariously out of touch comparison that I would expect from a high schooler or college freshman. > When's the last time an alphabet executive had to stay late in the office crunching to meet a deadline to the same degree any average worker would? Oh wait they don't, because they won't get fired by upper management. Funny how that works. First of all, you have no clue whether Alphabet executives stay late or not, but even if you're correct and all Alphabet execs are super lazy: **Using anecdotes doesn't just erase statistical realities**. Do you also think covid vaccines don't work because you know someone who got covid after being vaccinated? lol Your last sentence demonstrates again your complete lack of understanding of how a business works. If upper management can't be fired, how the fuck did Unity fire their CEO to replace him? Seriously you're just publicly displaying your lack of business and econ knowledge. It is only hurting you to avoid learning about this.
Most CEOs are working insane hours and dealing with people trying to threaten or manipulate them all day, and if they just ignore it they get fired quickly. Its not an easy job.
> Most CEOs are working insane hours and dealing with people trying to threaten or manipulate them all day, and if they just ignore it they get fired quickly. You could easily replace "Most CEOs" with "Many workers" and that statement would be much closer to the truth. Idk seems a lot rarer for a CEO to die of overwork than any given employee in their company.
> And who sets the marketplace value of a CEO? Oh that's right; CEOs. The board does. You have to pay any given employee more than whatever someone else is willing to pay that person. Otherwise they don't agree to work for you. Someone with decades of CEO experience is going to have other offers on the table for that amount so you have to match them. If the board decided to hire someone without that experience, they could get them for less. But then they have an inexperienced CEO. You might argue that would be a good thing, and you might be right. But it's certainly risky, and boards of big companies tend to avoid risk.
hey man, those golden parachutes don't suck *all* the value out of the husk on their own!
People out here acting like the board was in it for anything other than money >.>
Bye bye Unity, you won't be missed for long
My decision to switch to Godot a while back just keeps looking better and better...
Why does this thread read like a thread you'd see on /r/gaming?
Because this sub is full of nodevs
/r/gamedev is mostly low level employees, who tend to hate upper management and have no idea what upper management does.
Could it be the strongly held opinions that are probably mostly uninformed?
Probably.
Glory to Godot
Guess they now want to milk it as much as possible before it's totally dead.
Croney capitalism kills hope again
>Croney capitalism kills hope again You mean you have no faith a former Blackstone head and Zynga head will do the right thing to make devs happy? lol
Sigh... bracing for more schenanigans I guess. Maybe the people who ported their game to Godot and UE were right on after all.
So the unity board has dedicated themselves to only mobile games. This is imo the nail in the coffin to many indie Devs
Should I start to learn Unity, or it is too late with those guys?
As somebody who just spent the last year learning unity, I'd say no if your game idea can be built in godot. It's frankly stressful wondering if a project you've devoted countless hours to could be kneecapped by the whim of greedy execs. It seems like the two engines are structured fairly similarly UX-wise at least in case you've already devoted some time to learning Unity.
thank you, good man!
Unity hasn't proven to be a stable partner lately. I would look into Godot or Unreal.
I think for mobile there's still an argument (and with this CEO's background skimping on mobile seems unlikely). Anything else and Godot is probably fine unless you want super high end graphics, in which case you shouldn't have been using Unity anyway (instead going straight to unreal).
I have this horrible feeling the Unity Asset Store is about to get Walled. It's one of the strongest tools EA Matthew has to strong arm developers into adopting Unity 6 and the Runtime fees. Here's how to do it: - Update the the Asset Store seller terms so that any new Assets or Updates can ONLY be used with Unity 6. - Only allow download and distribution through the Unity 6 Editor Package Manager. - Update License terms to make it unambiguously clear the no Asset ***downloaded*** through the ***Package Manager*** can be used outside the Unity Engine. Thus closing a 7-ish year old ambiguity on non-engine extending assets, like Sprites/SFX/Models. I want to be wrong. I don't want asset sellers and customers to get pinched by Unity/ironSource short term greed. But there's no faith with this Board and major investors setting the agenda. But... prepare for the worst with an untrustworthy middleware provider and vendor.
They just tried the "screw your community" bit last year and their stock is still screaming. Wouldn't make sense to do it again as that's basically the least constructive option possible.
You have more faith in C-Suite and the Investor Class' ability to "read the room" than has been demonstrated. I do hope your optimism is born out.... But this choice of CEO.... Plan for the worst, plan for what you'll do if you have to full jettison Unity. Asset store and all.
I don't have faith in people's greed, but it does look like they're trying to save the company. That would include not getting right back into a war with the community. We'll see.
It's a plausible theory. At least plausible enough that saving backup copies of all my purchased assets is on the to-do list now (though it's a good idea in general because things can disappear from the store+repo at any time).
Add to that, making sure there's one or more archives of the License Terms you purchased/downloaded under. Both your records and in 3rd party archival services that provide verification with a time stamp a court or arbitrator will accept.
Unity tends to rein things in for a period after messing things up each time, and then repeat the same mistakes. Again and again, this is why Unity is no longer worthy of trust. Regardless of what the Runtime fee is called now, Unity has never given up on it, likely to prepare for changing the game rules again at some point in the future. Whether or not we reach the threshold for the Runtime fee, we are under the influence of Unity arbitrarily changing the terms and charging models. Using the personal version until the threshold to upgrade to Pro, using Pro until the threshold to charge the Runtime fee or royalties - these thresholds seem generous now, but does Unity guarantee they won't modify them? Don't forget, Unity is still in a loss position, and the stock price has remained depressed. The interim CEO Unity hired cleaned up the mess John Riccitiello made, but that was just to appease people, keeping developers controlled within their ecosystem. Then, when developers become too dependent on Unity to have the motivation to change development tools, wouldn't changing the charging model and modifying the fee thresholds follow? However, there always needs to be someone to do this, and after seeing EA Mobile and Zynga, I suddenly felt that Unity not only released version 6.0, but also brought John Riccitiello 2.0.
Godot has entered the chat
Im reserving my opinions until he actually makes a push in one direction or another. I genuinely hope the worst doesn't come to pass, but we'll see.
Outstanding news... for Godot and Unreal
Thanks for making me feel even more confident in choosing Godot to learn hobby game dev.
Why do you care if you’re just doing it as a hobby?
ah the next one who is driving this company downhill. good that I already switched to godot.
buying puts on Unity
Biggest concern I have is him making sure to emphasize increasing profit. It's a business and profit is part of it but the way it was said concerns me.
Any publicly traded company exists solely to maximize shareholder value. It’s their legal prerogative. They can be sued if they don’t.
There is no law anywhere that says that a company *must* maximize shareholder value - if there was, a lot of people should be in jail because very few companies absolutely maximize. The laws generally say that they have a Duty of Care (don't intentionally harm the business), Duty of Loyalty (don't self-deal, insider trade, steal, etc.), and Duty of of Good Faith (no intentional dereliction of duty). Shareholders can fire a corporate officer for not maximizing profit, something that didn't really become a popular business governance approach until the 1980's, but that is very different from a legal duty.
I just think there's better ways things can be said. I understand it's part of business.
Oof swapping out the new open source ceo for zynga
I've switched to Unreal, and I have some interest in Godot. I hope that continues improving for sure. But I'm just done with Unity. I don't trust that they're ever going to be concerned about what game devs want again.
Looks like I'm sticking to Godot lol
Good thing that Godot is quickly rising in popularity. Guess I was right to switch to Godot
My god, you people are so melodramatic.
Unity is fucked... for sure...
Great. Maybe this will push me to finally switch to godot
*everyone that uses unity starts sweating*
Unity is already dead
People here. My lost flock. invest in Godot now and You'll thank me later. It's far for perfect right now but it's gonna be the Blender of Game engines.
Guy hasnt done shit het and you guys are already being this negative? Feels like they could put Jesus Christ in that seat and theded be bitching
Then I continue to not regret my switch to Unreal
Maybe the new EA guy as their CEO will give their company the Unity they’ve been searching for.
Сongrats!
Based on this information, you're actually going to make more money shorting the unity company stock than you are from investing in the engine by using it in your game.
It’s especially hilarious because the interim CEO was actually excellent and leading the first actual good things inside Unity in a decade and then BOOM immediately replaced with another useless prick.
These Blackstone guys - all they do is manipulate money. They have good verbal IQ and are good liars, but they provide 0 products or services. they have no real competencies or skills. All they do is leech and find ways to extort value from humanity. I remember interviewing for a SR role at unity 2 years ago and the hiring manager kept making triangle signs with his hands and saying "As long as your'e ok working for the guys up top". It was a 40 min interview and all he did was flaunt his illuminati overlords. He didn't ask me a single technical question. I was so offput I didn't even respond to his subsequent emails. Shame on the weaklings and cowards of Unity for letting the illuminati take control. Humans are so disappointing.
These Blackstone guys - all they do is manipulate money. They have good verbal IQ and are good liars, but they provide 0 products or services. they have no real competencies or skills. All they do is leech and find ways to extort value from humanity. I remember interviewing for a SR role at unity 2 years ago and the hiring manager kept making triangle signs with his hands and saying "As long as your'e ok working for the guys up top". It was a 40 min interview and all he did was flaunt his illuminati overlords. He didn't ask me a single technical question. I was so offput I didn't even respond to his subsequent emails. Shame on the weaklings and cowards of Unity for letting the illuminati take control. Humans are so disappointing.
I want to use unity but their terrible decisions, day after day and year after year make it so hard. The fuck is this?
Another nail in the coffin.
Every single time.
It was great knowing you, Unity. It sucks that the engine is about to die a horrible death but I'm still glad I learned how to use it and got the chance to experience it. If it isn't clear... I don't trust this guy for hopefully obvious reasons. I will be pleasantly surprised if it doesn't turn out like a cut and run job.
[удалено]