The de-Riccitiello-ification of Unity
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- Опубликовано: 28 сен 2024
- After almost a decade at the helm, ex Unity CEO John Riccitiello made a number of massive purchases and decisions. Now that he is gone and a new CEO is in charge, Unity are refocusing on their core products, the Unity Game Engine, Unity ads and Unity Cloud.
So how did his moves turn out? Well... not great. And today it got even worse for his record as Unity announced they are divesting of Ziva Dynamics.
In this video we run through the various decisions Riccitiello made while in charge of Unity... and how they turned out.
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Money-people ruin everything and come out smiling while real people clean up the mess.
Thats unfortunately what jews do
Then other money-people buy the good stuff once it's good again, then ruin everything again, then....
@@micowata History learnt us one thing : "we don't learn from history"
Maybe if they worked on integrating the assets into the user workflows they would have had more adoption. The tools looked great, but I never knew if / how they were available.
You'll be tossed out for that opinion.
This is my humble opinion is a recurring problem.
ArtEngine should 100% of been integrated into Unity, even as an upsell cost, but instead it was confusing as hell to try and buy it and was vastly overpriced.
SpeedTree is an absolute no brainer to integrate into Unity and have as a perk to sell Pro/Enterprise seats, but... nope.
Ziva... Ziva they bragged about constantly at GDC and Unite, but in the end, NOBODY KNEW HOW TO BUY IT! This was just nuts... most of Ziva customers were simply Ziva customers from before when Unity purchased it.
They did a brutal job of integrating these technologies into Unity and frankly just did a brutal job of selling them in general. The purchases didn't have to end the way they did (other than maybe Weta... it never really made sense), but they bungled it so badly that no wonder they failed.
@gamefromscratch that's the part they missed when competing with UE - just including the tools for free! Why did companies adopt UE for film? Cause they got a whole suite of tools for basically nothing! (Even now, the film licensing for UE appears to be far cheaper than other professional software licenses.)
As a Unity user, Ziva or SpeedTree did nothing for me; in fact, I avoided SpeedTree assets on the Asset Store BECAUSE of the crazy way I could buy it! (Buy an individual tree but to adjust it or randomize its look required a subscription? Nope!) However, if I got it included or even as a Plus/Pro license, it would both give an excuse to upgrade and provide additional users who could help male the product better by using it.
@@gamefromscratch Wētā was supposed to be their way to compete with EpicGames, but they also didn't bother integrating it into the engine. Wētā would've been great for them in that space (but again, needed to be ecosystem supported).
No point in buying up something, when you don't wanna make it part of your ecosystem.
It's like they _really_ wanted Unity to _be_ Unreal (especially the film industry usage) rather than just a better Unity (as in almost exclusively game industry usage).
Weta does great CGI.
Thanks for summarizing this!
As a developer, this is incredibly helpful since engineering takes so much of my time!
Anyone who believes they won't try retroactive license changes a third(!) time is a fool. The license still permits it. If they want to show they've turned over a new leaf, put it in writing.
Not gonna lie, I first read your thumbnail as RE-Riccitiello-ification not DE-Riccitiello-ification. whew.
Looks legit
Riccietello was a board member of the USC School of Cinematic Arts. My view, for a long time, is that he seemed obsessed with competing with Unreal in the one area Unreal was great - but unprofitable - at, helping filmmakers. Besides draining resources from the core business, it also distracted him from the machinations of the PayPal mafia guys who engineered the Iron Source nonsense. AppLovin tried to "save the day" by offering to buy Unity outright, but were rebuffed by Riccietello and the mafia guys - I'm not sure how that might have turned out... but it could not have been worse than the Pricing Fiasco that ensued (and likely engineered by clueless Iron Source execs to bolster their own part of the business). Corporate mergers are ultimately about that fun buzzword, "synergy"... not a fun buzzword for the workers laid off, but optimizing the work and reaping the new revenue stream is the whole idea; Riccietello seemed to massively fail at both (on the one hand, failing to let a bunch of people go seems less heartless, but it was going to happen no matter what).
It's a shame they just dropped Ziva instead of repurposing it to be more game friendly like a Unity MetaHuman. They could've used it to compete with metahumans
Or maybe they realized they can't ever compete with metahumans and dropped the ball.
@MrHadane maybe they wouldn't be able to compete. But Unity doesn't have anything at all in terms of a character system like metahuman. They could've at least had something in the same vain
You need to have a functioning brain for that. And that's not the case when we are talking about Unity's leadership.
@@ezioassassin2028 and what problem will that solve when Unreal offers a better product... for free?
All they had to do was hire sakura rabbit probably. To get anything like that.
Use stride, Flaxx, Monogame, or Godot mono if you’re feeling frisky.
😮Whatt
now they need to bring back gigaya
ZIVA was the one acquisition that I was really hoping panned out well. The tech would’ve been welcomed, especially if they introduced a blender extension for making the puppets
This seems to be a good direction right now. I'm not gonna trust unity, but honestly, I never did anyways. Trusting in a company, any company, is just an idiotic concept to me. We shall see if they actually mean to improve or are just trying to change their image after their huge fuck up in September. I'm sure that move did cost them big time, so lets hope they really want to go for more quality. The engine market is quite competitive, so in order for them to do well, they really have to deliver on that, which would be a benefit for the whole industry. More competition is good for consumers, in this case game devs, so even if you hate unity because of what they did, ultimately, we should all want them to improve instead of failing outright
Like most acquisitions the company doing the buying does not gain what they thought they would and the products from the company that was brought disappear within a couple years. I even saw a paper company buy a paper mill for the sole reason of closing it and driving up the cost of the high quality magazine paper that mill made.
I guess that's good for people that have to keep using Unity, but the reputational damage is already done. I would never choose Unity as a engine for a new project.
What games have you made?
I was about to ask this question, but someone else already asked: what games have you made?
For the common indie developer
using a engine that requires a lot of computational power like Unreal is just out of question, also it is really bad for any game who's focus is not being a AAA or extremely realistic (again, most of indie developers).
With that said, Unity is still the best option out there for anyone who actually want to make a game, unlike people who start 20 new projects every month and has never finished a single commercial game while they consider themselves as "game developers".
Godot 4 would like to have a word
We moved to Unreal Engine when the runtime fee hit, but it was just the last kick. The real reason was that the engine just isn't good. Everything that matters to us is better in Unreal Engine, but because of a lot of sunk cost, we were having a hard time being honest. Now we're out on the other side. We lost 4 months in the transition, but that's behind us and we're making new code. Strangely, I'm almost thankful, because Unity was extremely wrong for us, and we were in denial. From where I sit, Unreal Engine is a far more mature, clean, well-integrated and future-oriented piece of technology than Unity.
while unreal is superior to unity, in many cases unreal is just not a direct replacement. Unreal engine is really bulky and requires a decent PC, meanwhile unity can run on potato office lenovo computers. Unreal is also quite hard to get your head around at first. I tried teaching my students c++ in unreal and few of them already gave up. Don't even get me started with compile times. Unity and unreal are great and everyone should learn both engines.
@@leeoiou7295 Making game is an endeavor. It require discipline and commitment. So for those who gave up, it's just not for them. It's not a bad thing.
@@leeoiou7295 Compile times only one of the two reasons why i gave up on unreal.
Its too damn long, Plus the C++ Documentation is so lacking.
I have no idea why people do not get demotivated by Unreals compile times. Its workflow is below anything unity can do just by waiting on itself.
@@ancy1205 I believe most people give up because of compile times and having to learn the node system.
While Im just meh over the node system on unreal. I think it turns people away from Unreal because it can be very limiting, and its upto unreal engine to add more nodes, not the developer. Also Unreal Engine putting the middle finger at the people who just wanna write the code instead with 0 documentation.
@@misa8286 Unreal is open source right? You can add whatever kind of node you want.
Great title!
The debloating of Unity sounds bad at first but it's actually a good thing because Unity operated best when it was small. They have basically fucked around and found out what happens when you get too big.
Even though i enjoy unity's downfall, i still feel sad for the people who invested so many years learning unity because those people who had projects in unity either had them not finished or mid finished 😢😢
That’s their fault, the runtime fee was never a big issue for anyone especially the ones concerned about it the most.
For a 20 dollar game you would have had to make roughly 3-4 million before paying anything and even then it would be way less than unreals flat 5%. The 5% would only hurt low margin high selling games that price at around 3-5 bucks but sell a ton of copies
@@KomodoBitGames As someone who is still using Unity, you are completely oversimplifying the issue. They literally went against their own TOS to put this fee on older Unity games!
They also provided no transparency on how they would handle stuff like demos and "install bombs." They just expected people to trust them after they just screwed over a small, yet significant percentage of developers with little warning!
If it weren't for all the management getting fired I would've felt very uncomfortable continuing my multi year project on a platform that could rug pull me at any moment. I still do honestly.
Can we hope now that techinkally savvy people will be in charge of Unity development?
This is a nice game engine with really wrong politics. But now it clears from stuff what make a problem, but, always have. The guys from unity just think how to get money with that, we think that is stupid buying, but that is classic stealing money from unity company on that way. That is the oldest way and can you imagine steal working, get money from company, that is my opinion. Nice video!
There's one core problem that still remains. Unity is still a publicly traded company. As such the board will likely be inclined to push for decisions that make the investors more money and those might be at odds with what's best for the engine long term as we saw with the decisions over the last couple years after they went public.
I would have loved to use Ziva, if I could have figured out how to get it. But it seemed like it was still behind closed doors.
As soon as my game is done and published im still moving away from Unity. Unity 6 is still going to have a runtime fee even if its a better percentage and i cant support that. Time to go FOSS with godot.
You picked a great time, 4.3 Godot is shaping up to be amazing
Give at least 5 more years before godot has all the Unity capabilities.
@@umapessoa6051Wrong. Godot can already do pretty much anything and everything Unity can.
I hate how these company"mergers" and then shutting them down kills once great companies. But that's what you get when you let stock holders run businesses.
3:49 Damnn bro got some cool tone here 😂😂😂😂😂
John is the destroyer of worlds
Unity made stupid buying decisions and a few years later the people who actually make the engine pay the price and by extension us
Unity loses a LOT of money each year. They have been reporting HUGE losses every year for a long time now. It is a business problem, and it is just a matter of time before the next attempt, whether it is a new pricing model, inclusion of "in-app" ads or something else. What they are doing at the moment is undoing bad reputation, but the financial problem is still not solved.
I'm quite mad for weta digital. They didn't move out of it they destroyed it. I've seen people from weta on corridor digital, it was an incredibly competent bunch and the company was wiped out.
I think that unity was trying to compete with unreal for the past years while Godot got under their nose and turned out like their real competitor (unity serves for indies, not AAA like unreal)
You know how things go up and down then up again, I feel there's already a small bounce back.
3:33 They didnt walk it back. They only partially walked it back. Runtime fee is still in Unity's terms just in a different form.
You mention what it is now right after but calling it a walk back is too generous. It's not back to what it was so it's not a walk back.
For me personally i F@ckin hated john riccitiello when he made my favorite game company the worst company in American🤬🤬🤬
And yet, John was, and I'm sure will be, paid handsomely...
Hmmm, ive already shifted to unreal and im sort of commited now. But this is really good news !
I just don't know if Unity will recover from this at all. Its been nothing but spiraling down and Unreal rising up. Maybe if it tanks completely it becomes open source eventually but by then Unreal will be....well Unreal with features that Unity will not have.
Open source has it's own problems.
Good! Unity is still screwing us (vr studios) with industry pricing, so anything to keep reverting dumb policies is helpful
Just for context, if you do any non games, you must have pro regardless of revenue
And with the latest changes we also now need to buy 5k industry licenses if you create something for a company that has over 1m in revenue. Including post secondaries, museums etc.
So if you want to use Unity for VR education or non games - no matter how little you make - they now force you into 5k/yr/member licensing.
Anyway I digress... I'm just tired of the company I suppose.
👍
Those are all enterprise products, either for industrial/previz or film/TV. They charge separately for the same reason Adobe & Microsoft don't bundle Substance & Project into CC and Office. *Money.*
Unity has/had an entire B2B consulting arm that pushed tech solutions for million-dollar customers - now they keep the IP, get paid license fees, and let other companies do the consulting. This seems like a solid business move to me, layoffs notwithstanding.
People keep forgetting that indie games are Unity's charity operation. Their actual revenue comes from enterprise middleware & mobile ads, which all these moves fit with.
What? You guys still thinking Unity is okay for you now?
It’s easier to be a CEO than a reaction RUclipsr
Killable demon
Soon Unity will move out of gaming. They are not done yet
They have government contracts now, it's clear which direction they want to move in
Unity shouldve never gone public.
Now... It's all over.
if this guy gets a job again we truly live in hell
He always gets jobs.
that class of people always get jobs
Thank god i never learnt unity i am better with ue5 and godot
Definitely not, that's just a hobbyist thinking.
This is a frustrating video because the problem is capitalism, ricciteillo understands this and is simply enjoying the ride. A public company is trying to make short term profits for individual people at the expense of game developers and consumers. At the long term expense of the company itself. This is not new, it happens in every industry (see Boeing). There will be no changes. This is how the economy operates and a part of it depends on us as game developers blaming individuals (scape goats) instead of the system itself.
Switched to MonoGame. So far so good. Smell ya later Unity
Oh yeah, the good old "i'm gonna make my own engine" move.
Sorry to disappoint but it won't last long.
On the first big problem you will spend days, if not weeks or even months, and you'll give up.
Wanna know why? Because you will have no one to blame, apart from yourself.
I'm only using Unity to learn game dev with C#, as soon as I'm comfortable enough I'll switch to Flax. Unity is a pain in the butt to use anyways, it barely stands together.
Hey, someone who's been developing games commercially on a daily basis for 7 years here.
Just giving a friendly advice: prepare yourself to be disappointed, Unity is still the best choice for us fellow indie developers.
@@umapessoa6051Hey, someone who's been developing games commercially on a daily basis since the turn of the century here. Just giving some friendly advice: deciding that a piece of technology is 'the best choice' and doggedly sticking to that no matter what probably isn't going to end well for you.
"He sadly got paid"
I used Unity for 10 years and started playing with Unreal Engine 5 since its beta because of all the shady things being cocked at Unity's (just in case I need to switch engines). By the time Unity let people know about the runtime fee, I was in love with Unreal Engine. ❤ Never looking back unless I'm forced to use it in a job. In my channel I've published dozens of hours of Unity tutorials in Spanish, but now I only publish Unreal Engine tutorials.
Yeah, unreal is just so much better for building bigger scoped games. Even just its API is so extensive that it makes working in Unity difficult because you have to make everything from scratch in Unity.
As a black and homosexual transgender unemployed Muslim immigrant. I agree
Funny enough, I still use Art Engine as it's not getting updates but it has enough features and power to tackle things with Locally Sourced Power (4090) to power the AI portion of the program.
Riccitiello was an obvious disaster coming, and I said so at the time. I was told, "No, you have to give him time to let him prove his worth."
Well ... how did that turn out? Some things you can see as they start. John was not the only bad seed. But you could tell by his selection that the governance of Unity was badly askew.
never going back, it's not worth going back simply for the threat of something similar happening
What are you using now? Godot I have no confidence it can handle 3d games, 2d is amazing. Unreal is huge and power hungry. I have a older PC and it takes forever to run. i7 2nd gen gtx 1060. I'm only interested in 3d at the moment. And learning to code, unity seems to fit the bill even though I wanted to use unreal.
@@MrXlee1967 I fudging my way around Unreal, you can gain great experience from Unity while you get funds together for a computer that suits your needs for running unreal 🦾
@@MrXlee1967 I know the feeling but I think diversifying your toolset is really the safest option. I'm stuck with Unity for my current project for sure since I have too much tech invested in it and since the partial rollback of the license (namely the retroactive part) I can safely continue working with the version I have been for now. But not every project I do requires 3D. Godot really does have that rapid development and almost care-free charm I used to get from working with Unity and it will likely be my goto tool for smaller projects in the future. I've been meaning to give Unreal a serious play and I think with the right effort you can turn off much of what makes it so power hungry in the first place (I tend to make games that deliberately look and feel old so that's something I can uniquely get away with for sure). Even then I'd only consider it for 3D heavy lifting. Either way, I'll feel more confident if I have more tools available too me rather than less. I'll keep an eye on Unity for the future but for now there is absolutely no way I can keep all of my eggs in that single basket and sleep well.
@@MrXlee1967 One thing I failed to mention in my previous message: If you're just starting out and learning then don't sweat it. This really doesn't affect you. Just focus on the fundamentals of learning how to make games and how to do game design. There's plenty of time in the future when you can worry about what tech to use and what business decisions to make. For now the learning process will be complicated enough so just focus on learning how and don't worry about the why.
I believe that John Riccitiello is a scapegoat for the company, keep in mind Unity is a public company with a board of directors so it makes sense for them to blame everything on the CEO and act like they're fixing everything now. This is what the board of directors want so that we can forget everything bad they did so that they can eventually pull off more scummy practices later
yeah, trust is broken, they are only doing it for monetary reasons and they will eventually sink
While it's very likely he's being used as a scapegoat, he was also one of those people doing the scummy things. He was in with the board. Just wanted to make that clear in case someone read your post like it was defending him, or feeling sorry for him.
Well here's the thing... most of the board was John, IronSource folks (all gone now) and the venture capital firms that all got paid massively when Unity went public.
So really all of the decision makers more or less are gone now, so if he was a scape goat, he did a pretty bad job of it.
Yeah, it's not like EA has really gotten better after he left either. If the board(s) genuinely didn't like the direction he went, we would be seeing them completely reverse course, not walk back just enough to appease public outcry and let people get used to the new normal. Basically Riccitiello at every company he goes to:
"You want me to do all the unpopular stuff you don't want tied to your name? Sure, I'll trash my reputation for money."
@@gamefromscratchdo you know if VC firms paid off, or do they still have significant ownership of the company?
My position is this, if you throw a bag of sh*t in the air and it hits you in the face, That's your fault and you are a fool.
(Unity = person, Riccitello = bag)
The more important reason of buying those companies is that Unreal and other competitors can't buy them.
I've been a blender user for years. Now learning godot because the unity drama. FOSS forever
same here
well that just stupid, ziva as the only thing unity had to compete with unreal metahumans and they did nothing with it
What a shitshow.
don't trust unity ever again imo, stick to open sourced or free software
Meaning Godot and a number of smaller projects.
I would do that if open source alternatives were as mature
@@ZedDevStuffI agree lol
@@ZedDevStuffunderstandable. I moved to Godot and I feel it has at least a year before it feels mature. I'm still waiting for a commercial asset store too which I think will be the missing factor.
@@ShiloBuffyou’re waiting for an open source project to add a paid asset store?
I could see them maybe setting up a donation ware based system, but not a paid one.
I started my Unity development journey in early 2020 and I have never felt more disappointed in a company ever. Bugs, documentation issues, sloppy UI issues and many fundamental components totally missing requiring each and every dev to write this or that when Unity could have just provided for all, as most titles need the same basic things yet, here we are reinventing the wheel each. I really have hated the experience. I am hanging in there for Unity 6 as I am invested in the tool unfortunately. When I see the changes Unity are making, I feel like I am finally coming out of a bad relationship...or at least it is looking that way. Fingers crossed as my project is a VR Theme Park that is 4 years into development with many years to go as I intend to keep adding and keep refreshing as I have been with each new headset release.
Is this your first experience? Because it sounds like it, if you say unity documentation is bad you'll be sorely disappointed in Unreal or Godot. Not everything is black and white, I tend to believe that when someone sees problems everywhere then the real problem is something else.
Be aware that Unity 6 is gonna be the first one including the new fee. If you've developed everything with older versions, it probably makes sense to finish it with the same one.
@@kebrusI’ve been super impressed with Godot 4’s documentation. While it focuses on the GDScript instead of the other languages, it’s very detailed
@@OctagonalSquare have you used unity in a meaningful way while using Unity's documentation?
@@kebrus
I think people are underappriciating how good unity's documentation is compared to many other game engines. Most documentation for other game engines are so lacking or borderline useless in some cases (looking at Unreal engine here with their C++ documentation).
Ive also had poor experience with Godot and Unreal engine documentation after trying them both seperately for 2-3 months each.
Unity is just good in terms of workflow in my personal opinion. Godot and Unreal engine has a completely different workflow that are unfortunately just really bad imo.
6:36 - go here if you know all the pre-story
I just care about one thing -- iron-clad licenses tied to engine version, so you don't have to worry that a game your may have released several years ago now has a new engine monetization scheme for you to pay, and not just for the pre-6.0 releases. I'm glad I supposedly don't have to worry about the agreement being changed after the fact on my last game now, but what about the next game?
I'm just glad we can finally move on and just focus on our projects. There is still that fear that Unity may screw us again, but for now we have peace. As a Unity developer, that's more than enough for me.
What a leech.
Greed.
My brain hurt trying to read it XD thanks for the video and have a great day
Who in their right state of mind would hire Riccitiello again, for any imaginable position? This guy absolutely wrecks companies... Maybe send him to some church or something :))
The people who hired him got stinking rich, so I think he did exactly what he was hired for.
IMO the lesson to learn from this is to sell your stock in companies who hire Riccitiello as CEO and never ever invest in a company when he's CEO already if you don't want to lose your money.
Good for Unity, Hope it gets back closer to what it should have been.
make a succesful game .. Unity
It'd pronounced RITSHEE-TYELL-O
This word needs to be added to the english dictionary
Love the video name.
RIP Unity
It's good to see Unity finally going on the right direct.
That said, I'm probably going with Bevy.
Not because I don't want Unity, but because I prefer a more code oriented exp... Unity's interface full of buttons is boring.
I might come back, but maybe not.
No wonder Riccitiello needed money, the guy was buying left and right, and then when money dried up, well just charge in the most obscure way possible that allows shadow fees. Crazy executives fail upwards.
i wouldnt be surprised if this guy got caught doing money laundry
still -7k on Unity stocks :D
they have ditched ziva as well
What do you mean ArtEngine is gone? Is Unity Muse.
Nah ArtEngine and Muse are COMPLETELY different technologies. Muse is pretty much a license fork of ChatGPT imagegen tech.
I covered ArtEngine hands-on several years ago
gamefromscratch.com/hands-on-with-unitys-artengine-ai-powered-texturing-tool/
It was a cool tool with a lot of potential, but was never integrated into Unity and they struggled so hard with how to sell it.
Unity is dead to me, they now represent too high of a risk in a world where there's enought good and viable alternatives.
When the whole runtime fee thing happened I decided that I was done with Unity. It was honestly a long time coming. I was already feeling like Unity had become terribly bloated and was always in flux. New render pipelines, etc. Also, I primarily tinker with 2D games and I felt like Unity was just way more complicated than it needed to be for the stuff I was working on. Anyway, I'll likely never go back. I've been learning Godot. I keep hearing about devs transitioning to Unreal, but the last time I looked at Unreal it wasn't very 2D friendly. Also, I'm not very interested in getting involved in C++ development. Good luck to those still doing Unity development. I honestly hope Unity can turn it around, but I'm personally not likely to return.
CEOs apparently exist for scapegoating
Ziva was such a slap in the face for me, glad it's gone.