"Dumb idiots" - how Unity has upset developers several times in recent days

In the last few days, Unity managed to stuff a whole combo of scandals. Together, they add up to an unpleasant picture that hurts the company's image — especially among indie developers, where Unity continues to be the leading engine.

Backword

In March, Unity announced that it was going to ship Gigaya, an indie-scale game from its in-house studio. The point was to create a team in Unity that is close to the "field conditions" of indie creators: working with a relatively small staff, someone from the staff contributes to the remote, and the main goal is to release their game on Steam. 

In addition, Gigaya was going to be made into an educational tool: the intricacies of production were planned to be published in open access for all Unity users.

But July 4 on the official forum a post appeared, where Unity announced that it was halting development of Gigaya. The game will not be put out for general review: for this, projects need to be cleaned of unnecessary software tails, but, according to the company, resources are better spent in some other directions.

Gigaya will remain only as an internal project. According to Unity, it gained a lot of useful experience while creating the game.

Developers often criticize Unity for the fact that it does not understand the needs of its customers well enough: the company has never released full-fledged products on its own engine, and therefore misses various nuances of production and does not feel the pain of them on its own skin. But the Unreal Engine team has the necessary experience: Fortnite is a real game, where new Epic Games technologies are often used.

Trojan producers

July 12 Unity reported, which is absorbing the company ironSource - it specializes in solutions for monetization, marketing, analytics and audience discovery. All things considered, ironSource tools are particularly well-suited for games and non-game applications that are constantly evolving.

"What if the content creation process was no longer built on the principle of 'make first, then monetize'? What if we gave creators an engine for game-as-a-service that by default allowed them to collect early indicators of success through user engagement in their prototype? What if the engine provided a feedback system based on engaging with real players at the earliest stages possible? Unity and ironSource's joint offering will create a unique company that provides a platform for both game development and game growth." -Unity in the official announcement

The piquant nuance is that ironSource came up with installCore - a wrapper for installers that can drag a bunch of additional programs with it, often unnecessary to the user. Inexperienced people looked for the program on the Internet, found the installer with installCore and naively invited a lot of garbage to their computer.

installCore appeared in 2010, and around 2014, popular security software manufacturers began to classify this wrapper as unwanted or even malicious. For example, there was a case when users were tricked into using installCore to allegedly install the Windows version of the popular Snapchat chat. In fact, it was a disguised Android emulator with adware added.

ironSource dropped installCore in 2015 when it merged with Supersonic, a developer of an in-app purchases platform. That is, ironSource tried to distance itself from the reputation of the producer of malicious software, but the Internet does not forget - many began to criticize Unity for such a dubious neighborhood.

The press writes that the deal between Unity and ironSource is valued at $4.4 billion.

"Dumb idiots"

Following the announcement of the ironSource deal, an interview with Unity CEO John Richitello and Unity Create General Manager Mark Whitten was released. There is a provocative moment:

"Interviewer: The drive to monetize earlier is clearly alienating some developers.

Richitello: Ferrari and some other high-end car manufacturers still use plasticine and cutting knives. A very small part of the gaming industry works this way, but some of them are my favorite people in the world who I just love to debate with. They are beautiful and pure, brilliant individuals. But they are also the dumbest idiots in the world.

I've been in this industry longer than almost everyone else, I've even managed to get gray. Previously, it was customary among developers to throw a game at the wall to publicists and sellers without any prior interaction. Such a model is woven into the philosophy of many forms of art and media. And I respect her very much. I know that people put their heart into their efforts.

But the industry divides people between those who still adhere to this philosophy and those who seek to understand how to create a successful product. Also, I don't know any successful creator who cares what the players think. This is where a feedback loop [like the one offered by ironSource in Unity] comes in handy and can be ignored. But choosing not to know the players' opinions at all is a wrong move."

The quote is vivid and spread across social networks: they say, if you don't think about monetization in advance, then Richitello considers you a "dumb idiot." Such words were not liked by some developers, especially among Indies.

i made Apple's iPhone Game of the Year in 2018 (Donut County) using Unity, but according to their CEO i'm a 'big fucking idiot' for not making Hole io, the f2p game that ripped it off ???? https://t.co/Gv1zqy0BjH

— Ben Esposito (@torahhorse) July 14, 2022

Someone began to say that Richitello previously headed Electronic Arts (from 1997 to 2004 and from 2007 to 2013), a company that has long been famous for its questionable business practices. Others remembered either a joke or a snide remark by Japanese developer Goichi Suda — his game Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes has a villain named Damon Richitello.

There is a version that the Japanese has personal accounts with the former boss of EA. During Richitello's time at the helm, EA was working on Shadows of the Damned, the game Sud was working on. However, during production, EA interfered with the creative process to make Shadows of the Damned more appealing to Western audiences. The result was the game that Sudu dreamed of. A similar line can be traced in the story of Damon Richitello, who appeared in Travis Strikes Again a few years later.

This is not the end of Unity's adventures in the infofield: recently there were reports in the press that hundreds of people are being fired from the company. In a recent interview, Richitello clarifies that roughly half of the affected employees have been reassigned to other Unity departments, so the scale of the layoffs is exaggerated.

However, in combination with other scandals surrounding Unity, which have fallen on the company within a few days, such clarification does not improve the image of the company.