Developers of indie puzzle game Orgynizer have claimed that Unity said organisations like Planned Parenthood are “not valid charities” and are instead “political groups.”
In a blog post, the EU-based developer LizardFactory said the plans to charge developers up to $0.20 per install if they reach certain thresholds would cost them “around 30% of the funds we have gathered and already sent to charity.”
As Unity clarified the runtime fee will not apply to charity games, LizardFactory reached out to the company to clarify their game would be exempt from the plan.
However, Unity reportedly said their partners were not “valid charities” and were viewed as “political groups.”
Profits made from the game go directly to non-profit organisation Planned Parenthood and C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital, Michigan.
“We did this to raise money for a good cause, not to line the coffers of greedy scumbags,” the developers wrote in a blog post. “We have been solid Unity fanboys for over ten years, but the trust is scattered all over the floor.”
The developers are considering a move to open-source game engine Godot, “but we will have to recode our entire game because we refuse to give you a dime,” they wrote. “This is a mafia-style shakedown, nothing more, nothing less.”
Today, Unity responded to the ongoing backlash and apologised, acknowledging the “confusion and angst” surrounding the runtime fee policy.
The company has promised that changes to the policy will be shared in “a couple of days.”
There’s also this:
Unity’s CEO Sold Company Shares Before This Week’s Unpopular Announcement
It was 2000 shares, he’s already sold like 50k in the last year. Nothing sinister about it.
Not sure if /s or not, but:
I generally agree, 2k shares overall is nothing, but there have been changes to the ToS(s) over the last couple years that lead to this possibility.
The major change of course being the April 2023 ToS change, which was already some time ago.
Additionally, as Ars’ points out, they made auto-acceptance of ToS fee changes in their superseding general ToS, from continued use of their products, back in January 2022.
So it is very possibly a year of trickle selling in laying the groundwork for the new fee structure change, could very well still be insider trading; those ToS changes are of course public, but the changes being made in preparation for this recent announcement, I would believe to be insider trading if proven true.
Pure conspiracy for now.
Ars’: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2023/09/wait-is-unity-allowed-to-just-change-its-fee-structure-like-that/2/
How else do you want to handle a CEO owning stock? From his perspective: He sees hard times coming for Unity so he sells his stock. At the same time he tries to turn the situation around, uncertain if he will succeed.
And AFAIK the trades are public so everyone would know that the CEO is sceptical about the company’s future. There are obviously problems with the ToS changes but is the stock selling really all that relevant in this discussion?
This is called insider trading, using his inside knowledge of the company to buy/sell shares before material information becomes public.
The selling was planned a long time ago right? I think the main problem here is a CEO owning stock in the first place. If he owns stock he will obviously sell it when he no longer thinks it’s a good investment. And if it’s planned some time ahead it’s not exactly inside knowledge. At least I don’t think that this is a bad case of insider trading.