This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Fresh controversial gaming news.
If you're not familiar with Unity, it's one of the more popular game engines in use today, especially for Indy developers. It's frequently recommended for it's relative ease of use, and up until now, generous licensing. Even if you're a very casual gamer, you've probably played some games built on this platform like Pokemon Go, Beat Saber, or Monument Valley.
Today, Unity has announced some significant pricing changes. Most controversial seems to be that beyond a certain revenue and install threshold, developers will be paying Unity per install of their game. As in, if you uninstall and reinstall the game, the dev gets charged twice.
This has managed to piss off the usual suspects of game developers, games journalists, and gamers. Many an angry comment written by Dorito stained keyboards are flooding messageboards and twitter about how this is the death of gaming. (Tongue-in-cheek by the way, as a non-game developer I find the pricing model half-baked.)
But what's really interesting is the potential for misuse that I predict will occur for the next controversial game. While Unity has said they'll try to limit malicious behavior, they're providing gamers with the ability to charge developers money by essentially clicking the uninstall/reinstall button.
Any predictions for how quickly we see the first weaponization of this tool?
I think an underappreciated aspect of this whole situation is that according to https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/U/income-statement , Unity Technologies is losing a billion dollars a year and is already 3 billion in debt, with their total market cap being 15 billion. This is a company that's circling the drain; this seems transparently like a hail-mary play that probably fails but maybe brings Unity to profitability.
Legally, I have no idea how big a grey area retroactive ToS changes are; the fact that Unity's doing it implies that they're not obviously illegal but I'm also aware that, in kind of a brute legal realism sense, different domains of law have judges that feel very differently about contracts where the fine print states "also we are allowed to fuck you in arbitrary ways defined by us, no limits, neener neener"
Like: apparently (based on what I've read in Matt Levine articles) corporate debt courts are really really specifically about the letter of the contract; someone puts in the fine print "also we can fuck you at any time" and the judge looks at it and is like "well, it's in the contract, guess you shouldn't have signed that one" which is in large part because corporate debt contracts are assumed to have been extremely well-vetted by lawyers on both sides. Everyone is assumed to be extremely saavy. My suspicion (not a lawyer) is that this is less true of consumer-facing EULAs (like Unity's); if I have a bunch of reddit posts saying "Unity will never fuck our users who sign this contract" and I have a EULA saying "Unity will never fuck our users. Also Unity, in its sole discretion, reserves the right to amend this contract" and then I do the obvious thing-- amend the contract retroactively to allow user-fucking, and then proceed to fuck our users-- I'm not sure how it would fare in court but it's not obvious the judge would love me for that?
Of course, there's also the legal-realism idea of "Unity probably just settles out-of-court with anyone big enough to challenge them, and hoovers up money from indies that can't afford ruinous court fees". Which is of course deeply unethical and also vibes like they're eating their seed corn (since who wants to go into business with a company that has, historically, not been willing to honor contracts.)
My expectation is that this ends with Unity sticking to its guns and declaring bankruptcy in a couple years.
I guess I'm not surprised about the changes, then, but I had assumed they were profitable given their established market share and how I had assumed their costs were fairly low. Good developers are expensive, but I didn't think Unity themselves had many costs beyond engine development and some seemingly-trivial web hosting (downloads, documentation, forums).
I know they have some adtech business on the side, but I'm rather curious where billions of dollars of annual costs are going: the statement only shows a billion each for development and administration/sales.
As a comparison, Valve is privately held, also publishes a game engine (admittedly, not the most popular one these days), and despite seemingly undirected management seems generally described as profitable. Although they also run a storefront that pays the bills. I guess Epic (the other major engine-publisher) does too.
Another thing about Valve, since you mentioned them: If I recall correctly, as per Tyler McVicker, Valve actually works (or worked?) in the same building/next door to Unity. Valve has even used Unity for their VR tech demos, and McVicker even once speculated that Valve could have switched to using Unity since it was much more developed compared to their own Source 2 Engine, which even today still lacks an SDK as fleshed-out as the first Source Engine's (and, sidenote, it would benefit Valve to strike while the iron is hot by finally going foward with their old plans to put out Source 2 for free and make it a UGC paradise).
More options
Context Copy link
I also assumed they operated as a small company funded by license and asset store fees, but I guess they wanted to be more than that and tapped into VC funding and now are looking for huge revenue streams.
More options
Context Copy link
It's more Unity's an adtech business with some game engine sales on the side; last I heard they had maybe 2/3 of their revenue coming from advertising. App Tracking Transparency savagely brutalized that business model, sadly, and I think Unity's frantically flailing around in search of a different one.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link