Of course they don’t see synergy. The vast majority of Unity game developer will never need Weta Tools or Ziva FX. And the one that might have been useful, that texture generator tool called ArtEngine, is discontinued. And all their other tools they acquired are half baked. Like that version control system Plastic SCM
Don’t get me started on Plastic… There’s this weird thing that happens internally sometimes when we get to work on fun projects, like mini game jams kind of thing. Someone in the group will inevitably be like “We should use Plastic” and we all kinda have to go along with it because it feels like we’re not allowed to admit that Plastic blows. Then we end up frustrated and complaining about it but not switching to Git because again, can’t say out loud that one of our own tools doesn’t work well that would just be silly
Too bad Unity axed that project to create a game in-house using the engine to identify weak points and improve the engine. My guess is they realized how many of their acquired tools aren’t as good as they had hoped and didn’t want to admit they messed up in a few places. I sense lots of tech debt in the engine.
Translation: the higher ups fucked up because they’re so disconnected with their own product, so now they are making their employees pay for their mistakes in order to keep their bosses salaries and bonuses intact.
Corporate playbook:
When the company does well: Reward leadership by giving all the profits to the executives and shareholders.
When the company fails: Give the CEO a golden parachute and layoff the peasants.
Is anyone believing they would not have layoffs anyway? They are likely just trying to pin their cost-cutting plans on game devs who protested against their ridiculous scheme. Comes to mind that the money their clients were already paying is the money that would have paid for those employees’ wages.
I work for Unity, granted I’m just a lowly worker they don’t tell me shit. I honestly don’t know on this one, or rather I feel there probably still would have been but maybe not to the extent this one is rumored to be. Our change in leadership is the starting point for some internal reworks so it is possible if the pricing scheme worked JR wouldn’t have ‘resigned’ and we’d be operating on a more status quo basis. I suspect layoffs would have come down the pipes again sooner or later though
Man. Bloody corporates. You can bet your ass it won’t be any of the higher ups being let go.
Not disputing your main point, but they fired CEO John Riccitiello over this.
“fired” is a bit of a strong word for stuffing his ass so full of money it spewing out was what ejected him from the building.
