tef

tef

@tef

bad poster & mediocre photographer

  • they/them
log inask
tef
@tef
kadybat
@kadybat
JackDotJS
@JackDotJS

The Enshittification of Unity

EDIT 2023-9-15: added a couple of events regarding unity's military contracts, and fixed the ToS timeline which was MASSIVELY incorrect. there's a lot more i wanna add, so stay tuned.

  • August 2020: Unity announces the filing of a registration statement for a proposed IPO (Initial Public Offering).
  • September 2020: Unity begins trading publicly on the New York Stock Exchange.
  • August 2021: Unity employees express deep ethical concerns and the lack of transparency about the company actively pursuing contracts with the US Military.
  • November 2021: Unity spends $1.6 billion to acquire Wētā Digital, a company that exclusively works in pre-rendered high-end VFX, in order to convince Wall Street that they're down with the metaverse. Seriously.
  • June 2022: In light of the rapid decline of Unity's stock price between the end of 2021 (~$191) to mid-2022 (~$37), Unity CEO John Riccitiello assures employees that the company is not in any financial trouble, and they would not be laying anyone off. This was followed up 2 weeks later with ~200+ employees being laid off.
  • June(?) 2022: Unity quietly deletes their GitHub repo that was once used to allow developers to view previous versions of their Terms of Service, which was previously critical as developers only had to worry about the ToS that was in effect at the time of game publishing. Keep this in mind for later.
  • July 2022: Unity cancels their only "AAA" sample game project "Gigaya" (within 4 months of its initial announcement, no less), because they think that actually improving the engine by putting it through a full AAA development cycle is a waste of time.
  • July 2022: Unity spends $4.4 billion to acquire ironSource, an in-game ads company that was well-known to be the developer of InstallCore, a wrapper for software installation bundling responsible for tons of adware/malware distribution.
  • July 2022: Almost immediately following the outrage surrounding Unity's acquisition of ironSource, CEO John Riccitiello loudly and proudly calls game developers who do not consider monetization "fucking idiots".
  • August 2022: Unity partners with CACI International in a 3 year, "multi-million dollar" contract to aid in development of "Smart Human Machine Interfaces" for the US Military. Yes, the US Military. Again.
  • January 2023: Unity lays off another 284 employees, for "streamlining" purposes.
  • April 2023: Unity updates their Terms of Service, which no longer includes the clause allowing developers to stick with the ToS they published their games with.
  • May 2023: Unity files a form 8-K, laying off yet another 600 employees.
  • June 2023: Unity jumps into the AI-generated content hypetrain, introducing Muse and Sentis. Unity also makes zero effort to assure developers regarding the legal uncertainties AI content has, nor to explain what data their AI systems are trained on.
  • September 2023: Over 150,000 shares of Unity stock are sold by various Unity executives (including CEO John Riccitiello) over the course of 3 weeks leading up to Unity's upcoming pricing change announcement. (EDIT: there's a possibilty that this is just regularly scheduled sells. i gotta dig into it a bit further)
  • September 2023: Unity announces changes to their pricing plans, which includes a "runtime fee" based on game installs and the previous 12 months of revenue. This change applies retroactively to every game ever made in Unity, resulting in mass panic in the game development community, forcing many developers to pre-emptively delist their games in protest, and/or fear of the massive debts to come. They also discontinued the Unity Plus plan, making the next best thing Unity Pro, which costs $2,040/yr per seat, only 5x the original price of Unity Plus at $399/yr per seat. No big deal, obviously.

did i miss anything?

sources if ur a nerd like that (WARNING: MASSIVE, I AM NOT JOKING)
tef
@tef
vogon
@vogon
metroidhat
@metroidhat

Ooblets Plushies: Manufacturing plushies is a collaborative process

Photo by Fangamer

While I used to be a prototyper for Fangamer, working by contract on a project-to-project basis, I've been hired on as a full time employee for several months now. Since then, most plushies that get produced by Fangamer passes by my hands, even if I'm not prototyping them directly. I address any snags in the manufacturing process and communicate directly with the overseas factory, which can be something of a challenge! Not only are there language, cultural, technological, and straight-up geographical barriers, but it's often a hurdle to get everyone on the same page, especially when everyone (including the developers, Fangamer employees, and the team on the factory side) has differing skills, visions, and requirements for the final product.

The three newly released Ooblets plushies all required some pattern-level help in their production, which is where I jump in. The first sample of Clomper here had raw-cut fabric pieces in place of the ears and small branches, which we wanted to make into 3D objects. I also asked for changes to the positions of the seams, which would alter the overall shape. To communicate what changes we wanted, I would use a combination of draw-overs, drawings, photos, patterns, and English and Mandarin. I try to be as clear as possible. It takes a lot of time to make so many notes, but if it can save a round of sampling, reduce confusion, and improve the overall quality of the plushie, then I will have saved some time overall. Here's one page of my notes.

My Mandarin is not very good...! I had to use Google Translate a lot to painstakingly cut and paste what I wanted to say. Although the factories we work with usually have an English-speaking representative, their mastery is often not at the level of a native speaker. And even if they were, they are not necessarily very skilled with sewing. Using Mandarin helps me communicate directly with the seamsters that are making the plushie.

Glanter started out with their body being mostly printed. But I felt that sewn fabric stripes would look better and would aid the curve and taper of their head.

It's something of a geometric puzzle to assemble the correct shapes of fabric stripes to achieve curves. It's an exercise in fabric manipulation that I rather enjoy!

Shrumbo's first sample had a great body, but the cap needed a few additional rounds of sampling. The notches cut right into the cap, which distorted it. The cap's shape was wonky and the mushroom gills bulged out as much as the cap. I suggested that the notches simply be little triangles sewn into the cap instead of actual notches. If the top of the cap was one piece of fabric with 4 darts instead of two pieces with no darts, then the shaping of the cap can be more evenly distributed. And the gills can be somewhat flattened if they had narrow darts running towards the center. That last alteration only had a slight effect; the stretchiness of the baby minky we were using proved to be too powerful, so in the final plushie the gills still bulge out quite a bit. Another issue with the stretchy baby minky was that applique embroidery didn't work very well. The white spots were originally appliqued fabric, but the embroidered edge wobbled quite a bit. So I suggested that the spots be directly sewn into the cap.

To test all of my suggestions, I made a half-scale mushroom cap. This is also very useful because I now have a pattern to share with the factory, so their next sample will be very close to perfect. I gave my mushroom a stem because then I have a finished mushroom plushie. It's so cute! Maybe one day I'll make a tutorial out of this pattern.

tef
@tef

devil's dictionary but it's just clear unambiguous descriptions of neurotypical small talk and interactions

"you need to make more eye contact"

and it's

"i am a fragile being and every time i open my mouth i am plagued with anxieties, often wondering to myself if i am being acknowledged, let alone understood. far from infodumping, i'm trying to gauge others interest in me, and thus my objective value as a human being.

i will look at you every time i make a dramatic pause in my dull narrative, and i never catch your eyes. i will you tell you to look at me when i'm talking, only then to say that's too much, as i do not have the faintest notion of what i actually need. i only know that you're wrong.

forgive me, i am already under a crushing amount of self awareness and understanding my own non verbal communication patterns is something i've never had to reflect on, until now.

not only do i feel ignored, i can't even begin to explain why.

p.s. that's why it's your fault.

tef
@tef
bcj
@bcj
parappayo
@parappayo

Tell Us Why You Want to Work at Hooli

Imagine for a sec that you are a trades person (plumber, electrician, carpenter, or the like) and you are meeting with a prospective client when they spring the following question on you: "tell me why you want to work on my house specifically and not one of my neighbour's houses instead?" It's a weird thing to ask, right? It's kind of understood that this is just a job and that you would be contented to ply your trade for any client who is reasonable to work for.

You probably see this next point coming from a mile away: certain tech companies ask questions of the form "why do you want to work at X? what's special about us?" of their software developer job candidates and it's toxic for much the same reason that it would be toxic to interrogate your plumber about why they came to work for you. Some tech managers may believe that people who really "want" to work for them will make sacrifices and do more work for less pay. The reality is that few, if any, of these companies are offering jobs that people would still want to work at if they did not need to make a living. Wanting to do tech work primarily because it is lucrative is fine.

I find myself doing a double-take when asked this sort of thing during a job interview process. Clearly I want the job, I am spending valuable time and brain cycles on the interview process. Moreover, we should be talking about how valuable I am, because the potential upside to employing somebody like me is enormous. Most employers would be lucky to have that opportunity.

Generally speaking, don't settle for a job where your employer treats you like you're easily replaced. If they really believe that, they're delusional and you should get out as soon as you can. When they're already asking you to talk about how great they are during a job interview, that whole "you're not special, we're special" thing has already started. Just walk away and let that employer be somebody else's problem.

tef
@tef

It's true, "tell us why you want to work here" is a nonsense question, but I bet if you ask people in trades "how often do you have to fake enthusiasm" you'd find a few raised hands.

Thing is, there's another meaning to this question:

  • You might think it's "Can you tell us a fact about our company?" and maybe that's a small part of it. Other questions filter for candidates who haven't done research.

  • You might think it's "Tell me that the (my) company is cool." and when a founder is involved, you'd be right. Working in an early startup often means being an emotional support programmer for capricious entrepreneurs, terrified from having to pay rent for the first time in their life, albeit on an office. You have to reassure them in weekly 1:1s, them's the breaks.

  • When you hear it from anyone below c-suite, it might be better to pretend you heard. "Tell me I made the right decision joining this company".

You aren't meant to talk about what you care about, you're meant to affirm the interviewers beliefs about the job. You don't get hired for looking smart, you get hired for making people feel smart.