Last year Unity decided it wanted to manufacture some discord within the games industry in the name of a quick buck when it added new runtime fees, which were almost immediately met with game dev uproar, several attempts at concessions and apologies from Unity, and ultimately the resignation of CEO John Riccitiello and the end of the scheme altogether, replaced instead with hiked subscription fees.
This was, for all intents and purposes, a closed book for the whole thing, but CEO Matthew Bromberg decided to dig the matter up in a “fireside chat” at GamesBeat 2024, where he talked about the personal efforts he made to provide devs with what can only be assumed is a CEO’s idea of contrition and care.
“The first thing I did was get on a plane and start flying around the world to ask folks […] how they were connecting with us. […] They told me again and again, all over the world, that folks valued Unity as a partner, but they didn’t like the way we were connecting with them. They didn’t like the fact we hadn’t consulted with them; they didn’t like the way we were planning to charge them.”
Bromberg talked up the lessons learned from the affair, with announcing changes to payment model well in advance being chief among them. “My experience in general is that if you do things in the right way, you tend to get better outcomes,” Blomberg says. “It’s about the quality of the process and the authenticity with which you go into it and the openness with which you go into it.” Shocking, that.
