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The announcement of a new “installation tax” from Unity is proving to be disastrous for the company. A former employee who had just left the company reported on X that many others were about to follow suit because of a management decision that surprised even them.
Former Unity employee Jono Forbes spoke out, commenting on a post by Grizzly Games developer Shahriar Shahrabi, who talked about Unity’s inability to regain everyone’s trust after what he did, to the point that the engine is now considered too risky for companies. More specifically, he put it this way:
Unity is a source of uncertain risk. It would be unwise to develop new games on it.
Forbes responded to this as follows:
As a Unity employee until this morning, I can assure you that we have been fighting like crazy to voice to management the points you keep repeating. We were told that there would be further discussions, but the announcement was made without any warning. Those of us who care are gone. There will be more voluntary layoffs at the end of the week.
Another developer, Dillon Rogers, immediately responded to Forbes, saying that he appreciated his words and that everyone knew what the real problem with Unity was:
The people running the show don’t listen to developers and engineers like you.
Indeed, it is often the case in companies that people placed in leadership positions do not listen to the concerns coming from the bottom (egocentrism can be a harbinger of great stupidity), with the result that the situation escalates to the breaking point, perhaps through controversial decisions like those , which Unity has been adopting over the past few years under the leadership of John Riccitiello, resulting in an “installation tax” that has huge implications for an entire segment of the video game industry.
