Unity's Marc Whitten Resigns Amid Runtime Fee Controversy

Marc Whitten, Unity Create's chief product and technology officer, is stepping down on June 1, 2024, following the company's contentious Runtime Fee policy. Whitten will assist with the transition until December 31, 2024. The now-discarded Runtime Fee, announced in September 2023, faced severe backlash from developers who viewed it as a punitive per-install tariff. Unity reworked the fee and acknowledged its lack of communication with developers. CEO John Riccitiello also departed in October 2023, succeeded by Matthew Bromberg. Upon resignation, Whitten will receive a total of $814,801 in various payouts and benefits.

Some punishment

[flibbidyfloo]

I wish when I messed up at work and had to quit in shame I got ab $800,000 payout.

Re:Some punishment

[flibbidyfloo]

I wish when I posted on /. and made a dumb typo I could go back and edit it.

Re:

[bn-7bc]

I agree, the kack of edit in 2024 is redicules, unfortunately it seams like it's a trend that is spreading

Re:

[Local ID10T]

Executives negotiate their severance deals up-front, before they start at the job.

You could do the same.

Re:

[Pseudonymous Powers]

And if you did that, in all likelihood your employer-to-be could, and would, just move on to the next candidate.

Re:

[Rinnon]

And if you did that, in all likelihood your employer-to-be could, and would, just move on to the next candidate.

A regrettable prisoner's dilemma. If every applicant was negotiating their employment contracts more thoroughly, then doing so wouldn't be a reason to move to another candidate, and we (the workers) would all benefit. As soon as some applicants roll over and take whatever is offered, the rest have to follow suit to be competitive (this is generally where the concept of collective bargaining makes sense, preventing the workers from engaging in a bidding war to lower their own wages). I'm not saying a front-l

Another early retirement for top 1%

[will4]

He's 53 and worth tens of millions of dollars per the latest shareholder proxy. These 'leader stepping down' new stories are clickbait at best and worse than clickbait in general.

https://investors.unity.com/fi... [unity.com]

Re:

[Local ID10T]

Do you not negotiate pay rate, schedule, vacation, benefits, etc?
You just do as you are told and assume that you will get what you deserve?

Yikes.

Re:

[YetAnotherDrew]

What punishment? That's the payment for doing the job.

The job was to play the scapegoat for the board being shitty. Apparently, sacrificing Riccitiello wasn't enough.

Clickbait title

[SuperDre]

The title suggests he resigns because of the runtime fee controversy, but nothing is clear if that's the reason, as that has happened more then half a year ago.

Re:

[elcor]

You're right, cliakcbait bullshit title. He was fired by the new CEO who is only keeping productive non toxic elements. And he was so toxic.

Is it discarded?

[SuperKendall]

I could have sworn I looked a few months ago and there was still a significant runtime fee.

The fee still applies

[Brain-Fu]

Details here [unity.com]

You have to make a lot of money before it kicks in. But it is still there, along with the incentives it presents to rely on DRM to avoid over-paying this fee due to file sharing, and the need to file income reports to Unity.

Re:

[SuperKendall]

Thanks, that is what I remember seeing!

We were thinking of using Unity in a non-game app and that fee structure put it right out of contention.

Re: Is it discarded?

[RegistrationIsDumb83]

Yeah, dunno why the news media keeps reporting that the fee is gone, when in actuality it's just halved. The reality is that the only reason devs aren't complaining as loudly now is many of them switched engines or are hanging onto the last non-fee branch. Unity already had heaps of problems prior to the revenue cut, Unity did themselves no favors with this.

Unity is a strange project

[PhrostyMcByte]

There's this perception that Unity is great as a "first game engine" but that you want something like Unreal once you're serious. They have enough of the market they should be trying to actively mend that perception to avoid bleeding customers.

I can't help but feel they saw every other company out there enacting the "because fuck you, who else are you going to use?" price increases and other money grabs and decided to do their own, but failed to realize it only works if there isn't a good answer to that question.

Re:Unity is a strange project

[Pseudonymous Powers]

In practical terms, it's going to be extremely (impossibly) expensive to switch engines, to use the obvious metaphor, once the train is running. So it seems to me that vendor lock-in is still very much a consideration here.

Re:

[Dan Posluns]

I don't think that's been the perception for a long time. Lots of mid-range shops ship Unity. Hell, when I worked at Amazon we were shipping Unity games before Lumberyard came along. Pretty much the only ones that don't are the AAAs that either field their own engines or already built their tech stack on Unreal years ago.

Unity was *very* smart about their business early on, and all the kids who learned on it for free matriculated into companies that found it the best option (cheapest license, cheapest devs,

So sad

[Bu11etmagnet]

I bet he's crying all the way to the bank

YESSS!!!

[elcor]

Finally a good news at Unity. Everyone inside the company is cheering.