I grant the premise that Unity sucks and has made changes that make it much harder to be an indie developer using its runtime.
That said, I don't understand the decision to shut the group and encourage members to move to a more general game dev group instead. If the reason is "everyone stopped using Unity, we don't have any members" then I understand, but the press release didn't say that. In fact it implied there might be thousands of members.
The closest thing to a reason they gave was that Unity has become hostile to indie devs. But Unity doesn't run BUG, so if some people are still using Unity, which I assume is the case, wouldn't they still benefit from having a users group? If it's an act of protest by the group organizers, that seems annoying for the people who still use Unity and got value out of having access to that community.
Without sufficient context to understand the decision, I find I'm not sure what this act accomplishes, or what it intended to accomplish.
I think one of the reason of the group existing is because members trusted Unity. Now this trust is throwed out in trash. They can't force Unity to be good to users and they don't want to support Untity anymore. Thats all.
Given the meetup group has 2,000+ members, and they haven't had an event since the announcement, I have a hard time believing all, or even a majority, (since it's so rare for the majority to even speak) had much input on this decision.
The wording sounds like a few key members felt a certain way and decided to take the ball home with them instead of stepping down and leaving whoever didn't feel as strongly hurt to continue in their stead.
_
It happens often with groups past a certain size: Some people argue that having contributed to the growth up to that size justifies being able to take unilateral actions like this
But in my opinion, once you get past a certain size, it's larger than you. Even if you've poured blood sweat and tears in, it's obviously taken contributions from many small players, who may have been willing to step up as big players.
It's hard to believe that out of 2,000 people there's no group of people who couldn't have continued to get value out of the existence of the group post-Unity's actions.
This is a repeat of the reddit API backlash and protest. Moderators deciding to close down subs or to change the rules to hurt reddit at the expense of their users and community.
Many of which have already backpedaled or opened up. It was important to look involved during the important parts of the protest but now that its blown over subreddits are silently reopening and back to business as usual.
Some subreddits have taken to outright lying to their community in order to continue with the reddit-bashing or as an excuse for bad moderation or other issues.
I forget the subreddit but AutoModerator comments on every post making sure to mention how the API limits don't allow them to use the tools they need to moderate properly, blah blah, etc.
Except Reddit confirmed that only ~8 bots total on the entire site were going above the free usage limits and were willing to help or work with them.
My issue had nothing to do with morals. If I cant use Apollo, then I wont use reddit. All of the other clients are awful, and I dont miss the content enough to justify using the official app, or finding other ways to circumvent the restrictions.
Thats fine and no one is forcing anyone to use a site. I personally don't think the offical app or website is that bad. I was just talking about moderators closing down subreddits for everyone.
Why are you turning "at the expense of their users" into "at the expense of all their users"? Most people using a forum don't speak. They're readers who visit, gain some value, and leave.
> They said they wanted Reddit admins to realise that they rely on moderators to operate the site and felt that the only way to send a message was by harming Reddit's traffic.
That traffic was users, most of whom had no say in the matter.
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That's also why statements like this were especially ridiculous:
> "Our entire community is supporting us against this change," they said.
r/DIY was a community of 24 million people with decades of posts. A few dozen people got upset, queried a few hundred of those tens of millions, and now a significant chunk of the internet is just gone.
Content the moderators didn't own and didn't write is forever locked behind a monument to their tantrum.
> Why are you turning "at the expense of their users" into "at the expense of all their users"?
I'm not. But "at the expense" implies that it's not what the users in general want, and I'm pretty sure the users in general wanted it for at least a whole bunch of the subreddits.
> queried a few hundred of those tens of millions
Polls are usually pretty accurate.
> tantrum
You can call it a tantrum, but if we're using language that strong then the action of the admins is a betrayal that hasn't been walked back in the slightest.
> I'm pretty sure the users in general wanted it for at least a whole bunch of the subreddits.
No, they didn't, most of the users never even spoke.
r/DIY mods never asked before going from the original 48 hrs to permanently deleting.
> Polls are usually pretty accurate.
I hope you're being facetious and realize a time limited self-selective poll where most of the population can't even vote is not accurate.
Polls are accurate when you put work into making them accurate. They're not magic.
> the action of the admins is a betrayal that hasn't been walked back in the slightest.
So what? If you feel betrayed, remove the content you own and walk away instead of locking away content you don't own off the internet and enticing people to post porn of John Oliver.
Tantrum is the perfect word to describe what these people did.
If the volunteer organizers of a group don't want to organize the group anymore, the group ceases to exist. If BUG members want BUG to continue to exist, they can volunteer to organize it. Nobody has any obligations past that.
I live in Boston and frequently went to BUG events prior to COVID. The pandemic killed off many in-person meetups, and nowadays game developer events meet much less frequently. There already is a game dev meetup group called Boston GameDev which seems to have absorbed all of the meetups into one umbrella - and this includes BUG. There is no pressing need to rename the group or transfer members because this umbrella organization already exists.
That said, I don't understand the decision to shut the group and encourage members to move to a more general game dev group instead. If the reason is "everyone stopped using Unity, we don't have any members" then I understand, but the press release didn't say that. In fact it implied there might be thousands of members.
The closest thing to a reason they gave was that Unity has become hostile to indie devs. But Unity doesn't run BUG, so if some people are still using Unity, which I assume is the case, wouldn't they still benefit from having a users group? If it's an act of protest by the group organizers, that seems annoying for the people who still use Unity and got value out of having access to that community.
Without sufficient context to understand the decision, I find I'm not sure what this act accomplishes, or what it intended to accomplish.