• stopthatgirl7@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Unity well and truly thought everyone would just roll over on this, and oh boy, were they wrong. They didn’t at all learn from the Wizards of the Coast debacle at the beginning of the year.

    • noqturn@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      WoTC, Reddit, Twitter, now unity. All made changes that their user base said they wouldn’t like, made the changes anyway, then lost a bunch of users. There must be some new business Guru telling everybody to piss off their customers

      • stopthatgirl7@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Unfortunately, they all seem to be working from the techno-feudalism playbook. It started when tech companies realized they could make more by making us rent software instead of selling it to us, and it’s spread.

      • float@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        piss off their customers

        At least for Reddit and Twitter, the users are not the actual customers. The ad companies are the customers.

      • rahmad@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        Pretty sure Elon was first to the key, and the rest have followed suit.

        In seriousness, though, the primary driver is the VC tap slowing down significantly and forcing long term business strategy to lean much harder into its existing opportunities vs. planning for periodic cash infusion from investors. A lot of these businesses never had to set themselves up for success in the absence of that capital, and it’s led to bad practices and product strategies.

        • babyphatman @lemmy.ml
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          1 year ago

          This is the real answer. The low interest money train has left the building and these companies are scrambling to meet their feduciary duty

          • sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            Yup, the old mantra was:

            1. Hype product
            2. Get users
            3. Profit?

            They might experiment with ads and subscription tiers, but the real focus is always on getting users. Look at YouTube, AFAIK, it’s still not profitable (or if it is, it’s barely profitable), and not for lack of trying over the past few years. Yeah, sites like Reddit and Twitter are cheaper to run, but there’s still a ton of overhead and ads aren’t as profitable there.

            Now investors want to see a return, and it’s just not happening.