Report: Unity continues mass layoffs with 'abrupt' communications and 5am emails
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I've somehow survived all the firings and restructurings so far. It's a shit show over here. I'm trying to get through a few more months then I'm off to another country to go back to school
The agonizing hasn't stopped for me I've just gotten used to it as a part of my day to day. It's wild what they've been putting us through we need to unionize
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There's a lot of people losing their jobs today that didn't do anything wrong.
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The exact reason I have to deal with unity for a specific project.
And now its already built, so stuck with it for a while.
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"That being said, I want to call out the way Unity chose to communicate these layoffs. Receiving a 5am email from 'noreply@unity' informing me that my role was being 'eliminated' and that I'd lose system access by the end of the day felt completely abrupt and impersonal. Unity must do better in how they treat their workers in hard times like this."
Ouch
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I’m not going to tell you how to feel but I would like to think there’s maybe a balance here lol
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Shout out to Bevy engine. It’s like if you took Unity DOTS and actually made it work.
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Needs a lot of work yet but I like it. I’m using it for non game shenanigans personally.
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I'm in Canada so left on silver parachute due to mass layoff laws.
The issue in most places isn't the abrupt notice, it's the shitty labor laws
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(cries in federal employment)
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I'm very sorry man, I've been through that, and I have friends that have been cut at unity before. They treat their workers terribly.
Focus on getting better first, just process it for a bit. When you're ready to start looking, the market is warm right now. I'm more than happy to help review resumes.
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Ah I think my comment made in haste was ambiguous. Fortunately I was not cut this time around, I've somehow skated by all the firings. I'm actually just clinging on for a few more months then I'm off to Sweden to go back to school. Hoping to actually finish my game dev degree this time around! I do have some school application stuff I would love to have people see though I'll keep you in mind for that if you are up for it (for a work sample primarily, to get into higher rates schools)
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Is this related to the pricing changes or something else?
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Unreal is easy to pick up for 3D.
Unreal Engine 1.5 - yeah, maybe. Definitely not UE5. It's one of the most complicated, convoluted and heavyweight systems in existence. Just engine itself is 100gb+ download, opening it the first time takes 30m to compile shaders. Just reading briefly through gtlf import dialog took me like 10minutes.
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It’s very sad. We’re going lose a lot of great employees with tons of experience. This is going to cost to taxpayers in the form of poor services and contractors down the road filling in for more money and with less experience.
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I am a big supporter of godot but... it is incredibly tacky to run into a thread about layoffs and basically say "Good, they shouldn't have jobs. Use this instead"
Time and place
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UE is a beast to run (and has incredibly shitty linux support if you want to use the marketplace or any plugins...). But basically everything you listed is a one time cost or just an indicator that you probably shouldn't be developing medium fidelity 3d games on a potato.
Honestly? For "hobbyist" 3d games, Unity is still the king. Godot is awesome but a lot of the core loops and flows are very much geared with 2D first and the performance of 3D games is a hotly contested issue. I would still say that Godot's 3D "performance" is better than Unreal's 2D but... that is an incredibly low bar.
And in terms of workflows? UE is more than a bit convoluted but with stuff like blueprints it is probably the most consistent tool out there (so long as you never try to do a 2D game). Unity is a distant second. And Godot is great but it also reeks of an open source project that is being designed and redesigned in real time (just look at how file IDs are handled...). Not the end of the world if you understand the core concepts but also not something people are generally going to learn without a lot of trips to the forums (or watching youtubes of people who did said trips for them).
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one time cost
Maybe stuff like shaders compiling isn't a big deal in the long run, but one-time cost in terms of learning may be too much. If you're going to use 5% of its features, having to go through the rest 95% when learning how to do things is a big distraction and productivity killer. Also, there is a surge of AAA games made in UE5 that have critical performance issues that developers struggle to fix for extended periods of time after release, killing performance even on the most top-notch hardware that most gamers could never afford.
an indicator that you probably shouldn’t be developing medium fidelity 3d games on a potato
Why though? Just use other engine and you're good.
For “hobbyist” 3d games, Unity is still the king.
I'm doing a hobbyist 3d game and I'm using UPBGE. It's terrible in a lot of ways, depsgraph kills performance, but it's very convenient to just hit P and play during 3d modelling of the scene. This is what I would call an engine for "hobbyist". Unity is a decent engine for professionals, for indies, for AAA, for AA, for a lot of things. At least, technically it's there. Its management is a big issue though.
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I can criticize a broken product. The jobs deserve thing is creative reading on your part.
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but one-time cost in terms of learning may be too much
If a slow startup of the editor the first time you start it is enough to end your career in game dev: you never had one.
If you’re going to use 5% of its features, having to go through the rest 95% when learning how to do things is a big distraction and productivity killer
It is a philosophical difference. But the reason I still suggest folk "learn with" UE is that it is, mostly, consistent between all the different kinds of games you may want to make. Which... is a leading cause of said performance issues when you start pushing things but more on that in...
Also, there is a surge of AAA games made in UE5 that have critical performance issues that developers struggle to fix for extended periods of time after release
Now. First and foremost: That means nothing for a hobbyist learning and making a game with their kids or spending a few hours a week for a few months until they give up.
As for the A-AA space (AAA means something, god damn it): That is not something that an individual developer is going to have any say in. That is going to be a corporate decision and it is almost exclusively going to be that company's engine (ha, Frostbite) or Unreal because UE is the industry standard and there is a lot of value in being able to rapidly onboard a new hire or a contractor.
As for performance for those corporate games? That is really no concern for the hobbyist scale and is a much more complicated question related to allocating resources and time. But if there being poorly performant games made with an engine disqualified that engine: NO engines would exist.
Why though? Just use other engine and you’re good.
This gets back to the optimization side of things. You should not need to go through and migrate the critical path from gdscript to c# or even c++ just to test out your game. You want your development system to be significantly beefier than your target system so that you can rapidly iterate and debug.
Other engines may or may not be more performant for debugging a specific "level" of fidelity. If you are at the point where your engine's editor's system requirements are limiting your ability to develop: You and your users are going to have a very bad time.
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Nearly an entire generation lacks the wisdom that comes with struggle and now we're reaping the effects of that.
