Monthly Archives: September 2023

Unity and Enshittification

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Last week, I wrote about Enshittification, which is a great lead into for what just happened with Unity. Unity is a game development engine. It’s a very popular platform and a number of universities use it as part of their game development degrees. Popular YouTuber Mark Brown, of GameMakersToolKit uses Unity in his series exploring novice game development.

Which is rather unfortunate, because Unity has gone and decided to retroactively add a way to claw back value from game developers. They announced it on 9/12, it is a Run Time Fee for every new install of a game. It might not sound like a lot, $0.20 (at the lowest end) for an install, however, if you are a low priced game, because it’s a small game, that could be 1/5 of your revenue. Add in Steam’s 30% fee, you’re already at 50% of your revenue chewed up in fees. The other challenging part of this fee, is that it would apply to every computer an end user installs the game on.

I have a Steam Deck, a laptop, and a Gaming PC. If I installed a $0.99 game on all three systems, the company that developed by game would have lost 10 cents on my purchase. That’s untenable for game developers. It’s not a survivable product strategy. Game devs and publishers would need to charge at least $2.00 for every game to ensure they made money. Which might kill the viability for that game.

In a related cash grab eX-Twitter is contemplating charging a fee for every user on the platform. No matter how much you use the site, it’s now a subscription price. The benefit of that product was always the free association and random interactions on the platform. Another way it’s been enshittified has been the significant growth of Nazi users.

Companies that dramatically change the terms of use, will drive customers away. They will push companies from the platform or potential companies away. The Developers of Terraria, didn’t even use the engine, have elected to fund two Open Source development engines as a result.

I think it’s important for technology companies to take a long look at what the users are saying in response to Twitter, Unity, Google (and it’s Google Graveyard), and Telecom companies. End Users, the life blood of any platform, avoid these companies and their products as much as they. They do not want to be exploited. It’s toxic.

The executive class do like these schemes as they push up the “value” of their products to the stock market. However, this is ultimately at the expense of their long term revenue and value to customers. Working with your customers, both immediate and end customers, will drive value for your business in the long run. Trust lost is lost value. Don’t enshittify your products.

Enshittification and Your Favorite App

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A few months back, Corey Doctorow wrote a blog about Enshittification, which is a process of taking a good, fun, and useable product and gradually, through a clear set of steps, make it terrible. Or a shitty product.

HERE IS HOW platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

https://www.wired.com/story/tiktok-platforms-cory-doctorow/

It is likely you favorite App will go through this process. First, you have a great app that seems like it brings you a lot of value, then it gets a little crappier, clunkier to use, more logins more data tracked, then you’re getting charged a subscription, then you feel like you’re getting ads in the app you’re subscribed too.

This is part of the reason why Google dropped the “Don’t Be Evil” motto. They were doing things previous versions of themselves would have considered Evil. Case in point, moving into China and censoring part of the internet. They still do, just on a much more limited basis. It’s the “Cost of Doing Business.” If that’s the cost of doing business, then they’ve already gone to the point of abusing their users.

I don’t think this is the only way platforms/apps die. I think they are often left to rot and die through neglect after a purchase. If a larger competitor gobbles up a smaller one, the larger competitor can extract the best bits of the smaller product and put them into their Enshittified product. This leaves the original smaller more innovative app, much worse off.

Fighting against Enshittification is hard. It requires collective action. It requires users to demand regulation to protect the user from Enshitification. It’s a constant battle, this isn’t a one time set and forget action.

Section 230 is one of the best things for any internet platform, but it’s been under constant attack. It’s under attack because it allows businesses to keep Nazi’s off a platform. It keeps Right Wing Fascists off a platform. The problem for Right Wing Politicians in office is that their talking points line up or are softened versions of Nazi rhetoric. So, those platforms, if they use automation for moderation, will kick Right Wing voices off, because they sound like Nazis.

Section 230 is very far from perfect, but it protects businesses that do not want to Enshittifiy the way eXTwitter has Enshittified.

Call your Senator and support actions to block mergers. Call your Representatives and support actions to protect users

Health is a hell of a thing

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Over the past couple years, I’ve been struggling with some really significant health issues. I have been dealing with some sort of allergy since I was a kid. I had reactions to Swedish Fish, it was my first real experience of cutting food out of my life and just kind of moving on. When I was about 9 I loved Swedish Fish. I’d eat them as often as I could get my grubby mitts on them. However, my throat would swell up. After the second time it happened, I just stopped eating them.

Almost two decades later, I was having issues with wheat. I’d been having those since I discovered wheat beer while in undergrad, but it’d escalated to the point of impacting bread. I’d also started to have issues with cheese. Dairy was also not something I’d enjoyed for a while, so it just kind felt like time to cut them both out.

This was hard, much harder than giving up Swedish Fish.

About 5 or so years later, I finally went to an allergist. From there with immunotherapy things just kind of blew up. I’ve had my diet restricted to about 6 or 7 different things. It’s been tough. I’ve shed about 90 pounds on this diet. However, I’ve been able to get into shape a lot, because of my indoor cycling trainer.

I’m currently going through the process of trying a couple new drugs. Right now I’m testing out Orladeyo. This one is interesting, since it was generally made for Hereditary angioedema, which is a very significant swelling disease. It looks pretty challenging to live with.

So far, I’ve been only it only a few days, the immediate Gastro side effect aren’t too bad, just a bit of burping and discomfort, which is significantly better than the potential. I’ve already seen some benefit of it, I’ve shed about 3 pounds of water weight in just about 2 days. Clearly, the medicine is doing something for me. I’m pretty happy about that. I’m hoping that this will work for me to allow me to resume the immunotherapy.

This year I’ve been struggling to do any writing or editing, in general. I hope to get back to the editing this month and finish up Goat’s Legacy. I’d like to get it published early next year. I plan to turn the Good Goddamn into a Vella for Kindle. I also hope to get back to writing a blog on here once a week or once every two weeks. Just to get back into the swing of writing.

Things have just been hard.