Let me expand on the title. I’m concerned because on the top of all the problems Unity has done to itself and its user-base, I am detecting an underlying problem which will and is preventing Unity’s return to the customers.
The thing is, Unity used to created solutions for the users, to make our life easier and make making games reachable and approachable for more and more people. In Unity’s words: democratizing game development.
And you could find tracks of this all over the place.
For (a very small) example: engineers found that safety is sometimes fragile, so they limited the download protocols.
It’s a good move, usually you want that. But then what about legacy stuff? Or unusual limitations? Unity recognized this, so they put a setting in place where you can choose the level of security based on the circumstances. They did the right thing. They made users’ lives easier.
But this kind of consideration is long gone when it comes to Unity’s latest additions. For example you can find a sudden, unannounced change here .
This absolutely doesn’t make any sense. Without any previous warning an API gets shut down basically, because engineers think it doesn’t work in some circumstances. And then when we start asking questions, they say “we may put a new API in place to solve the problem we just dumped on you”. They can detect when you call the CreateAsset method during the import process, because they warn you about it specifically. So they could choose to handle the things there properly. Well, they could do that, they chose not to. They just tell you to stop using that API during import, which dumps a big pile of crap on very many applications, since very many people are creating multiple assets on disk from one source asset.
They could keep the functionality, since in the majority of the time it just works good enough and maybe, just maybe shovel a setting in the settings so it can be secured in circumstances when it shouldn’t be used (like when an organization starts using the cache server). But they chose not to. They just cut you off without explanation or example how to get around this and make your life harder.
You can find similar anti-user sentiment in the [Graphics]( Water System for the High Definition Render Pipeline page-13) team as well. Example:
They could choose to make users’ lives easier and cut the crap and make a setup button and then users can go in and tweak if needed, they deliberately chose not to. Because users need to be educated or whatever crap. You can educate users by writing proper manual. When you make the setup button and users realize they need something slightly different, they can read the fricking manual and learn where to tweak it. When it is needed. Not every single time when they want to setup something.
This is extremely hostile anti-user and anti-UX behavior.
I wish Unity would go back and think this through and switch back to serve users, not some l’art pour l’art puritan BS. This is similar to something some coders do:
“We could make a software change which is faster, more readable, etc, but we can’t because it violates some BS convention or SOLID or some pattern or something.”
You are making Unity software for the users. Not that you can have a perfectly pure software system in place. People are messy, the best way to serve their ideas and their creativity is messy. Deal with it.
Sorry for the rant.
