this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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To be honest, in the face of how dumb that lie would be and how I have come to view stats-based decision-making (where companies favour decisions they can point to some KPI for because it makes them seem scientifically grounded over ones made "just" with human reasoning), I'll invoke Hanlon's Razor and say:
I absolutely think it's possible some middle-manager looked at the view stats and decided they'd look better if they cut some chaff, never mind just what that chaff may be. Protests - if issued ar all - went unheard or unheeded, and the change went through because the numbers told them to make it.
It's awful optics, in any case, but I'm willing to concede it may be dumb coincidence paired with dumb decisions, probably made by someone wholly uninvolved with the pricing change decision, rather than actual dumb malice.
(Doesn't excuse the rest of their bullshit, of course)
Literally no one but legal should have the authority to remove a contract from the website, and allowing any other human being to do so is gross negligence at absolute best.
It should have sent a cascade of giant red flags the second it was touched.
Oh it definitely would be grossly negligent, but the amount of technical systems I've seen that somebody should have a stake in but wasn't actually involved with... well, if Legal's purview ends at writing up those terms, Compliance made sure they're up in an appropriate place and nobody thought to put "make sure they are automatically involved of any change affecting this" on the checklist, all the boxes have been ticked and they won't notice until the fallout starts hitting.
In an ideal world, any change to the master branch of that repo or to the repo itself should require the approval of a technically versed member of Legal/Compliance (or one of each, if they're separate teams). In reality, that approval process may well exist only on paper, with no technical safeguards to enforce it.
I definitely wouldn't completely discount that as a possibility for sure, but Unity sure is bad at damage control (as are most companies that make dumb decisions like this) - even if this is true, it would've been better to just not mention it, as it could only ever just douse fuel onto the already out-of-control PR fire that has erupted due to all of this.
No dispute on that front, it's a dumb move to excuse a dumb move with a dumb excuse at a dumb time where nobody will believe that it was genuinely just dumb instead of malicious. And who knows, I might be totally wrong too.
My giving them this much credit is really just out of (possibly misplaced) idealistic desire to find alternate explanations before jumping right to accusations of malice. I'm not even entirety sure I believe it myself, to be honest.