Regulars here would know that like quite a lot of gamers, we're not a fan of microtransactions.

However we're also not fans of dishonesty and last week potentially saw this in relation to Unity CEO John Ricciotello.

With titles like this from IGN Daily Fix:

Former EA CEO Calls Devs Who Don't Focus on Microtransactions 'F****** Idiots'

and this from TechSpot:

Unity boss says game devs who refuse to embrace monetization are "f**king idiots"

These aren't outliers. They're representative of the media's coverage and the title of the Pocket Gamer interview it comes from:

John Riccitiello: devs who shun monetisation are "pure, brilliant" and "fucking idiots"

What did he actually say?

He talks about Unity offering tools to give more immediate feedback to developers and discouraging them from treating monetisation and gameplay as completely separate.

The announcement is centred around transforming Unity into a combined growth engine, with features such as embedding monetisation indicators. What kind of developer feedback have you received that led to this direction?

Marc Whitten: It comes down to a couple of key aspects: the first is the massive success of game creation in general, particularly in mobile. The second is the sheer quantity of mobile releases every month, in the tens of thousands.

From the game creator perspective, the challenge is no longer do I have an interesting idea and more do I have an idea that can rise above the noise and find the right customers and players. We’re really excited about creating a live engine – something that can provide critical feedback as early in the creation process as possible, and starting that conversation with potential users at that point.

Implementing monetisation earlier in the process and conversation is certainly an angle that has seen pushback from some developers.

Riccitiello: Ferrari and some of the other high-end car manufacturers still use clay and carving knives. It’s a very small portion of the gaming industry that works that way, and some of these people are my favourite people in the world to fight with – they’re the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people. They’re also some of the biggest fucking idiots.

I’ve been in the gaming industry longer than most anybody – getting to the grey hair and all that. It used to be the case that developers would throw their game over the wall to the publicist and sales force with literally no interaction beforehand. That model is baked into the philosophy of a lot of artforms and medium, and it’s one I am deeply respectful of; I know their dedication and care.

But this industry divides people between those who still hold to that philosophy and those who massively embrace how to figure out what makes a successful product. And I don’t know a successful artist anywhere that doesn’t care about what their player thinks. This is where this cycle of feedback comes back, and they can choose to ignore it. But to choose to not know it at all is not a great call.

I’ve seen great games fail because they tuned their compulsion loop to two minutes when it should have been an hour. Sometimes, you wouldn’t even notice the product difference between a massive success and tremendous fail, but for this tuning and what it does to the attrition rate. There isn’t a developer on the planet that wouldn’t want that knowledge.

Whitten: To double down on John’s point, Unity has democratised creation. Nowadays, if I were to tell you the next breakaway title is going to be made by two guys sitting in a flat in the Philippines, you wouldn’t blink twice. There is a beauty in tools that let people find out that this is how they want to make their livelihood, and our responsibility is to continue that democratisation.

Looking at ironSource, they came with the same ideas. Making feedback and publishing more transparent, as opposed to locked in a black box of marketing people. Now creators can look at minute information about monetisation and feedback in the same way they would look at load times or where they need to optimise their C# code.

He answered a question which was specifically about monetisation (i.e. microtransactions) and the point during development at which developers think about that.

There was no explicit reference to nor room to infer anything about games without any microtransactions.

Yet that's what the gaming media did and his response was:

Clickbait. Out of full context. Deeply sorry if what I said offended any game dev. Absolutely love the people that make games. Creative, hard work. #Unity

The media just continued in the same vein.

Ultimately he apologised for his crude choice of words, which the media ran with as his apologising for the stuff he never said.

Did the Media Lie?

Language can be ambiguous and in the context of an industry where there is both a deep divide over the issue of monetisation and also of some developers (eg. Electronic Arts) really pushing that envelope, titles like IGN's:

Former EA CEO Calls Devs Who Don't Focus on Microtransactions 'F****** Idiots'

will create the wrong impression, especially when the video follows with:

A former EA CEO may need to stop doing interviews as when recently speaking about developers avoiding implementing microtransactions in video games he called them fucking idiots.

Others like Eurogamer straight up get it wrong:

Earlier this week, Riccitiello was slammed for stating that mobile developers who don't seek to squeeze monetisation from their smartphone games represented only "a very small portion of the gaming industry", calling them "the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people" that were also "some of the biggest fucking idiots".

The Real Story

What he actually said is still horrible and not just for his "crude" choice of words.

From a business perspective a holistic approach to game development, including microtransactions if those are in the mix, is perfectly logical.

But again dipping into ambiguity, the once clean divide between purely recreational video gaming and gambling gaming has disappeared.

Instead of the goal being player enjoyment in some games it's about stripping them of much money as possible.

That's not only sucks from the player perspective but also the developer's, most of whom we'd expect to have a recreational rather than gambling gaming background.

Many could have moral objections to and be deeply saddened by compulsive monetization practices.

Everyone has to make a living though and maybe they can tolerate involvement in making such games provided they don't actively participate in the evil bits.

Instead of sympathy for such developers, John casts them as stuck in an old way of thinking about game development, without any acknowledgement of potential principled objections.

Which is arguably dishonest of him.

Publication of John Riccitiello's interview followed a Brazilian developer springing a surprise anti NFT (non-fungible token) speech during Brazil's International Games Festival.

We don't know when that interview was conducted but hitting the internet two days after this speech, John's dig at developers could be perceived as an indirect response.

News or Clickbait?

Was this news or clickbait?

Possibly neither. Or both.

Being wedged between June's summer gaming reveals and the San Diego Comic-Con we can vouch for entertainment news presently being in short supply.

But we don't think gaming media were simply after attention with this one.

Free-to-play games accounting for 85% of the total revenue for the gaming industry means that microtransactions account for more than 85% of the gaming industry's revenue.

Because many buy-to-play and or subscription games also include microtransactions.

That they're economically significant can't be denied but many gamers and also developers have no interest in them or their baby, NFTs.

There's a real war in progress for the soul of the gaming industry and this was probably the latest volley from the anti-side.

Meanwhile in the realm of definitely real news, Elden Ring - which includes no microtransactions - has been reported to be the top-selling game in the US in four out of the five months since its release.

That it is an exceptional game can't be set aside but it does prove the viability of the traditional, microtransaction-free business model.

[ Main Image: John Riccitiello. Credit: CBS News. ]

References

Bankhurst, Adam (July 16, 2022). Elden Ring Was Once Again the Best-Selling Game of the Past Month. IGN.

Blake, Vikki (July 17, 2022). Unity CEO apologises for criticising mobile developers who don't prioritise monetisation. Eurogamer.

Fenlon, Wes (July 11, 2022). Developer turns 'future of gaming' talk into a surprise attack on convention's NFT and blockchain sponsors. PC Gamer.

IGN (July 16, 2022). Former EA CEO Calls Devs Who Don't Focus on Microtransactions 'F****** Idiots' - IGN Daily Fix. YouTube.

Le, Khai Trung (July 13, 2022). John Riccitiello: devs who shun monetisation are "pure, brilliant" and "fucking idiots". Pocket Gamer.

Play Today. 24 Mind-Blowing Gaming Industry Statistics for 2022. (viewed July 18, 2022)

Plunkett, Luke (January 23, 2022). Survey Says Developers Are Definitely Not Interested In Crypto Or NFTs. Kotaku.

Riccitiello, John [@johnriccitiello] (July 15, 2022). Clickbait. Twitter.

Riccitiello, John [@johnriccitiello] (July 17, 2022). To our friends in the #unity community, I owe you this. Twitter.

Thubron, Rob (July 15, 2022) Unity boss says game devs who refuse to embrace monetization are "f**king idiots". TechSpot.