Unity closes offices due to ‘credible death threat’
www.polygon.com
The closures come after a week of controversy around a new pricing model

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ca/post/5340114

ghostarchive
Original Discussion[1]

San Francisco police told Polygon that officers responded to Unity’s San Francisco office “regarding a threats incident.” A “reporting party” told police that “an employee made a threat towards his employer using social media.” The employee that made the threat works in an office outside of California, according to the police statement.

  1. https://lemmy.world/post/5057297 ↩︎

  • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.worldEnglish
    9711·
    1 year ago

    Honestly at this point I feel worse for the guy who made the threat than anyone else. Can you imagine what is like working with those sort of bosses with such exploitative tendencies and an utter disregard for an entire industry? They get to ruin countless lives but if anyone gets mad that’s the unacceptable one who is punished.

    • Kayn@dormi.zoneEnglish
      4215·
      1 year ago

      Then why don’t they look for work at another company?

      Making death threats is still a major dick move regardless of the circumstances.

      • xantoxis@lemmy.worldEnglish
        27·
        1 year ago

        It is, but all we have right now is Unity’s claim that this is what happened. We don’t even know the content of the threat, who made it, why they made it. All of that context could cast this in a wildly different light. I am very suspicious of Unity the company’s motives here in saying this when we haven’t heard from anyone else.

        • Kayn@dormi.zoneEnglish
          28·
          1 year ago

          How can this be cast in any light that’s not negative?

          Companies don’t just make up death threats.

          • xantoxis@lemmy.worldEnglish
            282·
            1 year ago

            They absolutely do when it benefits them and they think they can get away with it, I don’t know how you could make such a blanket claim without questioning yourself just a little bit.

            And of course it would be negative, but I think there’s a chance the claim casts a negative light on the company, and not on the employee, who is as yet unnamed. As it stands now, any of the following could be true:

            1. The entire story is fiction, made up by Unity to distract from literally everything else about them. Distractions are massively important to companies at times like this, and it’s almost like clockwork that you find them making up distractions when they can’t find a way to put a good spin on the press.
            2. There’s a real employee who posted something on social media, and it was a death threat. The death threat was about the current news. Bad employee, hope they see some consequences. I am doubting this right now because we don’t have any actual evidence of it, and because of point (1). Furthermore, the vagueness of this press announcement and the fact that “you wouldn’t know him, he works in another state” gives them cover . . .
            3. There’s a real employee who posted something negative on social media. It was not a death threat, and is being deliberately misconstrued by Unity to allow them to deploy point (1).
            4. There’s a real death threat posted on social media by someone who sucks. That person is not, in fact, a Unity employee and the announcement to the contrary was either deliberate misinformation or a simple mistaken identity. IDK what this would say about the company, but gamers can be real shitty. If this one is the case, I hope that person sees consequences, but they probably won’t.
            5. There’s a real post on social media framed as a death threat, deliberately planted by someone at Unity to create a distraction, see point (1).

            There’s more, and quite frankly it gets tiresome to see people jumping to defend when ploys like this have been the playbook for shitty companies since the invention of the company. I don’t know which of these things will be turn out to be true, but neither do you, and it’s so boring to see someone claiming they know the facts here for sure.

          • ram@lemmy.caOPEnglish
            8·
            1 year ago

            They literally do though to steer the conversation to one wherein they’re a sympathetic figure. Never hear of PR?

      • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.worldEnglish
        293·
        1 year ago

        It might have been wiser, but seems to me we got to a point we should be thinking of the circumstances.

        Besides, that only would have solved their individual problem, IF they even managed it. The way the company is being run would remain the same. How it would impact all the people who rely on that engine would remain the same.

        It’s “never acceptable” to threaten someone, but intentionally ruining countless people’s livelihoods is “nothing personal”. Something is off about that.

        • Kayn@dormi.zoneEnglish
          101·
          1 year ago

          You can’t just solve a company’s culture by yourself.

          You can either convince enough people to unionize, or you can save yourself.

    • Elderos@lemmings.worldEnglish
      185·
      1 year ago

      Unity employees have extraordinary working conditions and pay. It sucks that their hard work gets tarnished by stupid executives and poor PR but let’s not paint the employee as a victim here.

      • TwilightVulpine@lemmy.worldEnglish
        204·
        1 year ago

        The number of people being ruined is pretty different though.

        I get it, it’s a callous attitude, but I’m wondering if going for civility above anything else is really working out. I’d love for such situations to be settled with a reasonable discussion, but do they ever?

        • KlearEnglish
          34·
          1 year ago

          Not sending death threats is the bar set for civility these days?

          • FaceDeer@kbin.social
            113·
            1 year ago

            Because a threat is not an attempt. Most likely they had absolutely no intention to carry through with it.

            It’s still bad but saying “I’m gonna kill you” is not the same as actually trying to kill you.

            • SocialMediaRefugee@lemmy.worldEnglish
              33·
              1 year ago

              Because a threat is not an attempt…but saying “I’m gonna kill you” is not the same as actually trying to kill you.

              Obviously, but you don’t ignore it either. You don’t wait for a DUI to crash before doing something about the threat. Say you’d like to shoot the president and see if the secret service ignores you.

              • FaceDeer@kbin.social
                71·
                1 year ago

                You said that he didn’t kill anyone because he got caught first. Which implies that if he didn’t get caught he would have actually killed someone.

                They really aren’t the same. It’s a common fallacy on the Internet to lunge straight to the worst possible case and equate that to whatever it is you’re arguing, but it really isn’t the same. Sure, the secret service won’t ignore you if you say you’d like to shoot the president. But will their reaction be the same as if you’ve smuggled a gun in to a press conference and are spotted actively moving to get near him? Obviously not, because what I said remains true. Simply saying “I’m gonna kill you” is not the same as actually trying to kill you.

    • ???@lemmy.worldEnglish
      35·
      1 year ago

      But they didn’t just get mad (if this is the full story). They sent them a death threat. I think there is a fine line.

      • pinkdrunkenelephants@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        103·
        1 year ago

        I’ll bite: Death threats are not as serious as tanking an entire company and ruining thousands of lives.

        (I don’t actually think that; I just feel like playing devil’s advocate today)

          • pinkdrunkenelephants@sopuli.xyzEnglish
            11·
            1 year ago

            A fair point. None of the news articles even give us any real, meaningful details as to what happened so we don’t know if it was just execs who were threatened or if, perhaps, there was a bomb threat or something. I wish we could see a screenshot of the actual threat so we could make a determination.