Update: Unity office death threat was made by a Unity employee

ram@lemmy.ca to Technology@lemmy.world – 1067 points – Unity closes offices due to ‘credible death threat’
polygon.com

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

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Original Discussion^[https://lemmy.world/post/5057297]

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.

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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.

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

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

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.

I think it was the police who found out it was an employee.

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

Companies don't just make up death threats.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

I'm pretty sure killing is a worse way to ruin someone's life.

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?

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

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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.

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)

Death threats are personal. Corporations can be boycotted.

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.

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