Unity May Never Win Back the Developers It Lost in Its Fee Debacle

nanoUFO@sh.itjust.worksmod to Games@sh.itjust.works – 765 points –
Unity May Never Win Back the Developers It Lost in Its Fee Debacle
wired.com
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"Selling shares before the announcement" was a pretty egregious misrepresentation. He has scheduled pre-registered sales on a regular basis because he gets paid partly in stock.

It was always going to be relatively soon after a sale of stock.

As if you can't schedule your announcements to fall just after the scheduled stock sales... Or just before them, if you want.

Just want to add you’re right but what pisses me off is that they still can influence decisions based on this. Let’s say his shares are sold at x day, just do some decisions before that and boom your auto sell share price is now either higher or lower. Only because it’s predetermined they still influence it and SEC now can’t do shit.

This has nothing in common with insider trading and doesn't resemble it in any way. The shares he sold weren't a relevant proportion of his ownership. He didn't sell then deliberately tank them. He sold then announced something he thought would improve the value of his big stake in the company. The decision almost definitely cost him a lot of money by substantially lowering the trajectory of his company's ability to maintain market share.

He sold then announced something he thought would improve the value of his big stake in the company.

In what universe?

If he didn't think the announcement would improve the value of the company, why did they do it?

Exactly. It was plopping his dick on the table, then realizing "oh shit, no one actually is impressed by this".

Insider trading would be more "I know we're about to get sued for this egregious fuckup and have no defense, so I'm going to sell before the news leaks". Strategy knowledge can be part of insider trading, but it would tend to be more buying shares because you have advanced knowledge that a highly lucrative contract has been signed before the announcement. It would be harder to have selling because of a strategy decision be insider trading unless you were opposed to it internally, because decisions you make are intended to make the shareholders (you) money.

So he would get a huge bonus from the short term gains, and then dip before the company suffered the long term damages.

You know, that might just make it worse. As in, this wasn't some 5d plot, he genuinely thought this would work.

Don't you bring facts into this! We want to be outraged!

Being serious though, they ought to be investigating whether there were any changes in those sale orders. If they've been the same and unchanged for the last two years or some long period of time, I don't think there's a case. But if they're was an adjustment a month or two ago, that would be very problematic.