Unity bosses sold stock days before development fees announcement::Unity executives sold thousands of shares in the weeks leading up to last night’s hugely controversial announcement it …

229 points

Sounds like insider trading to me

permalink
report
reply
78 points

The stock is down 5.5% today. It’s down 6% from a week ago.

The stock is up 0.5% from a month ago, and up a whopping 32% from 6 months ago.

It’s down 50% from five years ago.

What I’m getting at is that this announcement has very little movement on the stock price overall. Unless these bosses were clearing out their inventory thinking this news would kill the company, its possible these sales were normal transactions.

permalink
report
parent
reply
56 points

The financial impact of this decision is entirely speculative at this stage. Unity’s next quarterly earnings report won’t be impacted by it. The market is attempting to price in losses that haven’t yet occurred. We won’t know how it affects stock price for awhile

permalink
report
parent
reply
17 points

Yeah, an announcement like this is the shit wall street lives for. Short term gain but a long term harm is what they’re all about. That’s why they love layoffs as well. Doesn’t matter that it screws with company morale, short term the company makes more profit!

permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

The small nosedive the stock price took agrees with your assessment. It’ll get an emotional reaction from some, but decisions like this are made in the interest of the shareholder, not the consumer - this is a calculated move to generate profit. They decided that the losses of people abandoning the product will be outweighed by the profits of this new revenue steam.

permalink
report
parent
reply
23 points
*
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
18 points

So it’s only kind of insider trader because it’s only 5%?

permalink
report
parent
reply
19 points
*

He may have committed some…light insider trading

Edit: inb4 people don’t get the joke

permalink
report
parent
reply
-4 points
*

It’s not insider trading because this decision will make the stock price climb in the long term, and any sales would need to be significant to be worth the penalties.

Stock was $39, dropped to $36. $3 difference x 2000 shares sold is a difference of $6000, something considered a rounding error when talking about the sums of money these people have.

This sounds like someone was selling their stocks and buying their kids a house by making small sales to have minimal impacts on stock price, not insider trading.

In reality the people that know their intentions are the ones that pressed the “SELL” button

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

“Normal transaction” after a fundamental change in how all games that use your product are financially responsible by novel, unmeasurable, and unrealistic metrics. No transaction prior to this kind of announcement is “normal” imo.

permalink
report
parent
reply
0 points

Why would executives sell shares of their own company in any case?

I could imagine selling a handful of shares to finance a big purchase like a house, but otherwise they shouldn’t ever be cashing out while they’re in charge. If they think they’re serving the company, they should be holding onto their shares.

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points

The flaw is the notion that they serve the company. This is a parasitic class which serves itself above all else.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points
*

Stock buybacks, where a company buys its own stock to inflate stock prices and reward shareholders, are reeaally common practices. Obviously, shareholders have to sell stocks to cash out.

permalink
report
parent
reply
49 points

All trading by corporate officers is, by definition, “insider trading”.

But as long as they did it at the appropriate times (usually windows after earnings calls iirc) and file with the SEC it’s fine.

permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points

We’re gonna tank the company for money, everyone in this room sell all your stock over the next x months.

X months pass and the last sale of stock happens legally

Time for that announcement, send it.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point
1 point

Thanks - now that I’ve slept on it I believe the “after earnings call” applies to other non-officers of the company. I remember having some options that I could only exercise during certain times (HR would send us emails when those windows opened/closed).

permalink
report
parent
reply
20 points

Nope, just a scheduled sale of a minute portion of his held shares which he receives as part of his compensation and a minuscule amount of shares outstanding. He’s sold over 50k shares this year, this is just a normal thing.

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
5 points
*
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
6 points

Has any executive uh ever been prosecuted for insider trading after stock buybacks?

permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

Lol

permalink
report
parent
reply
-3 points

CEOs and CFOs on occasion have protections against insider trading stuff.

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Got a source on that?

permalink
report
parent
reply
1 point

Note the key takeaways section hence it’s not always a breach of insider trading if the CEO/CFO does it. it really depends. It’s a dumb escape mechanism people in power have.

permalink
report
parent
reply
76 points

If you’re ever worried that these corporate assholes are never punished for their blatant shady behavior, don’t worry. They have to deal with raised eyebrows which we all know can be super embarrassing.

permalink
report
reply
6 points

I dunno, if a government cares enough to look into this then the corpos might get some VERY sharp slaps on their wrists.

permalink
report
parent
reply
70 points

Sounds illegal to me.

permalink
report
reply
50 points

unfortunately there is a massive loophole that allows them to do this. what they do is set up sell orders at regular intervals (once a month or whatever) for months or years in advance. then when they decide they dont want to sell, they just cancel the order which is totally fine for them to do for some reason. if they do want to sell they just let the order execute and if anyone asks, they set it up a year ago and there is no possibility that the current decision could have influenced them into making that sell order a year ago.

permalink
report
parent
reply
15 points

I guess it would be best to change the rules so that they cannot trade their company stocks at all while working there and a reasonable period beyond. I think some legislations already restrict floating stock like that but I’m no expert on the matter.

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

That would make stocks a form of retirement, not a work compensation.

How about that you can sell the stocks, with an uncancellable order a year in advance?

permalink
report
parent
reply
64 points

Installed Godot yesterday and it’s starting to grow on me, I like it. Looking forward to a huge movement of studios over to Godot, which will hopefully speed up the development of Godot through further support. Is there any reliable source of data about which game engines are popular at the moment? I want to see that sweet sweet decline in Unity user base over to Godot.

permalink
report
reply
18 points

I found steamdb.info. According to them Godot seems to be growing steadily.

permalink
report
parent
reply
15 points

I really love Godot, it’s great. I actually switched to it before I even knew what open source was simply because it’s way nicer to use.

permalink
report
parent
reply
3 points

What types of games do you develop? I just started gamedev as a hobbyist earlier this year, so I’m by no means an expert in the field. I’m not into 2D games, I very much prefer 3D. What scares me is that I don’t see that many well made 3D games in Godot out there. It’s mostly 2D. Nonetheless, the engine seems to be capable of doing about the same of what Unity offers. I hope I’ll be able to soon reach the same level of proficiency in Godot and support the growth of 3D community.

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points

Now I am confused what a game engine even does? I thought it was a type of rendering software, shouldn’t all of them do 3D?

permalink
report
parent
reply
2 points
*

Godot 4 has brought a lot of improvements to 3D, it’s definitely a good engine for 3D games now. I also prefer 3D btw.

permalink
report
parent
reply
8 points
*
Deleted by creator
permalink
report
parent
reply
4 points

Amazing, we need more competition on the market. It’s never good to let big corporations run a monopoly.

permalink
report
parent
reply
40 points

How’s that even legal.

permalink
report
reply
29 points
*

Usually people at a company are not allowed to sell stock except during special windows. For people at the very top it’s restricted even further where they need to essentially plan to buy/sell stock well in advance. Essentially there is a huge delay to any stock decisions. So these sell offs were likely decided far in advance and once locked in cannot be changed.

For more details read https://www.investopedia.com/terms/r/rule-10b5-1.asp

permalink
report
parent
reply
45 points

the sale might not have been shady if scheduled, but the timing of the announcement which they have complete control over IS shady as fuck.

permalink
report
parent
reply
7 points

So basically it can be “legit” if they schedule the sale for a year out and the announcement for a year and a day…

permalink
report
parent
reply
14 points

You can regulate the stock market as much as you want but it’s a flawed concept.

permalink
report
parent
reply

Technology

!technology@lemmy.world

Create post

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


Community stats

  • 17K

    Monthly active users

  • 12K

    Posts

  • 555K

    Comments