Unity went crazy, what will happen to KSP2 (and KSP1)?

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, asmi said:

Very few people have the guts to say "no" to their boss, especially a passionate one (even if for all the wrong reasons), as it can put their career at risk. As the old saying goes, a failed project is a failure for grunts (engineers and regular line workers - you know those who actually get stuff done), but it's "gained experience" for managers. All those vice's are probably seeing themselves in a CEO chair one day.

The problem I see is that the Board of Directors are not exactly "employees" from each other, but elected officials of the shareholders that , at least in theory, are the bosses. Ergo, they answer to the shareholders, not to themselves. Again, in theory.

As far as I know (and it's not that much, I admit), the BoD are directly responsible for this huge borkage and are in risk of being sued by the shareholders, to the extend of their personal assets.

We are not talking a one hundred and a half billion USD company losing a couple billions on a unhappy dumb bet (about 1% of the overall value), we are talking a company worthing a dozen billion USD company that are risking losing about half of their value due an incredibly inept chain of decisions.

Once the losses are counted, someone will spill some beans and then bullets should start to fly. Hopefully, because otherwise I don't see how Capitalism will continue to work on USA.

That Stephen Elop dude I mention ad nauseam?

He was sued: https://www.crn.com/news/mobility/232901495/investor-sues-nokia-for-fraud-poor-lumia-sales.htm .

More here: https://thenextweb.com/news/nokia-and-execs-hit-with-lawsuit-alleging-fraud-over-meager-lumia-sales-failed-turnaround :

Quote

Nokia provides telecommunications infrastructure hardware, software, and services worldwide. During the Class Period, defendants told investors that Nokia’s conversion to a Windows platform would halt its deteriorating position in the smartphone market. It did not.

This became apparent on April 11, 2012, when Nokia disclosed that its first quarter performance would be worse than expected. Nokia expected its first quarter 2012 non-IFRS Devices & Services operating margin to fall by 3%, and projected first quarter 2012 Devices & Services net sales of €4.2 billion.

It also disclosed a glitch in its newest Windows offering – the Lumia 900. Nokia had to immediately offer customers an automatic $100, making the phone essentially free.

As a result of this disclosure, the price of Nokia’s American Depositary Shares (“ADRs”) dropped over 16% in a single day.

And later even Microsoft departed from him, laying him off in 2015.

What's happening on Unity Technologies appears to be way worse than that.

Edited September 18, 2023 by Lisias
Grammars. Don't you hate this thing?

[mattihase]

19 hours ago, Lisias said:

But these guys didn't reached where they are now by doing incredibly stupid mistakes by accident, as it would need to happen to you be right.

I'm not saying they're doing anything by accident, I'm just saying their grand plan has, now that we've all seen it, obvious flaws that they have either failed to notice or severely underestimated be it from arrogance, hubris or just forgetting that people are people.

[asmi]

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

The problem I see is that the Board of Directors are not exactly "employees" from each other, but elected officials of the shareholders that , at least in theory, are the bosses. Ergo, they answer to the shareholders, not to themselves. Again, in theory.

Before this plan ever reached the Board, it went through executive office tops who actually prepared it, you know drawing all those PowerPoint presentations with arrows going up into the stratosphere, and all of that. So if this proposal reached the Board, you can be sure that it was approved by all vices, SVPs and other folks from executive office.

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

As far as I know (and it's not that much, I admit), the BoD are directly responsible for this huge borkage and are in risk of being sued by the shareholders, to the extend of their personal assets.

No, this is not how it works, none of directors are responsible with their personal assets, they are in the same boat as any other employees - unless a criminal negligence or criminal intent will be proven in a criminal count of law(which is extremely unlikely), the worst can happen to them is that they will be fired without any additional compensation.

I happen to be an onwer and a president of a federal corporation under Canadian feredal law, and even I am not financially responsible for my bad decisions unless someone manages to prove in count of law criminal negligence/intent on my part. I suspect the law in US works the same way it does here in Canada.

Edited September 18, 2023 by asmi

[PDCWolf]

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/unity-reportedly-tells-staff-details-of-runtime-fee-backtracking

TL;DR: No proprietary tech to track installs (lmao still spyware), no longer retroactive, and self-reported install numbers, plus a hard cap of the fee at a % of revenue.

Every dev that folds to these changes, I'm no longer purchasing from.

Edited September 18, 2023 by PDCWolf

[mattihase]

The cap to me seems like a tax break for rich people, people not making a million bucks a year are still getting the full force of things.

I can definitely imagine if it's no longer retroactive that could be good for ksp as long as they never upgrade unity ver...

 

 

Oh.

wait, no, the not retroactive is for past installs. That is really sneakily named to make it sound like it's not applying to older versions. nice

 

[Lisias]

22 hours ago, mattihase said:

I'm not saying they're doing anything by accident, I'm just saying their grand plan has, now that we've all seen it, obvious flaws that they have either failed to notice or severely underestimated be it from arrogance, hubris or just forgetting that people are people.

The failure on accepting this hypothesis is on me, not on you.

I'm really trying hard to accept that the Hanlon's razor can be applied to this crapstorm, but there're too many people involved, each one of them with their arses in the line and being enough just one to stop all that craziness to happen - I can't cope with this, at least yet.

The implications of things working this way is some orders of magnitude worse than my theory - you can coerce intelligent but imoral people to behave, but our society is powerless to defend itself from plain simple mass stupidity.

Being this theory the real reason Unity Technologies is going down means the multi billion USD corporations have no defences against dumbness. Who are Unity's shareholders and what they will do about? How in hell I will invest my money on such environment? What about the other USA companies, how many of them are being ran by morons?

Who in their right minds will keep investing money on Tech Companies after this? Or even in USA ones, if this is really a trend?

 

22 hours ago, asmi said:

Before this plan ever reached the Board, it went through executive office tops who actually prepared it, you know drawing all those PowerPoint presentations with arrows going up into the stratosphere, and all of that. So if this proposal reached the Board, you can be sure that it was approved by all vices, SVPs and other folks from executive office.

If a company I own hire a motoboy, and the dude slams on a parked car, I will pay for the damages. I'm responsible for any wrongdoing any employee of mine infringes to third-parties, and since I own the company, my personal assets are on the line if the company can't hold its obligations.

Apparently, the chain of responsibility works differently when your company start to worth some billion USD and goes public.

 

22 hours ago, asmi said:

No, this is not how it works, none of directors are responsible with their personal assets, they are in the same boat as any other employees - unless a criminal negligence or criminal intent will be proven in a criminal count of law(which is extremely unlikely), the worst can happen to them is that they will be fired without any additional compensation.

So the shareholders are defenceless, and it's suicidal to invest on public companies on the long run. I, definitively, will avoid them.

Investing on casinos appears to be a safer choice.

— — POST EDIT — — 

Allow me to further detail my argument.

• AppLovin do a offer to buy 51% of Unity Technologies shares for 20B USD.
  • The offer is turned down
• Unity merges with Iron Source, expending 4.4B USD
  • And in exchange would receive about 1B USD from Sequoia and Silver Lake, the two biggest shareholders
• Unity Technologies is bleeding money for years
  • -282M USD in 2019
  • -533M USD in 2020
  • -919M USD in 2021
  • the current period accumulated losses of 2.25B USD!!!
  • https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/U/unity-software/net-income-loss
• Unity Technologies, proving that not everything that falls from the skies are a meteorite,  plummeted from 55B in 2021 to about 14.4B nowadays.
  • https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/U/unity-software/net-worth
  • And nope, it wasn't the fee problem, they gone as low as 7.8B in 2022, Oct.
    • When was the merge to Iron Sourced concluded?
      • Yep.

So, the current board already had waived a 20B influx of capital, preferring to spend 3.4B instead (4.4 upfront, and a 1B influx from Sequoia and Silver Lake).

Being stupid is not a crime (unfortunately), so all this less than ideal chain of events will not lead to charges. Ok, I can understand that.

But now they decide to apply a terribly move of screwing about 40% of their still existent incoming with notoriously and evidently abhorrent decisions that unsurprisingly backslashed horribly on the company - even by everybody, everything and the kitchen's sink yelling about how this would tank the company.

The accuracy of the predictions, as well the internal measures taken later to prevent the stakeholders to further discuss the matter are, by themselves, enough evidence for a charge of reckless negligence (at best) for the whole Board and Executives. 

But, not being enough, they also decided to OPENLY BREAK THE ANTITRUST LAW by offering to wave the install-fees to anyone willing to exchange their current ad system to Unity's one!

This is not even negligence, imprudence or inexperience anymore, we are talking about Criminal Conspiracy! We are talking Sherman Act here, we are talking about jail time!

Edited September 19, 2023 by Lisias
Entertaining grammars made less entertaining.

[asmi]

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

If a company I own hire a motoboy, and the dude slams on a parked car, I will pay for the damages. I'm responsible for any wrongdoing any employee of mine infringes to third-parties, and since I own the company, my personal assets are on the line if the company can't hold its obligations.

If you own an incorporated company (LLC or Feredal Corporation), then you are not responsible with your personal assets (again with the caveat about crimial nature of your actions or inaction), and this is the same whether your company is a one-man-band or a multi-billion international enterprise. It's the company which will cover damages with it's own assets. That's the whole point of incorporation, it segregates owners' personal assets with that of an incorporated entity, and limits the personal liability. This is what allows startups to exist and try to invent new great things - as you probably know, most of startups fail, but people who organized those do not go to jail nor are they ending up on a hook for the rest of their lifes to repay investors' money. So on balance such setup is good for economy overall, as it allows enterpreneaurs to try risky things hoping to come up with something new, cool and useful, but of course any particular investor does end up losing money, infact VCs lose money all the time, but if they are smart and at least some of their investment do pay off, such payoff easily covers all losses.
In your example, company would either purchase an insurance policy that would cover damage to third parties, or (if it only needs a one-off job) it would hire a contractor who would have his own insurance policy that covers such damage (or he self-insures and in that case pays from his own pocket/that of his employer).

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

So the shareholders are defenceless, and it's suicidal to invest on public companies on the long run. I, definitively, will avoid them.

That's the way it works. To be fair, management of public companies are financially incentivized to make sure a company does good - their bonuses and stock options depend on company doing good, not to mention bad top managers risk losing their job and becoming unhireable elsewhere as their reputation tend to follow them, so no sane top manager would willfully run the company into the ground.

Edited September 19, 2023 by asmi

[Lisias]

2 hours ago, asmi said:

If you own an incorporated company (LLC or Feredal Corporation), then you are not responsible with your personal assets (again with the caveat about crimial nature of your actions or inaction), and this is the same whether your company is a one-man-band or a multi-billion international enterprise.

I understand that. On my country we have a legal dispositive called "despersonalização da pessoa jurídica", that I don't have the slightest idea how to translate it to USA's legal system, where the company is… humm… "disincorported"? … and the owners' assets are so accessible to honor the company's debits. It's more commonly used to (surprise!) recoup fiscal debits than to ordinary debits, however.

And, yeah, it can reach even the shareholders' assets.

As en example, there is (or was) a legal trick around here where a bunch of (highly specialised) workers would gather and incorporate so they can sell services paying way less taxes than they would pay if working by themselves. Being what is known here as S/A (Sociedade Anônima, the equivalent to LCC as it appears), the civil liability of the company is limited to the capital that was incorporated by that bunch of workers. The idea is/was to dilute the shares to each worker (something between 1 to 0.1% IIRC) would have enough to qualify to that smaller taxes I mentioned , with them selling their work in the name of the company and the company receiving the payment and then passing their part as dividends. Barely legal, but still legal.

Problem: one of the directors pulled a scam and left the company insolvent. The company was "desincorporated", and the personal assets of every one of the shareholders were "incorporated" on the bankruptcy estate proportionally to their shares , including the home of one of that workers - because the poor stand-up guy hadn't any other asset or money to cover the debit, so the Legal System impounded his home (I think "impounded" is the correct term).

The dude didn't lost his home because other mitigating measures on our legal system saved his sorry cheeks, but the asset become "frozen" for more than a decade, rendering him unable to sell, rent or mortgage it.

So, nope. At least around here, incorporating isn't a clean check to do what you want without risking your personal assets. You do something wrong with the company, you will be bitten - unless you know some big politician, but now we are talking about corruption and not about legalities.

 

2 hours ago, asmi said:

That's the way it works. To be fair, management of public companies are financially incentivized to make sure a company does good - their bonuses and stock options depend on company doing good, not to mention bad top managers risk losing their job and becoming unhireable elsewhere as their reputation tend to follow them, so no sane top manager would willfully run the company into the ground.

Tell that to Dennis Muilenburg. He was royally punished when he left Boeing by receiving 62M USD (in stock, incentives and pension). But, hey, he didn't received any severance.

If, in fact, the Hanlon's razor is applicable to Unity Technologies today, this system just won't work. Some of the director's are not even from USA, they can just leave the country and keep doing their business on their homeland as usual with whatever they had earned on the process.

This system only work for intelligent people with something to lose. The guy can be a sociopath, but if he's intelligent and the system guarantees punishment, things will work - most of the time, at least. The system fails when whatever the racketeer would loose will be largely compensated by whatever he will earn with the stunt.

Edited September 19, 2023 by Lisias
Rephrasing - some sentences didn't came out as I expected.

[asmi]

39 minutes ago, Lisias said:

I understand that. On my country we have a legal dispositive called "despersonalização da pessoa jurídica", that I don't have the slightest idea how to translate it to USA's legal system, where the company is… humm… "disincorported"? … and the owners' assets are so accessible to honor the company's debits. It's more commonly used to (surprise!) recoup fiscal debits than to ordinary debits, however.

That is that criminal caveat I mentioned above. Tax evasion/fraud is a criminal offence in most countries, and if director will be convicted, all of what you've said can happen. But it rarely happens in practice for a host of reasons which are offtopic here.

[Periple]

6 hours ago, Lisias said:

Once the losses are counted, someone will spill some beans and then bullets should start to fly. Hopefully, because otherwise I don't see how Capitalism will continue to work on USA.

Capitalism is working just fine, it’s just not working for us!

[Periple]

Updated terms are nowhere near as crazy. They will only apply to future versions of Unity and the fee is capped at 2.5% of revenue. So at least it won’t continue to cost you money indefinitely.

I don’t think it’s cool to double-dip with both per-seat and rev share, pick one, not both (or offer alternative plans so we can choose) and a lot of damage has been done. But at least already released games won’t be affected and current projects will most likely be able to continue normally. I think the long term future of the engine is still looking very murky though!

https://unity.com/pricing-updates

[USAGuerrilla]

58 minutes ago, Periple said:

Updated terms are nowhere near as crazy. They will only apply to future versions of Unity and the fee is capped at 2.5% of revenue. So at least it won’t continue to cost you money indefinitely.

I don’t think it’s cool to double-dip with both per-seat and rev share, pick one, not both (or offer alternative plans so we can choose) and a lot of damage has been done. But at least already released games won’t be affected and current projects will most likely be able to continue normally. I think the long term future of the engine is still looking very murky though!

https://unity.com/pricing-updates

neat way to make people accept any terms, 1st propose some huge changes which cost a lot of money to everybody and make everyone mad, then propose smaller changes but which still cost more than before.

Edited September 22, 2023 by USAGuerrilla

[Lisias]

6 hours ago, USAGuerrilla said:

neat way to make people accept any terms, 1st propose some huge changes which cost a lot of money to everybody and make everyone mad, then propose smaller changes but which still cost more than before.

For while. More is to come, they still have a huge money haemorrhage to fix - and this ineptitude fest surely didn't helped.

They did changed the ToS again telling that they will never try a retroactive stunt again? of course, not!

Quote

Fees and usage rates for certain Offerings are set forth within the Offering Identification. Unity may add or change fees, rates and charges for any of the Offerings from time to time by notifying you of such changes and/or posting such changes to the Offering Identification, which may include changes posted to the Site. Unity will provide you with prior notice of any changes affecting existing Offerings you have already started using, and your continued use of any Offering after the effective date of any such change means that you accept and agree to such changes.

https://unity.com/legal/terms-of-service

TL;DR: If they manage to pull another install-fee stunt like the last one, you will need to remove your games from the stores or you will had agreed with the terms.

"Mudar tudo para não mudar nada", as we say around here.

[USAGuerrilla]

54 minutes ago, Lisias said:

For while. More is to come, they still have a huge money haemorrhage to fix - and this ineptitude fest surely didn't helped.

They did changed the ToS again telling that they will never try a retroactive stunt again? of course, not!

TL;DR: If they manage to pull another install-fee stunt like the last one, you will need to remove your games from the stores or you will had agreed with the terms.

"Mudar tudo para não mudar nada", as we say around here.

contracts couldn't simply change terms any way they want, there are laws, and no contract can cancel a law.

[Periple]

2 hours ago, Lisias said:

For while. More is to come, they still have a huge money haemorrhage to fix - and this ineptitude fest surely didn't helped.

They did changed the ToS again telling that they will never try a retroactive stunt again? of course, not!

I don’t think a retroactive change like that would stand up to a legal challenge anyway.

Main thing is, we can now finish our ongoing projects and have a year or two to decide where to go next. Unless there are really drastic changes at Unity (like, a buyout and a total change in leadership and business model) I think it will be somewhere else.

[cocoscacao]

2 hours ago, Periple said:

don’t think a retroactive change like that would stand up to a legal challenge anyway

Which begs the question, who gave the green light for that proposal in the first place? I'm getting nagged for every minor thing I do, yet some people in the company  go free with ideas totally disconnected from reality. 

I'll never understand what happens in the upper management in most companies. 

Edited September 23, 2023 by cocoscacao
Typos

[Lisias]

7 hours ago, USAGuerrilla said:

contracts couldn't simply change terms any way they want, there are laws, and no contract can cancel a law.

Signed Contracts can't be changed, but Terms of Service can. If you have a contract with Unity, check it. It will tell you that the Terms of Service can change - as well the licensing terms.

EULAs, on the other hand, can change - and they are contracts the same - ergo, some contracts can change.

Microsoft is doing it for years. Hell, Android is doing it for years - just updated my phone that I paid in full and I had to agree with the new ToS. "Just don't update it, so" someone could propose - but them I can't install and use the productivity apps I need to carry on my work (as a freaking 2FA for github, or even my new banking).

Don't think you are safe from this - the only novelty on this crap is that, now, Software Publishers are being bitten in the SAS the same way their users were being for years.  

 

6 hours ago, Periple said:

I don’t think a retroactive change like that would stand up to a legal challenge anyway.

This will hardly reach the tribunals because a lot of big players are (ab)using this on their business (see my last paragraph).

So any attempt to pursue legal action on the matter will

1. A public gaslighting campaign, and perhaps a character assassination one.
2. That failing, some serious retaliations.
3. The dude/small company surviving the retaliations, an agreement will be signed solving the issue punctually (as well as a NDA preventing the agreement from being disclosed).
4. If and only the agreement is not accepted (but usually the money is too good to let it go) things will reach a Court of Law
   1. Where some really serious money will be spent for years.

 

6 hours ago, Periple said:

Main thing is, we can now finish our ongoing projects and have a year or two to decide where to go next. Unless there are really drastic changes at Unity (like, a buyout and a total change in leadership and business model) I think it will be somewhere else.

IMHO, you will have about 12 months of tranquility. They will try something again unless they managed to stop bleeding money.

Keep in mind: they desperately need lots of money, and they have little to no hope of getting it from expanding the customer base (I can't imagine why… ). So they will be forced to squeeze the current user base instead.

They didn't retreated - they just did a step back to earn time and do two steps forwards later. They don't have a choice, to tell you the true.

 

3 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

Which begs the question, who gave the green light for that proposal in the first place? I'm getting nagged for every minor thing I do, yet some people in the company  go free with ideas totally disconnected from reality. 

Not the CEO, I can guarantee you. He may be a scumbag, but he's a seasoned one - he knows better.

The next obvious suspects are the BoD.

 

3 hours ago, cocoscacao said:

I'll never understand what happens in the upper management in most companies. 

Talk to a Psychologist about pathological personality disorders, then attend to some PMI (or similar) classes, then tank to the Psychologist again about what did you learnt from how to… well… do Management.

Of course I'm not implying that every Manager is a sociopath - but every manager need to act like one now and then. When they enjoy what they are doing, things get hairy.

Edited September 23, 2023 by Lisias
Added clarification

[Periple]

1 hour ago, Lisias said:

They didn't retreated - they just did a step back to earn time and do two steps forwards later. They don't have a choice, to tell you the true.

They do have a choice. You don’t need 3000 people to maintain a game engine. They can downsize so their costs match their revenues. I think they will have to, because their customers clearly aren’t having it with these cash grabs.

[USAGuerrilla]

5 hours ago, Lisias said:

Signed Contracts can't be changed, but Terms of Service can. If you have a contract with Unity, check it. It will tell you that the Terms of Service can change - as well the licensing terms.

EULAs, on the other hand, can change - and they are contracts the same - ergo, some contracts can change.

Microsoft is doing it for years. Hell, Android is doing it for years - just updated my phone that I paid in full and I had to agree with the new ToS. "Just don't update it, so" someone could propose - but them I can't install and use the productivity apps I need to carry on my work (as a freaking 2FA for github, or even my new banking).

Don't think you are safe from this - the only novelty on this crap is that, now, Software Publishers are being bitten in the SAS the same way their users were being for years.  

again, they couldn't change terms of agreement to make you a slave or harvest your organs, or to make you pay 1/2 of all the money you have. That's illegal. so what contracts can do is limited by the law (singed or not).

Edited September 23, 2023 by USAGuerrilla

[Lisias]

7 hours ago, Periple said:

They do have a choice. You don’t need 3000 people to maintain a game engine. They can downsize so their costs match their revenues. I think they will have to, because their customers clearly aren’t having it with these cash grabs.

And that 3000 people will gladly starve to death after being fired, no doubt.  

They will look for a job, bringing with them all the knowledge and know-how they gathered while working on Unity - what means that Unity will be feeding the competition, and then eventually making even harsher to expand their current customer base, what means they will be more prone to squeeze the current user base instead - i.e., you.

There's also the political problem: Managers have their "power" influenced by the head count under their direct influence. No director will fire man power under their helm unless being forced by other Managers, that usually avoid such fights to prevent rivals gathering together against their workforce later. I consider a miracle Unity had laid off 1.100 workers already (200 in 2020, 300 in Jab, 600 in May)

But consider that even by firing 1.100 workers in the last 10 months, they are still on the red by 2.9B until now only for this year (and growing). This is approaching 25% of the total gross value of the company at this moment (~12B).

https://companiesmarketcap.com/unity-software/total-debt/

Even by magically stopping the haemorrhage, they need to pay that debt somehow - and since firing workforce will not only make harder to Unity to expand but also will feed the competition (making harder to expand in a self feeding loop), again they will not have another option other than to milky the current user base for more money as soon as they can.

 

4 hours ago, USAGuerrilla said:

again, they couldn't change terms of agreement to make you a slave or harvest your organs, or to make you pay 1/2 of all the money you have. That's illegal. so what contracts can do is limited by the law (singed or not).

EULAs are contracts.

Unfortunately, you need a reality check - being illegal or not, it's exactly what the Software Industry is doing on their customers for years, decades, unchecked. The only novelty here is the stunt being applied to fellow members of the Industry, instead of only to their users.

Laws are only useful when enforced.

Edited September 23, 2023 by Lisias
Entertaining grammars made less entertaining…

[USAGuerrilla]

11 hours ago, Lisias said:

EULAs are contracts.

Unfortunately, you need a reality check - being illegal or not, it's exactly what the Software Industry is doing on their customers for years, decades, unchecked. The only novelty here is the stunt being applied to fellow members of the Industry, instead of only to their users.

Laws are only useful when enforced.

there are such things as courts...

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, USAGuerrilla said:

there are such things as courts...

Check your contracts again - it's almost sure you had agreed on something like this:

Quote

THIS AGREEMENT CONTAINS A BINDING INDIVIDUAL ARBITRATION AND CLASS ACTION WAIVER PROVISION IN THE ‘BINDING INDIVIDUAL ARBITRATION’ SECTION THAT AFFECTS YOUR RIGHTS UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WITH RESPECT TO ANY ‘DISPUTE’ (AS DEFINED BELOW) BETWEEN YOU AND THE COMPANY, AND REQUIRES YOU AND THE COMPANY TO RESOLVE DISPUTES IN BINDING, INDIVIDUAL ARBITRATION, AND NOT IN COURT. 

I will left to an exercise to the reader to pinpoint the source of this quote.

Good luck, you are going to need it.

 

[Periple]

Thing about contracts is, they’re not always enforceable. That includes arbitration clauses.

This is why lawyers’ services continue to be in demand.

[Lisias]

1 hour ago, Periple said:

Thing about contracts is, they’re not always enforceable. That includes arbitration clauses.

Yep. But it's not cheap - not remotely cheap. It will cost you dearly, and they know it. It's the reason they do it at first place, even by knowing that they can be challenged.

You see, they are big enough to have a squad of layers on their payroll. They can left them seating on their hands all they, or they can send them for you - the cost will be essentially the same for them. And for you?

On a quick search, I found a document  saying that it can cost between 300 and 1200 USD per HOUR just for the arbitration itself. You will pay fees and, obviously, for the lawyer too - and I'm talking small cases, definitively not the case here.

 

1 hour ago, Periple said:

This is why lawyers’ services continue to be in demand.

Good if you are a lawyer. Are you a lawyer?

[Periple]

55 minutes ago, Lisias said:

Good if you are a lawyer. Are you a lawyer?

No but my studio employs some!