I left Unity. (Layoffs)

[@sykoo]

Thank you for watching! I do hope that this, in addition to giving an update of my own life and what I'll be doing moving forward, can be of use to someone out there. Let me recap a few things here in the comments too. Of course, the 'content creator burnout' is also very real -- having to constantly plan, create, publish, and repeat, is extremely exhausting. So taking breaks every now and then, giving each content more time to polish it, and actually post things that are fun to create and make me proud is the way to go. - I will be posting videos on Sykoo again, but it'll not be scheduled videos. I will try to post every 2-3 weeks, but I cannot guarantee that. There will be periods where I post more often, and periods where I post less. - The channel's content will mainly focus on rendering, graphics, and environments. I've wanted to make this change for a long time, so now it's finally happening. - I am working now at a AAA game studio, so it's of course taking a lot of time. But I'm super happy right now with where I am, and I'd love to continue making videos here. I just don't want to be stuck in a constant stressful situation here on KZbin, I want to create content that'll produce value. I hope you understand my decision around this. I love making content, I love producing videos for this audience, and I want to continue it. But it's not sustainable unless I am happy.

[@StigDesign]

nice to see you again :D and keep the passion :D Smak and big breaks is must for keeping the love and passion :D

[@PicckkUP]

I would love more blogs videos!! Cheers from Argentina :)

[@ByteSizedSociety]

What's helpful to me, coincidentally also ex Unity, currently taking a late-career break, is how you figured out a goal. The fact the goal aligns to what you want, and also that you know what "turns you off" (creating content for content's sake) resonates for me. It is inspiring to me, thank you for sharing yourself. Seeing your face @18:23 shows the joy you found in that goal, at the time of this video at the least!

[@sykoo]

Random question; would you like me to post some videos in this format? Like literally just sitting in front of the camera, chatting about experiences, sharing what work-related things I've gone through? Do you think it could be helpful?

[@vanragames]

Yea man, something more on what you've learned there which would be beneficial for other gamedevs. Thanks for everything you've done!!

[@bruhhhh772]

Yes Ofc, like thomas brush , u gois are like legends on yt for unity

[@jonathanmavunda6200]

Yes. I would love that

[@sarkariadmi4058]

You can shift to unreal engine

[@jam54]

Yes that would be great! Always interesting to have an insight in your ideas and thoughts on things

[@stefanbartolo]

what a legend and a gentleman. How you approached the layoff topic is honest an mature (kudos to that). The comfort zone is the most uncomfortable zone for people who are creatives and it starts to feel like being trapped in a cage. I really dig what you're saying! Do what you love and love what you do. Goodluck dude.

[@sykoo]

The kind words are much appreciated Stefan, thank you!

[@benmcilmoyle]

It was an honor working with you Sam! I'm glad you were able to take some time a reflect on what's next. Seems like we both picked the route of game development, maybe we'll finally meet up at GDC at some point still. Best of luck with the career and channel.

[@sykoo]

The feelings are mutual, Ben. Learned a lot from working with you, appreciate the patience and feedback as I was adjusting to a new role. Super happy to see how you just continue rocking on -- will definitely look forward to seeing you sometime soon. =)

[@simoxeh]

You have inspired and helped so many people that you don't even know. People are accomplishing they're dreams and it was you that helped and you may never be told. No matter what happens you will succeed at it and continue to impairs in a positive way.

[@damislav]

Unity made a big mistake.. Unity could make smaller games to show off tech much better than anyone else,cause of their inside knowledge. And buying few very expensive companies could show off as being a big waste.

[@morpheus7422]

Not smaller game, they should create a mega massive online game and maintain it. It would go a long way in improving a whole lot on the engine.

[@MRxRadex]

They wouldn’t succeed in it because of the enormous compile time on a simple script change 😂

[@ChristopherCricketWallace]

no. they need a few legit products in professional production for a few years. That will help them iron out wrinkles and fill in the gaps in their pipelines and systems. Ads, debugging, dependency management, analytics, cloud integration, performance profiling, art asset management, level design tools, scene/level management, etc. And don't get me started on 3 working render pipelines---seriously, sort that out, WTF!

[@AbstractType1]

Unity now answers to their shareholders - it doesn't matter what would be sensible and cool in terms of growth - it all comes down to $$$. Layoffs were about cost saving as they had to shrink operating costs.

[@dnavanith]

U helped us with your tutorial so much... Thank you so so much

[@serpnta1267]

I love the idea of you doing breakdowns. Very helpful for people to understand the process of making a great looking scene. I've been where you are when I was young. One thing I learned from it is to do what you love.

[@jonathanmavunda6200]

Thank you for all the help you gave me, i started unity with your tutorials and i still go to your tutorials for every new engine coming out. I will miss you Sykoo

[@sykoo]

Thank you Jonathan, I appreciate hearing that! Though I am not going anywhere, so more will follow. =)

[@nathanthomas3844]

Will always love your channel Sam! you're awesome and will do amazing things. Cant wait to see whats next for you!

[@HamdanBasri]

It's been awhile since I checked back on your videos and only found this out, glad you are happy with where you are now. Still can't believe we met while you were on your holiday in Malaysia. You've been a lot of help since I started my journey. I will continue in supporting yours.

[@gamesplusjames]

Glad to see a new video, and great to hear you're working at IO now! They've always seemed like a great place to work from everything I've ever heard and I love their games! Looking forward to seeing more Sykoo soon, I've always enjoyed the videos you've done over the last few years 👍

[@SamuelAsherRivello]

Best wishes! Great work and continued success!

[@selimgonen]

I like the "cutting out the position that you're fulfilling at the company" insight; really puts things in perspective. Also, from outside, it seems hard to rationalize at that time you need the most, due the heightened state of confusion. The way you took things, eventually is very pragmatic and mature. If you are into a different kind of tutorial, you could maybe share your layoff experience in detail for others to benefit (below I listed some ideas that popped into my mind. Although I haven't been in your shoes, still I learned things from your video. Regarding the future of the channel, I like it, please push Unity to its render quality potential! Ideas: - Your thought process - How you handled your biases - How to find something that you really like to do - How you broke the news to your social environment? The responses you get and how you handled them - How you stayed productive

[@viktorfreyrhjorleifsson8013]

I was laid off yesterday from the company that I had worked at for the past 10 months (first job I had within the industry). At first I was confused, not knowing what happened and questioned myself If I was the problem. The company was nice to me and even offered to give me a letter of recommendation as well assist me migrating to another company, I am very thankful for that. But I still was confused whether I was fired or not, watching your video really helped me understand further what the term layoff means... thank you so much.

[@sykoo]

I'm sorry to hear that Viktor, I'm glad the video was helpful. In addition to what was said in the video I'd add to say; your feelings are valid, give yourself some time to process through them. It's a tough spot to be in, especially when it's so recent. It's easy to get caught in the heat of the moment. Allow yourself to take some time off to cool down and acknowledge the situation. You'll figure stuff out as you go, it'll be ok. =)

[@navinkumar7370]

Stay strong King 👑

[@PorkinsRevenge]

Hey @Sykoo. Glad you found a new role so quickly, and had the opportunity to decompress post the layoff. I think the experiences and advice you shared were good advice. And it was a good thing that you took a step back to think. I've taken that step back, and have been pursuing game development instead of my day job (banking analytics) for the past year and a couple months. I've been doing it like 15-20 hours / week on the side. You've definitely contributed to the increase in my skill / knowledge that I'm beginning to be able to see myself even. I'm looking forward to seeing more videos from you. Your level designs are superb, and I'd love to learn that from you. Specifically from you. You asked for ideas re: how to present those ideas / videos below is mine. I really like the ongoing project breakdowns that people do. So like building a bigger world, that has multiple points of interest that are connected would be a real interesting series. You could even take the mechanics that you wrote in the survival tutorial, and apply them to the map to create a loose / casual experience, which could even potentially be shared so people can play / touch / experience / breakdown on their own pcs after / while watching your videos. Hands on learning experience. Anyway that's my idea. Bonus pretzel if you actually find it useful... and if not I'll still be watching / learning. Thanks for the videos. Was so glad to see your video pop up in my subscription queue today! ~Keith

[@WuCSquad]

Good to hear that you might have you mojo back. Excited to see the scene breakdown videos, sounds cool.

[@foreducation408]

you are awesome dude, do what you like, we will gonna keep on watching because we love these videos.

[@DarkDax]

Glad to have you back mate! The layoffs suck but I’m glad you landed on your feet as well as you did. Excited for your plans for the channel, we’ll definitely watch anything you decide to upload. Even more so if it’s content your passionate about.

[@unrealenvironments-speedle782]

Welcome back!

[@EdwinCreatives]

I've always wondered where you've been! Every once in a while, I have been checking out your channel to see if you've posted something new. I'm glad that you're finally back! Really missed the good old days where I joined the game jam organized by you, Brackeys and Mix and Jam. Oh btw, I hope you enjoyed your vacation at Malaysia! As a Malaysian myself, I didn't really have much time to travel within the country :c It's really good to have you back on my KZbin homepage ngl❤

[@sykoo]

Much appreciated Edwin, keep up the great content! I'm happy to have you here, thank you.

[@natia2216]

This was very insightful, Thank You!

[@687r45dfg]

Good luck for the future. Other than that, I and maybe (we) would love to see the breakdowns of level design.

[@emmanuelgonzalezcaseira9141]

Hey, welcome back :) good to see that you are taking your layoff really well. Hmm... things I would love to see? I would like to see the entire process of doing a render from start to finish, but focused on what to do to make Unity do said renders. Particularly for me it has always been some sort of mystery box that I would love to see finally open and cleanly explained, since I have an interest in doing renders with Unity too, URP and HDRP, but I don't even know where to start... It is kinda dauting thinking where to start x_x. So a clean introduction from start to finish with guidance on what to do, where to push, what to write, were to import/export (dunno if this is done, lol) would be very appreciated. It could be a series of videos too, where one video touches on one step, then the next video the next step. This way I believe is less stressful and more manageable to make said videos. Hope you consider this idea and throw it together with all the other ideas you have.

[@Fuuntag]

Good to see your integrity about your content. 😊

[@Private_Duck]

Hey man. Glad youre back. I like your new video ideas. Im looking forward to the future of this channel

[@burstww2107]

Hey Sykoo I have met you in real life and you are an awesome person to be around, It was a week at Unity where we were seeing how games was made and animations and much more. You were one of the people who inspire me to try to becoming a person who works with games, and I¨m much grateful for that. And whatever you post on youtube ill always check up on and whatever you do in the furture I hope Its gonna be great or more that I KNOW its gonna be great because of your talent and mindset and personality. - Lucas :)

[@TheMessyCoder]

Wishing you all the best on your new adventures buddy! Cannot believe its been 8yrs of Sykoo!!! WOW You have accomplished so much mate, so very proud of you! See you soon,

[@sykoo]

Thanks a lot man, appreciate everything! ❤️🎉

[@mariogame_dev8004]

Sry to hear that mate. I wish you luck in future adventures. All the best!

[@PutineluAlin]

You dodged a tactical nuke, the damage they did was irreversible.

[@JDAeroVR]

Good to hear from you! If you have been working long enough, this happens. We all like to get paid really well and work on cool stuff. Have to ask what your passions are. Sometimes we have to make sacrifices between pay and passions. I have focused on being a CRM developer... because it pays the bills. Would like to work on my Pearl Harbor work more... but until it reaches a state where I can make money with it... I will be burning the candle to do both. Appreciated all your talents you brought to us over the years. I moved off of Unity to Unreal because of the landscape size... Oahu is 32KM across at the southern end of the island. Best wishes for your next goals!

[@jeffreyjumisko5165]

I think your future plans for Sykoo sound quite interesting. I'll be interested to check out your next videos. I would suggest that with Unity being a constantly morphing game engine, you might consider updating some of your excellent tutorial videos as processes change, or as code can be simplified or optimized. Thank you for your enormous contribution to the education of many self-taught Unity developers like me. I came to this in middle age (55), and people like you, Brackeys, and Imphenzia have been instrumental in opening up a world that at one time seemed too daunting to penetrate.

[@sykoo]

I really appreciate the kind words, thank you! And yes definitely, I think there's immense value in updating old content. Especially with the new focus area for the channel, I'd love to update the tutorials focusing on various visual and rendering features such as lighting, post processing, and terrains.

[@StigDesign]

@@sykoo Sounds Awesome :D

[@JayadevHaddadi]

Wish you all the best! Thanks for that nice round off of your experience !:) Lots of love ❤☺👍

[@JenMaxon]

I'll be interested in your graphical breakdowns - because I feel that's one of my weakest areas. So I'm looking forward to what you will be doing. Good luck with your new job.

[@wasswahuzaifa]

Thank you bro your the reason why we use unity man

[@The-devllopperBlogspot]

We miss you dude, best of luck

[@Ibrahim-tg4fy]

Unity'nin çıkarmasına üzüldüm. Videolarını severek takip ediyordum. You are the best. 💪🏻 👑

[@mohit_yt_user]

Please Come back🥺🥺🥺🥺

[@gilleswalther5964]

Good luck for the next part of your career. Thanks for sharing this experience.

[@Seancstudiogames]

I just survived a round of layoffs. (Employer has 7K employees.) 111M debt load. They are offering severance (1week pay\ yr of service) they will be reevaluating in April. Unfortunately the only employment in my area for my skillset are low paid remote employers. I’m pretty scared. I’ve been in this role for 12 yrs, in the industry since 2001.

[@twosoulfox]

I think you made a lot of amazing content. Thanks for sharing. It is nice that you found the direction you want to take. I wish you the best and good luck while pursuing happiness.

[@robertalexander2478]

Thankyou for your videos! Very inspiring! I was wondering, is there any course I may take to learn about unity? Maybe this is your time to put something out to teach us newbies! If you were to put out a comprehensive course package, I’d definitely purchase it!!! The problem I’m having is besides what I see online, no one knows this stuff, no mentors

[@JohnnyBlackWinter]

Welcome back Sam, sorry to hear of the layoffs but kudos on taking it in your stride. Onwards and upwards 😎. Looking forward to the new content

[@seekeroftheball]

Would you mind sharing the projects you make on github?

[@jihadrouani5525]

Gigaya was a bloody impressive game/demo, I was eagerly waiting for it, to see the custom physics engine, the character controller with that cool dynamic hands and foot IK, the art style, it was really cool but now we won't get it :/ It makes me feel better that not even Unity can finish a game because of whatever reason, so this curse of having a stockpile of unfinished / unreleased games is not put upon indie devs alone lol Enough jokes, so about the layoffs, these companies making hundreds of billions of dollars per year seem to have missed their projections by something like +/- $10B, and they blame it on the economy and start laying off thousands of workers, I don't find that a valid excuse at all, missing your projections by 10% you're still making hundreds of billions per year, and the salary of 10000 worker is merely around $0.5B/year. This is just something I cannot understand. Maybe they are that greedy I have no idea. Unity isn't Google, they are valued at $13.4B, not $2T+, so maybe they feel the hit more than other more valuable companies, I don't know, what I know is their service is trash, a simple asset refund took them 6 weeks arguing left and right about why they can't accept the refund, only to accept it at the end simply because they realized their system is broken or mismanagement of the system. Their support is trash, they cannot reproduce half the bugs raised, and when they do they say this bug need a major reconstruction of the engine not a simple patch, in other words you probably have to wait half a decade until the so called "major reconstruction of the engine" happens and beg to God they don't forget about the bug by then. They are so far behind their competitors, mainly Unreal Engine in terms of Pro features like realtime indirect lighting that is actually realtime not Unity's lazy implementation that require to be baked even though they are calling it "realtime", auto LOD is attracting artists to UE5, PBR and so much more features that basically don't exit in Unity or they are poorly made. Being a Unity dev is though is all I'm saying but we invested so much that we can't afford to switch to UE lol About your channel, I'd say welcome back, your videos were certainly interesting, I hope we can see more, I'd want to see some videos about the visuals of Gigaya if Unity allows you to do that, it's a fantastic looking game. Maybe a breakdown of pre existing games and what their devs did, Code Monkey is doing something like that but he's more into the coding style, you seem to be all about the visuals so maybe you can break down the shaders, VFX, rendering features etc...

[@TedThomasTT]

Gigaya looked amazing, the team was so talented. Good luck with the future.

[@newsystem3667]

I'm blessed to be in a position where I never have to work for someone else so I don't have to think about some of the things you mentioned but I really appreciate the honesty

[@themedz]

Welcome back :)

[@PizzaOMC]

Don't worry man, speaking as a Producer there's always places for us, there always needs to be someone that guides a team so to anyone keep your head up, you'll find your place

[@patrickdavis9209]

The work that the fortnite team does for Unreal Engine is incredible. The value of having internal teams making games with the engine is incredible. I think it's a big mistake by Unity to get rid of teams like yours.

[@luqman_azeem]

I would love to watch a video in which you talk about parts of game development at IO that were different from what you expected due to working in Unity.

[@sykoo]

100% would be awesome, I will look into it! I already see things that are waaay different. :D

[@eric_mwenda]

Welcome Back!

[@sharif47]

Did I hear it right? You're working for IO Interactive, the creators of Hitman franchise?

[@headshot4256]

Now it feels like that Is Unity Even Focusing To Improve it ?

[@funlightfactory6031]

"Stock is at an all time high of $200 a share. Let's take the company into a new direction!" :::stock currently trading at $30::: Well, I guess that's a direction.

[@CodemasterJamal]

If Unity happens to shut down their company would we still be able to use the game engine?

[@ChristopherCricketWallace]

He's BACK!!!!!!

[@4away]

I remember when you joined... Was so amazing

[@sykoo]

I appreciate everything you have done Allan, really loved working together. I hope we get to work again in the future!

[@dyyno5578]

thanks for your work man wish you the 👌

[@GeorgesEmmanuelArnaud]

Are still recommending unity for 2D scroll game?

[@categorykim]

I felt sad when I realized I couldn't work with you anymore. But, I will visit your channel to be inspired like in older times. All the Best luck!

[@sykoo]

Thanks a lot man, much love for the kind words! I do hope we get to work together again. ❤️🌟

[@cgimadesimple]

nice thoughts, everyone has a period like this few times in life :)

[@mushishi3994]

Will you make a Unreal Engine 4 or 5 videos ?

[@sykoo]

Yes absolutely!

[@minorinxx]

Thanks for sharing.

[@biki_02]

you returned finally.❤

[@DavesChaoticBrain]

Man, I could have given you some ideas for videos to make. Every struggle I encountered with Unity was something no one else ever seemed to encounter because I could never get help to solve my problems. And most of it was level design issues/graphics problem. I eventually gave up and moved to Unreal which has been much better, though I still encounter issues no one can seem to answer.

[@sykoo]

Interesting, can you share some examples for both? It would be great.

[@DavesChaoticBrain]

@@sykoo A basic one, I still struggle with, is simply getting a completed model, with ALL of its textures, out of Blender and into Unity or Unreal. Properly. I still have issues where one model will import perfectly fine, but another will have all the textures messed up even though I did things exactly the same (as far as I could tell). Obviously SOMETHING was different but all I could do is fix it up as best I could in in Unity or Unreal. Just seems that with how many are doing this process, there would be a much more reliable method available. And not just some plug-in some guy made that hasn't been updated in 2 years. The issue that made me leave Unity though, was lighting. I wanted to have emissive objects actually light the scene without faking things with light sources placed in convincing places. The objects I was making were long sticks of light that needed to emit light in all directions and at the time, I just couldn't fake it properly in Unity. But Unreal 5's Lumen could. And so much more. Right out of the box. Not to mention Nanite. The last one I was struggling with that I think Unreal has a solution for in 5.1, was multiple layers of transparent materials always seemed to freak out. So, a glass bottle of water behind a glass door of a convenience store cooler. The water would end up looking weird, or the bottle would vanish while behind the glass. I knew it was some sort of order thing but I struggled to sort it out and I never got any replies to asking how to fix it. I've still encountered that issue in Unreal but to a lesser, less obvious or annoying degree. And like i say, I think Unreal 5.1 has had a change that should let me fix that up pretty easily. Once I get to it. There are a couple of seriously annoying aspects to Unreal though. The worst one is, any time I save my project, or make a change of some kind to an asset and save it, my entire Undo History gets wiped out. It's the only software I've ever in used in the last 30 years that does this (that I'm aware of). I've tested it in Unity and Unity doesn't do it. And yet, I've only ever encountered 2 other people who are annoyed by it. No one else seems to care in the slightest. Also, Unreal is THE engine that probably did the most to train gamers over the last twenty years that when you're playing a game, if you hold down the Shift key you will move faster. After honestly 20+ years of having this mechanic become second nature, imagine the frustration of working in the engine and moving the camera around your scene and you want the camera to move faster so you hold down the shift key....and just completely come to a dead stop. This is by design and NO ONE can tell me why. There is also no way to change this behavior. The only solution given is that while holding the right mouse button to move around, you can roll the scroll wheel to increase speed or decrease speed. It's been well over a year since I last touched Unity but I don't recall this being a frustration there. Anyway, I haven't touched my project in nearly 6 months and have only been back at it for about a week. Still just building my levels and haven't really encountered anything anything too bad yet. I'm really liking Unreal. It feels much more mature than Unity ever did, and I got that feeling when I had only moved over to version 4.26. 5.0 and up feels downright futuristic! For me, it's far better than Unity. I'm sure Unity has made some good progress the last year and half since I left, but for the 2.5 years I was using it, to me, it never really felt like they were trying to really update or innovate their engine. They just kept buying other people's stuff and integrating as their own (what was that visual scripting language they bought to replace the one they had attempted to put in?)

[@udaysinh]

you should start making some tutorial about how you create games

[@ARandomSub]

New content idea sounds good

[@Falgren]

Any chance that you would start working/making videos in UE4/UE5 again?

[@sykoo]

Yes that is part of my plan right now! I want to make renders and education in UE too. :)

[@MK-09]

Choose any option but think about it

[@landixus]

I ask my Son every time: Make it fun? If not then stop it!

[@spencer416]

Congrats

[@Any1SL]

Your an artist that can create your vision through unity. If you created a udemy course on how to build one of your speed level scenes step by step tons of people would buy it including me.

[@jonathanmavunda6200]

If you are turning 25, how old were you when you started unity

[@sykoo]

I started working at Unity when I was late 20. =) But I started using the engine itself when I was like 12.

[@Vikwak]

Okay abi häftigt hur långt du kommit! #hermods #teinf13

[@harharrr9810]

Aw just watching ur vids

[@goutam709]

Best wishes for all your work in io. you have luck that you got these opportunities I live in India and there are no opportunities for game Dev here. I really wanted to pursue it but I have the worst luck that I am born here

[@vast634]

Ok not strictly a layoff, but a restructure (that can always happen to a large business competing in the market), and you chose to not stay there in another role.

[@ap10235]

♥️♥️thk man im from India learn my first unity tutorial from here...

[@MrCrompz]

Wait what

[@morpheus7422]

wow, it's weird what's going with the layoffs. Hmm.

[@igorthelight]

Google about that - it's part of the FED stabilizing the economy.

[@Henry3dev]

looking for dani's comment

[@M7MMAD_1]

welome ❤❤❤

[@gokdenizkarakus1127]

Üstat video atmanı bekliyorduk ama böyle değil. :(

[@bruhhhh772]

BRO , Missed u a lot 🥲, Feeling soo happy that u came back 🥰🥰

[@alexalexpark12]

Unity just lost its greatest defender

[@SMORIGINALS]

Head to a new position its great for you and your personal life,anyway Congratulations 🎊 for your new beginning 👏.....

[@adambenk0]

Soooo... Switching to Unreal ? :DD jk

[@NeoShameMan]

Now do godot

[@Cyb11893]

Start doing unreal lessons. Unity will soon destroy itself

[@LostSol25]

Unity doesn’t have a future?

[@igorthelight]

@@LostSol25 Some people really don't like Unity's latest decisions ;-)

[@LostSol25]

@@igorthelight let’s be honest, unity is literally the most popular game engine. It will go for 100 years

[@igorthelight]

@@LostSol25 That's true! Godot is raising in popularity but Unity's Asset Store is a must have for most people ;-)

[@TENKIDGAMESLLC]

Your videos were better b4 you joined unity.

[@rahimouda2349]

Dude who tf are you I don't even remember when did I sub

[@HugodaSilvaRibas]

Biden effect

[@joecooper8527]

Government in general.

[@WyseOwls]

Sykoo can I reach out on LinkedIn or X?

[@MrCamdere]

Kanka gel kebapci acalim 😙

[@sykoo]

iskender varsa gelirim :))