Unity executives sold thousands of shares in the weeks leading up to last night’s hugely controversial announcement it will soon charge developers when one of their games is downloaded.

The company has subsequently softened its stance slightly on a couple of aspects - but fury across the industry remains.

Behind the scenes, CEO John Riccitiello shifted 2000 shares last week on 6th September, as noted by Yahoo Finance, which noted this move was part of a trend over the past year where the exec has sold more than 50,000 shares in total and bought none.

    • ShadowCat
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      60
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      2 years ago

      My friend told me about this earlier and that’s exactly what I thought. They knew this wouldn’t be popular and would drop the value so they sold before the announcement, that’s got to be insider trading

      • AuxBanned
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        62
        arrow-down
        3
        ·
        2 years ago

        Now the share price will drop and he will buy his share back at a discount. Then they will revert the policy and share prices will rise. Boom! Free monies!

        • Daisyifyoudo
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          24
          ·
          2 years ago

          And when it’s all said and done, we just have to wait, on our knees, for the trickle down Yay! Unfettered Capitalism working just as intended.

          • AuxBanned
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            2 years ago

            It’s too early to buy back.

    • mean_bean279
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      31
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      2 years ago

      They probably have automated sell of dates or automated sell of prices.

      This is part of a consistent pattern over the last year.

      He probably hasn’t bought any stocks due to receiving stock as part of his employment contract.

      It could be insider trading, but considering how companies have been doing pricing structures and rapid shifts from free to subscription based and then seeing sales/profit increase I imagine it’s worth it for them to simply keep the stock long term, but an initial sell off was put in place at a certain price. Sometimes there’s smoke and there’s fire, and sometimes it’s just simply the fumes of capitalism creating a system that’s uniquely imbalanced for everyone else, but isn’t really insider trading.

    • TimLovesTech@badatbeing.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      2 years ago

      I think the part where they had a trend of selling over the course of a year makes this not insider trading (or harder to prove if they were playing the long game).