I think the interviewer has mixed up knights of the old republic (KOTOR - the single player RPG) and Star Wars the old republic (SWTOR - the mmorpg in the same setting). SWTOR was “saved” in the sense that it went from a giant failure to a break even MMO. Which is not to diminish the work the interviewee and others put in to get there, but I’m not sure I’d call SWTOR “one of the great successes in gaming” (that would be KOTOR)
There's no doubt that Unity has put its users through the ringer over the last few years or so.
That said I still for the most part enjoy working with it. I think Unity had the right idea in regards to a lot of the toolset but unfortunately it's suffered in regards to stability.
With Unity 6+ though it really feels like we're starting to see the fruits of Unity labor. UI Toolkit, input system, rendering pipeline the package manger and more are finally starting to feel stable.
Additionally the engine itself feels far more rock solid then it had in years.
A rather large piece for me also really just enjoys programming in C#.
I'm actually super pumped that we have a great open source game engine to keep Unity on the straight and narrow. I'm also pumped that we have an amazing tool like Unreal for things more AAA in nature (although that's certainly not all). I personally think Unity is perfectly sandwiched in the middle of those options.
With the right ideas and execution I think it's going to be really exciting to see where it ends up.
Also: Zynga (and its clones, like Vostu) used to be the cancer of gaming, rightly reviled by people like Jonathan Blow and Ian Bogost. From a predatory business angle maybe it was interesting to discuss, much like one would discuss the life of Jordan Belfort. Is Zynga still alive? That's one company that didn't deserve resuscitation.