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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   28472 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 11, 2023

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Unity Technologies is losing a billion dollars a year

I guess I'm not surprised about the changes, then, but I had assumed they were profitable given their established market share and how I had assumed their costs were fairly low. Good developers are expensive, but I didn't think Unity themselves had many costs beyond engine development and some seemingly-trivial web hosting (downloads, documentation, forums).

I know they have some adtech business on the side, but I'm rather curious where billions of dollars of annual costs are going: the statement only shows a billion each for development and administration/sales.

As a comparison, Valve is privately held, also publishes a game engine (admittedly, not the most popular one these days), and despite seemingly undirected management seems generally described as profitable. Although they also run a storefront that pays the bills. I guess Epic (the other major engine-publisher) does too.

Another thing about Valve, since you mentioned them: If I recall correctly, as per Tyler McVicker, Valve actually works (or worked?) in the same building/next door to Unity. Valve has even used Unity for their VR tech demos, and McVicker even once speculated that Valve could have switched to using Unity since it was much more developed compared to their own Source 2 Engine, which even today still lacks an SDK as fleshed-out as the first Source Engine's (and, sidenote, it would benefit Valve to strike while the iron is hot by finally going foward with their old plans to put out Source 2 for free and make it a UGC paradise).

I guess I'm not surprised about the changes, then, but I had assumed they were profitable given their established market share and how I had assumed their costs were fairly low.

I also assumed they operated as a small company funded by license and asset store fees, but I guess they wanted to be more than that and tapped into VC funding and now are looking for huge revenue streams.

It's more Unity's an adtech business with some game engine sales on the side; last I heard they had maybe 2/3 of their revenue coming from advertising. App Tracking Transparency savagely brutalized that business model, sadly, and I think Unity's frantically flailing around in search of a different one.

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