Oh no, it’s the consequences of your own actions!
The slow deathroll of Unity Software is well underway following their cancerous antics regarding retroactive enforcement of a download based payment model for developers leveraging their game engine.
Which we’ve covered about a thousand times, as Unity doubled down on its predatory runtime scheme, proclaimed that the Children’s Hospital wasn’t a valid charity and therefore would not be exempt by the runtime free before eventually backing down with a revision that would only apply to developers who opted to utilize Unity LTS 2024 and onwards, meaning existing mobile games built on Unity were no longer destined to pay Unity Software around $50,000 per month just for the privilege.
This ultimately culminated in the death of the Unity engine, given the massive shitshow that unfolded it’s guaranteed that any new game plans will not be handled with the Unity engine and instead will be developed on alternatives such as the Unreal Engine instead.
Naturally, John Riccitiello, the dickhead that ruined Electronic Arts had been ousted from the company, though I am sure he got a nice fat severance package for destroying the reputation of Unity.
Now however changes are in order, with Unity now sacking 265 workers, around 3.8% of its total workforce as it winds down a partnership with Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital of which it had acquired two years ago for the tune of $1.63 billion dollars.
Interim CEO, Jim Whitehurst proclaimed that we should expect more radical changes to Unity as they aim to “refocus” their business and “rebuild” as every single ounce of trust in the company from developers has been irreparably damaged.
During its acquisition of Weta Digital in 2021, Unity Software had taken in 275 company engineers during the process, with essentially every single one of those individuals now being let go as Unity has terminated its obligations to provide services to Weta FX and ” also amended certain intellectual property rights between the parties” as per a recent SEC filing.
However, in a brief shareholder letter released earlier this month, interim CEO Jim Whitehurst outlined intentions “to enhance our concentration on our core strengths: the Unity Editor and Runtime, and Monetization Solutions,” areas where the company perceives the greatest potential for growth.
Whitehurst indicated in the letter that this strategic shift “may involve discontinuing specific product offerings, downsizing our workforce, and minimizing our office space” because of course we’ve discussed Unity’s failing finances as the company funneled tens of millions of dollars to its executives annually as the company continued losing money each year reporting net losses of $859 million for the 12 months ending in September 2023.
Additionally, the recent filing reveals Unity’s plans to shutter offices in 14 global locations, such as their Berlin and Singapore outfits.
The company’s stock price is currently down over 40 percent from its late 2020 IPO, and off nearly 85 percent from its peak in late 2021 and in all honesty they can sack as much dead weight as they’d like, despite backpedaling on the retroactive nature of their runtime fee the company remains a heinous one given their merger with IronSource, a malicious Israeli adware company who developed actual malware installers.
Unity’s trust with customers is done and dusted, there’s virtually zero recovery at this stage, any prolific indie outfit or larger studio should be shifting towards the Unreal Engine for future projects with those games currently stuck in development on Unity likely being the last of their kind.
Unity at this point is merely a cheaper and simplistic alternative to Epic’s Unreal Engine, instead of Godot it’s probable that the only sorts of games flushed out on the engine will be extremely basic asset flips such as Fairy Carrots.
