AppLovin Proposes to Buy Unity Software in Deal Valued at $20 Billion

Well, I guess an offer like this was being expected for some time. What do you guys think?

https://finance.yahoo.com/m/5a2e3f12-b11b-3fa5-822a-6fc2833f976f/applovin-proposes-to-buy.html

 

what kind of sick joke is this?

 

That caused a crash on AppLovin btw

 

The buying company always suffers nearly no matter who's involved, since the investors who believe the transaction will happen, just jump ship to the "to-be-bought company" and likely profit and after the merge, automatically have stocks of the buyers again.
Unity jumped further 5% after an already strong week.

 

The writing has been on the wall for some time in my opinion. Unity has been behaving like a company positioning itself to be acquired. It reminds me very much of the behavior of CA Technologies back in the day... Wonder if anyone is embezzling

 

"Proposes" does not mean "bought" or that anything has happened (just yet). It's just a bid, though a peculiar one in the light of not so recent events.

Basically this is the merger that Unity should have gotten instead of all the controversy.
Also:

Source (from the link provided by OP): https://www.barrons.com/articles/applovin-unity-software-takeover-bid-news-51660049615

 

This is a very poor unsolicited offer and I think (and hope) it will be rejected.
It makes no sense to sell now when the wider market is down so much, just a few dollars above IPO price.

Even if the intention is to sell at some point, then it would make more sense to use this as a catalyst to attract much higher offers from bigger companies when the wider market has recovered from the current downturn.

It's the Unity earnings report tonight, so be interesting to see what they say about it.

 

Just a reminder to everyone before you all go crazy & jump to conclusions that this is currently only an Offer.
This can be accepted, negotiated or rejected.
Acquisition offers have been made to Unity half a dozen times in the past and Unity to this date has not been acquired yet.

Obviously, this is a developing story. Interesting to see where it goes.

 

Would AppLovin be a good owner for Unity? Are they doing something or just buying tech companies?

 

"If the deal happens, AppLovin will take on Unity’s name and Adam Foroughi, AppLovin’s CEO, will become COO of the new company. Unity’s current CEO John Riccitiello (who recently made statements that did not endear him to the developer community) would become CEO of the combined entity, called Unity."

Considering all the recent bad news I fully expect this to happen as well.

 

An acquisition doesn't make any difference. Funny thread. Was amusing, now I'll make a cup of tea.

 

But nothing happened. I can offer to buy this galaxy. For a dollar. That offer would be rejected.

AppLoving net worth is estimated to be 20 billion, I don't think they can even afford it. Besides unity is not obliged to accept.

"If"

 

How so?

 

It depends what involvement the acquiring party has and whether they change directions. eg. a company could divert attention to 3D cinema to the detriment of mobile devs, or vice versa. Or do nothing and let Unity carry on with whatever they want. But in the games sector, there are quite a few stories of great devs acquired and then ruined as a result. An acquisition could be a good thing, or a bad, or neutral.

 

https://mobiledevmemo.com/applovin-offers-to-merge-with-unity-its-musical-chairs-on-mobile/

An analysis. It seems to depend on the ironSource merger being rejected. I don't have competence in this field to comment.

 

All this activity just makes me wonder what direction Unity is heading in. The Weta purchase seems a completely different direction compared to all of the ad-mobile activity. It's almost like there are 2 factions in the company - one is interested in games and game technology (Weta, Gigaya, etc.) the other faction is interested in where the majority of their income has been coming from (mobile ads) and greatly concerned with new privacy restrictions hurting that market.

I'm only interested in a game engine and one that works well. Great if people make money off mobile ads, but that is of zero interest to me. If the company becomes an engine to deliver ads on mobile, with some game functionality, that's not good for people who like to make games.

 

Please no. Microsoft buy Unity please. With the U stock going off a cliff they are an acquisition target now. Microsoft they are cheap, please buy them.

 

I don't think Microsoft is a good enough company to take care of the engine properly.

Also it would be significantly more entertaining if Unity was acquired by Epic Games instead.

 

Every, is the intention. Unity already has the strongest presence in the mobile space, but there are plenty of rising contenders to threaten that dominance. Meanwhile, UE5 is securing the prestigious realtime content market and making a name for itself in AAA visuals for every title thanks to its lighting tech. Unity hasn't really got room to grow doing just a game engine and it faces getting squeezed if it doesn't find a way to compete on other interactive media fronts.

I dare say Unity is becoming a jack-of-all-trades, master of none at the moment. On the one hand, ECS is the future of game development and performance titles. OTOH they want to compete with UE5. And OTOH they don't want to lose ground to lighter, more focussed game engines without Unity's legacy baggage. Tough spot to be in, I think,

 

Why? I mean, i understand the skepticism aimed at Microsoft, but some of their acquisitions (e.g Github) went pretty well.

That would raise a lot of eyebrows at FTC and in the EU and i don't think that Epic needs another "Epic vs. the world" type controversy right now.

 

Spoiler

 

Most likely getting an upper hand in the advertisment market to...perhaps bring in more money for the engine development?

 

So how many stocks do you have, and where do you work?

 

If Unity is looking for options to sale, please do it to a company that care about games... :V

 

i care about games. I'll buy unity, for tree-fiddy

 

We have been saying this for like seven years.

 

Dang, I expected someone here to explain who are those applovin guy, and now I have to do the job myself Lol right now I have no idea what that means at all.

 

Buying up seemingly random companies which make it seem like you aren't sure what direction you go in - the point being to show increases in revenue growth while also engaging in a lot of restructuring and layoffs etc. It seems like a company starts "flailing", throwing different acquisitions to see what sticks and the next thing you know, a company that buys companies is coming with an offer...

 

Here is a link to one of the reports that isn't behind a paywall.

https://www.businesswire.com/news/h...ng-Non-Binding-Proposal-to-Combine-with-Unity

 

My understanding is that AL is afraid of the IS merger, and is trying to convince Unity to merge with them instead.

Even though both of these events are technically acquisition, they're better understood as merger from a laymen perspective.

It's anyone guess which side Unity will chose. Either way, I believe the result will be the old "make more money and get more users overall, at the cost of alienating certain groups of existing user" story.

 

Im pretty sure ironsource is a done deal. Its not "in the pipeline", its done. So its not anyones guess, unity already clearly communicated what side they picked. Whether or not they will also "merge" with applovin is a seperate topic altogether, but ironsource is a done deal.

 

It is not. One of the condition of the AL deal is to terminate the IS acquisition.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/unity-ironsource-deal-threatened-20-214520300.html

 

Yeah I mean they can ask for whatever they want, the sun and the moon - but it doesnt make it a reality.

The ironsource deal has been worked on behind closed doors for a long time, Unity are not going to just dump it.

Ofcourse given this is unity and they dump stuff a lot, I guess never say never Still, I wouldnt hold my breath on this one!

 

It speaks volumes of the goodwill that Unity has absolutely squandered over the last several years that even somebody breathing the idea of this offer is causing this reaction.

 

The proposed deal leaves Unity with 49% voting rights. In the unlikely scenario this goes through, they'll actually become an ads company.

 

I have a bad feeling about all this. But if you look at the positives, appraised to be worth $20 billion is still something.

 

It's a story of shark and blood.

 

All I can think of McLovin...

Anyways, even the name itself is first red flag.

 

All of them, meaning that i don't have to work. I just don't see any other explanation for all of that "we need to have more involvement in ads" stuff other than creating a cashcow to offset dev related expenses.

I'm surprised to have my not-so-wild guess confirmed.

 

More like "have a smaller ad company" at your side and have more control over it or become one with a much larger company but with the pseudo "50/50" split. The first gives them more control, but the second might give them more money and if enough publicity is provided, perhaps is going to override the entire Ironsource controversy.
Either way, something is going on.

 

i do not care anymore about this business side. Whatever helps me to make money with my next game, please

 

I would so leave Unity forever if it were owned by mclovin,
Epic Unreal Engine sounds so much more lovely.

 

Clearly you mean Tencent Engine, right?

 

Yeah! Ten Cent, with a 401.97B market cap

I actually prefer Unity more than UE, but I'm pretty sure customers would perceive UnityLovin as a kind of low quality thing

 

Ah yes, because if there's one thing that's a sign of quality, it's IronSource, the company that was repeatedly embroiled in adware scandals and had one of their core products blacklisted by Microsoft and has its own antivirus entries.

 

This is all just so saddening

 

That invades your OS at startup...crashes..destroys model hierarchy, does not have retargeting ... and folks wanna whine around here about slave labor or greenwashing or climate crisis claptrap. Well the CCP owns Ten Cent and hey are guilty of many things and I will boycott them wherever I can. And..the ten centers trolling over here all the time to raise FUD is annoying.

 

I have developed for both engines. Unity is the most practical especially for machine learning and industry. However I was just pointing out that a roboticist company might think twice about incorporating software made by a company called AppLovin. As a technician I certainly would chuckle for a bit, then just keep looking for another solution (Python perhaps..).