Unity Acquires Parsec for $320 Million

Not sure that Mecanim is a great example of good purchasing.

I'd say Cinemachine and TextMeshPro are good examples of good aquirehires. Both are great.

Here's a few they could buy for less than this Parsec money, and make a huge difference to every Unity user, and make it easier for Unity by AquireHiring the folks from these assets:

1. Amplify Shader Editor :: works across all pipelines and is truly class leading.
- Unity can stop wasting time on their Shader Graph and repurpose these devs elsewhere

2. Peek :: is a next generation UI and workflow facilitator from the guy behind Bolt
- frees up Unity from whatever they're trying to do with their modularisation, and gets them the Bolt guru

3. Script Inspector 3 [Si3] :: inEditor script and shader editing! No more alt-tabbing to make little changes!
- guy is a freak of reflection and brings with him a huge range of skills in understanding how users use C# in Unity

4. ReWired :: we can all stop pretending the New Input System is ever going to be finished and just get on with having a great input system, instead.

:: Add whatever you can think of here, in terms of essential assets ::

---- other ideas that easily fit into a 9 figure budget ----

5. Sink a tonne of money into Blender. It never seems to goto waste.

6. Hire some writers and demo makers for the Documentation of Unity, it's getting a bit stale

7. Buy a couple of game making studios and learn from their pains in using Unity

8. Hire programmers to optimise Unity as it is (MonoBehaviour/Builtin) whilst DOTS dawdles into being

 

Kind of surprised they haven't bought Photon, really. A team to focus on both creating networking solutions and selling cloud services.

 

would be more sensible to use money to optimize animator component or add built in procedural animations

what a joke

 

i always designed my games to port to other engine in some manner
but it sucks they are this frivalous with their spending

 

Once a company becomes a corporation you need to throw what you think is logical out the window because not only is expanding like this normal it's completely expected. For an investor growth is every bit as important as the profitability of a company.

https://www.investopedia.com/ask/an...mportant-business-profitability-or-growth.asp

In fact most of the valuable tech startups out there have never once made a profit despite bringing in billions of dollars in investments and the companies that do make a profit are often not making it from their products. Tesla for example makes its profits off of regulatory credits not cars.

https://www.businessinsider.com/tech-companies-worth-billions-unprofitable-tesla-uber-snap-2019-11
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/31/investing/tesla-profitability/index.html

So again what you or I would see as a sensible way to run a business is only that way because we work with very small businesses. Once you step up into large companies like these those sensibilities need to be set aside in favor of the insanity that is big business.

 

Not really, we are just comparing to how Unreal spends their money. Seems a lot more reasonable.

 

Also wanted to say this, well minus the cowards. If they want to improve true collaboration they would invest into this. There's Scene Fusion but only really usable if you use ProBuilder.

 

Only if you look solely at the purchases and don't consider anything else. Epic's primary goal for the foreseeable future is market share of which they currently only have 13%. Once they've caught up to Unity which is currently sitting at around 48% their purchasing decisions will shift too.

Everyone complaining that Unity is focused on fields other than game development need to understand one simple fact. Once a company is dominating a field they no longer have any incentives to continue investing in that field and will shift their attention.

This is why competition is important. Unfortunately we're likely a few years out from Unreal Engine having even half the market share of Unity. Of course once it does we'll have to hope they still care as much about games as they do now.

 

Unity is making a push to be the content creation platform for the 'metaverse', John Ricatello has mentioned it a few times in interviews. Buzzwords aside its about enabling users to create content for 3D worlds (think anything from secondlife, to roblox, to the eventual target of an expected new wave of AR/VR platforms).

I can see how this acquisition ties in to that idea (even if it seems a bit overpriced).

EDIT: Can Unity win (or at least get a sizable piece of the pie)? Not sure, but it does have a strong alignment with the idea of democratising game development.

 

Is this something that removes steps to making a game or adds steps?

 

Nobody codes on their phone. And if they do they don't want to.

 

You could make the same argument about Apple vs ANY other phone maker... or... all other phone makers.

And many have made this comparison, to show that Apple has a very real monopoly on the profits available in the smartphone market.

Apple sometimes makes more than 100% of the profits in the smartphone market.

How is that possible? Some of the rest of the phone makers are making bigger losses than the combined profits of all other phone makers that are not Apple.

This may not be the exact case this year, but it's been true or close to true, for nearly a decade.

Unreal, in this analogy, is Apple. They're likely making WAY more than 100% of the total profits in the game engine market space. Much more.

Unity's losses, alone, would be greater than the profits of all other game engines that are not Unreal.

Unity's goal is to create and project the perception that they can turn their user adoption into profits. Without confidence in their ability to do this, they have no value.

If they can't re-cast this spell in the next 12 months, they're going to struggle. And then every 12 months after that, too.

At $320 million for Parsec, Unity must have a story to tell about how they think they're going to turn some kind of streaming into a very significant revenue stream.

As I said before... I'm betting that will be the worst possible streaming model - one in which you pay for your daily quota of access to a new/better version of Unity, streamed to you, and their servers (not your local machine) doing the lightmapping, AI, builds etc.

 

Not the point but thanks.

 

You know, when you see an article that claims "MORE than 100% of the profits", it likely means that the author is writing a sensationalist garbage in order to grab your attention, and that you should never read anything written by that author ever again.

Profits are profits, losses are losses, you can't make more than 100% because 100% is the whole thing, And if you try to wiggle around "but technically some", that's being insincere and moving goalpost in order to adjust the definition for the purposes. Or sophistry.

For example, one could write an article saying that Earth is moving around the moon. Shocking, right? Who would've thought it. And when you open the article, you'll find that the writer changed the definition of Moon to that of the Sun, turning Solar system into Lunar system instead. Same thing.

 

I'm still just struggling to see the actual real-world benefits of being able to run Unity on anything.

I get the concept and I understand the potential — but to me it all seems to be idealistic speculation of a future where Unity is used for cars, microwaves, planes, lamps, coffee machines, kiosks, you name it...

None of which is video game development, mind you.

And I guess that's what I'm struggling with when it comes to this acquisition.

 

It makes sense if you think of unity as of a 3d framework.

If you have a situation where you have a 2d or 3d object driven by a script or physics, and it can play sound or plays animation... or if you're making an interactive ANYTHING, that job can be done by a game engine.

Unity is a game engine.

Game Engines are used in movie development, for example. That's not game development either.

 

No. This is a common scenario for many industries with only a few players, or significantly asymmetric players.

It is absolutely possible for one company to make more than 100% of a market's profits.

It's not sensationalist to say this, and it's not even very clever. It's super basic maths.

If Apple makes $100 profit, and the combined profits of all other phones makers is a combined loss of $10, then Apple's made more than 100% of the profits.

True if Apple only made $1, too, when all others lose $10 combined.

Profits, as it turns out, still matter. It's bankable money, which can then be used to invest in all manner of interesting things, or to buy back stock. Which has all sorts of other long term ramifications for a public company.

A continued lack of profits also cause eventual problems, unless you're Amazon, who played out over one of the most unique timelines in corporate history.

 

Then apple still made 100%, because profits are positive, and profit of other companies is zero, while the loss is not.

And if you "use basic maths", then the total profit on the market in this scenario is -9$, and if apple earned $1 then they made MINUS 11% of the total profits on the market.

It IS a sensationalist nonsense. The writer tries to redefine profit to make an argument, fails to calculate a sum of multiple numbers, and in the end it doesn't change the fact that majority of the phones in the world do not run iOS.

A shining example of modern journalistic garbage. Or stinking example.

 

It is commonly calculated as relative to [company or sector], not of.

It not sensationalist because it's highly indicative, over time, of the survivability and thrivability of various players in any market.

 

It is a straight lie, so it is a sensationalist.

Because the implication of headline is "apple earned more than humanly possible", while inside they redefine profit as "net income", and then have audacity to claim that other companies losing somehow increases apple's achievements.

What's more they do not provide link to their source, so we won't ever know if they conveniently forgotten that chinese phone manufacturers exist.

So, in the end, this is garbage.

 

I don't know why you're so upset about this idea.

Achieving 100% of a sector or market's profits is a stunning and spectacular and sensational achievement.

All power to Apple for having achieved this and continuing to massively innovate with things like the M1 etc.

And if we're going to talk about sensational achievements, look at their percentage of tablet profits. It's absolutely sensational, and absolutely indicative of how we (consumers and users) consider tablets to be iPads.

 

Agreed. I think Unreal engine is the future of game development. Unity isn't really going anywhere in the next 10-15 years. Unity, well, is falling behind. Unreal engine is acquiring smartly and making stuff free, like Quixel for Unreal users. Unity, just throwing around money for stuff that doesn't even help the engine.

 

Photon makes multiplayer much easier than UNET or MLAPI. Unity could just buy it and make that its multiplayer approach rather than constructing its own.

 

Absolutely.
I completely agree, and this acquisition does make sense when considering the other industries Unity is targeting.

However,
What I am struggling to figure out is how this acquisition benefits the game development sector of Unity's user base.


If Unity is shifting its focus from 'Game' Engine to 'Interactive Experience' Engine, that is a flag we should all acknowledge.

All games are an interactive experience — but not all interactive experiences are games.

A 'game engine company' that isn't actually invested in their users making games will gladly shift their focus increasingly away from games if it serves their bottom line (long-term or otherwise).

 

If you have paid any attention to unity's marketing, this shift has been obvious for awhile. It seems like about 1/5 of the articles I see or posts on the Unity main site etc deal with games anymore and the rest is all robotics this, manufacturing that, movies and TV yadda yadda.

 

It looks, to me, like this was part of the "projecting the ability to be profitable in the future" pitch involved in going public.

Can't see how there's more significant revenues than games in these other sectors, which are all shrinking relative to the massive growth of games, and all better served by the superior (for product viz) qualities of Unreal.

Can you imagine a significant portion of the product viz market thinking... Unreal vs Unity for interactive product viz - and choosing Unity?

Now what do you estimate that market's worth, considering how few products actually need this?

Most are not truly interactive and benefit greatly from the massively better qualities of offline renders.

Beyond demos, truly realtime and interactive product viz stuff being sincerely needed is rare.

As for tv and movies... how many licenses do you think are needed and how many are studios willing to pay for when they're obviously the kinds of studios trying to save money by not gearing up their offline rendering costs?

 

I hate liars. And the article says "Apple ate 150% of the pie with only 100% available". It is an example of bad journalism, no matter how I look at it.

Only unity knows what their user base is. For example, if someone huge approaches them with a demand for "interactive experiences", then it wouldn't be surprising if unity turned away from game developers entirely.

Basically, there's no reason to hold strong loyalty to unity. If their goals match yours (or mine) right now, that's good but the things might change one day and then it will be the time to search for another tool.

Such is life, I believe.

 

No, it says the other eaters of the pie got no net nutrients from it, because their metabolisms weren't capable of absorbing it, and they got cavities, gout and diarrhoea, too.

Sales and revenues (eating and digesting) are distinct from profits (nutrient extraction).

 

Jokes aside, Unity is probably just trying to rake up more income sources.
You can see this in few specific behavior with past acquisitions such as SpeedTree, ArtEngine, etc.

There is no change to their business model or plans, and no integration whatsoever.

 

So what I'm getting is that parsec lets devs work from anywhere on the same project on the same computer, without any uploads/downloads and merging issues.

So it's as if you could park someone from anywhere on your computer chair and they can work directly on the project, no lag.

I think it's a very useful thing for studios working remotely on a game. Not sure about the price tag but if this day and age is all about remote work, then this is something that certainly makes sense to acquire.

 

Is this much different from the google remote desktop thing? I've only used it once, but it was to get some help from a guy in russia (i'm in US) and there was no problem with lag.

 

If they "got no nutrients" or "got cavities" that means they actually ate their piece and apple actually got less than 100%.

That's called sophistry.

Most people know about revenue, expense and losses, except this particular journalist tried to make a clickbaity title saying that in case of apple, losses of the opponents count as revenue. Which is nonsense.

Their tactic worked, as you've been trying to defend the honor of their article since.

Either way, I already tried to explain, if that didn't work, this is not my problem.

Remote desktop software already exists and is widely used in tech support. "No lag", however is not happening. You can't beat physics, if somebody is far away, the lag will be there.

 

Never used remote desktop, I'm not really familiar with that sort of thing as I don't do freelancing in Unity.

Just making the point that I see the fundamental idea of it, and it seems like a decent idea at first glance. I have no idea if it's worth 320m though.

I gotta say though, I don't see a lot of utility to the whole 'connect everything and the toaster' idea. OK you basically have phones and computers, nobody codes on phones so it's pretty much computers and computers.

Again, I don't have too much experience with remote working, so it's possible parsec has some feature that is really worth a lot in the status quo, but it seems like a lot of money for what it has.

 

There are hundreds of articles saying the same thing... Apple sometimes earns more than 100% of profits.

This is a sensational achievement, any way you like eating pie.

I just picked the first article in the list in google, didn't bother reading it.

The way the writer of that article explains it doesn't alter the facts.

They sometimes earn more than 100% of the smartphone market's profits.

If you think this is a lie, you're perhaps not understanding what profits are.

 

Photon has always been good. Although, their new product, Fusion, is really pushing the boundaries.
I've been using it lately and benchmarking it, it's insane how fast & modern it is.

 

Well, I tried.

 

Well, there's a small program your client can run without installing, you can run your own copy of the program, and if you share the pin, you connect to their desktop. Can be done from a phone too. And (IIRC) to the phone as well.

It is incredibly common, except this is used for tech support and not freelancing.

 

You've tried to read one article and still not grokking the maths of profits?

It's super simple.

Imagine how Unreal's profits look compared to those of all other engine makers, combined.

That's more than 100% of the market's profits, because almost all the other engine makers are losing money, and Unity is losing enough to make the ratio way higher than 100% in favour of Epic.

Was it $250 million loss, in six months? Before paying $320 million for Parsec?

 

Try this:

Unity raised a bit over 1.3 billion at IPO.

$255 million loss for first half of this year. If they repeat that, and you add in the $320 million spent on Parsec (one would hope a lot of this was in the form of shares, but Unity's saying it was cash) they'll need to raise more money by early next year to keep the lights on.

 

I've worked for a company that took their influx of IPO money and went on a spending spree buying up somewhat related businesses for their tech. It didn't end well.

It becomes a distraction from focusing on the company's core product, giving competition the opportunity to flank, taking market share away. Before you know it, your core business is deeper into the red, the acquisitions aren't performing as well as the bean counters predicted, and the company ends up doing layoffs. If you're really unlucky, the company gets taken private again, where it is stripped for its parts and revenue and not allowed to innovate, as every last dollar is drained from it until its core product itself dies.

 

So, regarding that profit part.

Apparently in newspaper lingo it means that "company net income is XYZ% relative to industry's total net income".

Meaning they sum everybody's net income, and compare the company's income to that.

Which is pretty much only useful to make noise and clickbaity titles.

Here's why.

Let's say we have
ACorp. $90 mil spent, $101 mil earned. Net Income? $11 mil.
BCorp. $2 mil spent, $1 mil, earned. Net Income? $ -1 mil.
CCorp. $10 billion spent, 10 billion earned. Net income? zero!

Industry total net income? $10 mil.

ACorp's "newspaper lingo profit?" 110% (yay?)

Who has the largest revenue, though?
That's CCorp which moves 100 times ACorps cash around.

 

Yeah, this is very well seen downfall historically. Looking into various large, once well known producers, which failed to innovate, to gain and compete on dramatically changing market. I.e. taking into consideration cameras and video recorders, which used films and tapes (anyone old enough here to remember? ). Multiple companies bankrupted, during digital age entry, where digital cameras start become a thing and camera films nearly went extinct (with fewer special use cases).

Saying that, we can not say Unity fails to innovate. It constantly tries to reach out new markets, by what we see.
This leads me to the following statement, which I find very valid and interesting, even tho it may be sad true:

This is now makes me curious and yet perhaps explains, why we see constantly things, which we complain for years on this forum and beyond. Maybe Unity builds future buffer, when times come and Unity will need to hit back on game devs market share, they start putting improvements, which we ask for milenia.

So basically Unity will focus on major improvements, when it will be needed and only then. Speculating ...

 

I disagree, Unreal's market share of AAA games is much bigger than Unity and they keep improving it. I haven't seen any new feature in UE5 directed for mobile games - following your logic it should be their focus to increase their market share.

That's mostly mobile, steam 3 years ago:

It's probably even worse on consoles.

 

That graph is pretty meaningless. It's based on wikipedia, and if a game's wikipedia page mentions an engine.
Unreal has a larger % of AA+ games, which tend to have a throughout wikipedia page.
Unity, not so much.

Pretty sure unity has a bigger marketshare on steam than unreal.
From my own research, it's (way) more.

https://store.steampowered.com/curator/39750107-Games-Made-With-Unity/#browse
This is my list. I don't base it on wikipedia, I look at game files or see if a dev mentions the engine a game uses.

https://store.steampowered.com/curator/39869360-Games-made-with-Unreal-Engine/#browse
This is my list as well, for unreal.
When I started, I put a ton of time into both of these lists, countless hours looking into files, reading posts and digging through developer posts. I found WAY more unity games.

I stopped the list for unreal, but that's only because there isn't that many really. Before I stopped, the unity list was quite a bit bigger than unreal's.


Note that the list isn't (all games made with unity). If a game got some attention, I'll add it. When I started though, going through games left and right, there wasn't as much curating and I found way more unity games than unreal.

 

#Edit I misread the graph, It's only 2600 games.

I'm sorry but your lists seems meaningless. They both total have less than 300 games when that graph has 60k. Found out someone run it this year, 115k games:

Unity wins but I'm curious about revenue as

^Quote from 2017, so maybe Unity increased their gap and Unreal tries to do anything to not lose the race.

 

I don’t think Unreal’s business model cares about market share all that much. They need people that make successful games to make money, as opposed to Unity where its most lucrative scenario is tons of people attempting to make games for a long time while doubling down on the various “solutions” Unity has to sell them.

 

surely this isn't SOP for successful companies... it's the sort of thing so common there is an old man saying for it. "don't rest on your laurels."

all the places i ever worked didn't operate like that. (also places that been around a lot longer than game dev and game dev companies have)

 

And if we're talking small indie teams (1-5), unreal has next to no successful commerical games. There's only two I know off.

Unity?
Valheim, Rimworld, Dyson Sphere Program, She Will Punish Them, Rust(legacy, when it started), Phasmophobia, The forest*, Risk of Rain 1, Risk of Rain 2, Among us, Clustertruck, Stick fight: the game, Getting over it, Eastshade, Ravenfield*, Becastled.

Most of these games made millions and were quite big when they were released, some with 1-2 developers.

There's more, but I can't remember them at the spot.

* = not very sure but I believe so, if my memory serves me correctly.

 

You’re obviously not trying very hard with your research then.

 

You mean revenue from games or revenue going to the engine/epic?

If the former, I seriously doubt it. If we consider mobile games, I think unity makes way more.
When ignoring the mobile platform, I can see that happening, considering the budget of big unreal games.

Although unity still has big PC money makers, genshin Impact, hearthstone, rust, escape from tarkov for example.