Official Unity Announces Intent to Join Forces with ironSource

Which is not happening, stop panicking and telling fairy tales

 

okay replying a bit to some comments on Unity's internal ad services for mobile - it seems that part of this move is Apple's ATT data privacy rollout for mobile caught Unity's AI Analytics and Ads team flat footed and the overpaying for Ironsource was a tactic for shoring up that. analysis article here may be helpful:

https://mobiledevmemo.com/why-are-unity-and-ironsource-merging/

the writer here also questions previous moves like buying Weta Digital for cinematic competition with Unreal when the vast majority of revenue comes from mobile. it does seem like part of the explanation for this merger is geared towards keeping the company's mobile ad strategy still profitable.

 

Sure, if I am on mobile and not baking in monetisation, then, yes... I am an effing idiot. But what if I am on console and desktop (I am) and can't? I am therefore an effing idiot for using Unity.

 

Yeah what a weird announcement this is. What's wilder is that they paid more for this black-eyed company than they paid for Weta.
Unity needs to buy a fuggin QA testing house, that's news I'll scream over.

 

Perhaps you care to
Elaborate ?

I’ve been ignoring unity for quite awhile but have a need for a good ad network solution and it is the one
I came back to.

especially since I’m looking for a tiny binary great power ad format as an essential part of my current venture

thanK yoU

 

I refuse to believe this will happen substantially for as long as C++ is the language to use in Unreal. Can't stand using C++. If Unreal added C# to take the market I would uninstall Unity tomorrow however, it really is the only thing that keeps me using Unity lol.

 

Which is really bizarre since C# mostly kinda sucks.

 

Well pay to play is still a form of monetisation.

 

For those who think this is good news: trust me, it isn't. ironSource is known to make malware or have malware in their products, so with this merge, it's only a matter of time that they do the same with Unity (or worse):

https://www.benedelman.org/news-021815/
https://www.businessinsider.com/ironsource-denies-its-for-malware-2015-3
https://www.reddit.com/r/Unity3D/comments/vy8ser/why_is_unity_partnering_with_a_company_best_known/
https://www.pcgamer.com/unity-is-merging-with-a-company-who-made-a-malware-installer

For those curious, this is the specific malware (at least, one example of their malware):
https://blog.malwarebytes.com/detections/adware-installcore/

 

Have you read that fully yourself?
I mean it explains clearly that installCore is "just" an installer. It has "just" been used to install (sometimes) harmful adware. ironSource was the possibly biggest provider of such a tool back then and thus naturally had been the target of the adware and malware publishers...
IronSource did not write malware themselves and to assume Unity would become malware due to the merger is just ridiculous.

 

How so ?

 

To be more accurate, ironSource didn't create malware. Malware creators just used their installcore package as it was useful to them. ironSource allegedly turned a blind eye and therefore the word installcore became synonymous with malware.

 

i agree that Ironsource certainly has a shady past, but to be fair it happened 7 years ago (note the 2015 dates?) when someone else distributed malware using their platform. but they are NOT a malware company slavering at the bit waiting for a chance to infect everyone's machines.

though i certainly don't think that even were they a squeaky clean company that devs of this forum would be excited by the thought of Unity spending money on a mobile ad company. but if 65% of your company's revenue comes from that and you've NEVER posted a profit and it's an economic downturn and your current mobile ad strategy was kneecapped by Apple, it doesn't leave you with a lot of options. if you let 65% of your revenue lose a significant percentage of value that results in massive stock selloff and you go out of business. what i dislike is all the rosy no layoff outlooks that the CEO painted just before the layoffs. it now becomes absolutely obvious that he knew Unity was bleeding revenue and planned the layoffs and the merger long in advance. but again, tell investors that Unity's operating at a greater loss than they thought, and they'll all stampede for the exits.

i certainly wish that a game engine company could be profitable just selling itself, but Unity's never been able to succeed (i.e. operate at a profit instead of a loss) focusing just on the engine itself. it certainly is another lesson in why going public is mainly a curse for tool makers.

 

This is not true. That's just how they're presenting events so that they seem "innocent".

Not true either, there are a lot more recent events that happened and they still do a ton of bullshit to this day.

https://blog.infostruction.com/2018/10/26/adware-empire-ironsource-and-installcore/

 

What? ironSource do ad mediation, not ads. Long story short, it will auto-switch to the highest paying ad service in realtime. Or if Unity/Google ads run out of inventory, it will switch to Facebook. The code will simply look like

IronSource.ShowInterstitial("PlayerDied");

, instead of you having to implement 20 different ad networks.

They also own a few other services (that they made or purchased), such as an engine that converts Unity games to javascript playable ads (Luna).

Their role is to help app developers make money.

 

and Amazon, Apple Microsoft and Google pull shady S*** all the time. but as i said, my point was it wouldn't matter if they were squeaky clean. the area of monetization turns off most developers and at best is considered a necessary evil, and not anything of creative or artistic value.

but it does beg the question - if 65% of your revenue was now more like 45% due to Apples data privacy issues and the other 35% did not show any obvious promise of growth in a stock downturn, what do you do then? again, the problem i see is the damn IPO in the first place.

 

The acquisitions for film and architecture are very much important for users who only want to develop games, because they put Unity on a broader user and revenue base. If all film studios only used Unreal for their virtual studios, then that would obviously be bad for Unity, because Unity needs as many developers using the engine as possible. To survive at the size Unity has grown to, Unity needs to be an industry standard for as many uses as possible.
When I started using Unity in 2007, the company only consisted of about 8 people, you could look at a group picture at the time, I remember being surprised when suddenly there were 30 people in the next picture they released. I'm convinced that Unity was quite profitable for several years back then because Unity wasn't free and the team was so small. Honestly, most of the things that have been introduced in the engine since about Unity 5 neither interest me nor do I use them. The really essential stuff was already in Unity 2.5. Now there are how many employees 5000? I seriously wonder what for, but they need to know that, not me.
But the move to the US and the focus on growth made permanent financial injections necessary, the financial injections needed user growth to justify even more financial injections, so in this vicious circle everything gradually became free. Already about 11 years ago I started to worry where this should lead to and how this should ever become profitable.
A merger via share swap with a profitable mobile-advertising company is perfectly logical, it costs virtually nothing and the merger offers minimally more financial security, market share, knowledge and experience in an area that is used by the main customer, the game developers. Unity simply has to take everything with which users can be secured and revenue generated. Diversification is thus the basis for the game engine's existence. The blog post was awful drivel for investor dorks though. As long as I can work with Unity GDPR compliant and I can disable tracking and co as well as disable any advertising in my games, I don't care how they make their money, the main thing is that they don't go bankrupt. The GDPR and various other privacy laws makes it impossible for them to do mischief anyway.

 

They should get smaller then.

Or not survive.

 

This is the CEO of the engine we're using for years. I can't believe.

"Ferrari and some of the other high-end car manufacturers still use clay and carving knives. It’s a very small portion of the gaming industry that works that way, and some of these people are my favourite people in the world to fight with – they’re the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people. They’re also some of the biggest F***ing idiots."

https://www.pocketgamer.biz/interview/79190/unity-ironsource-john-riccitiello-marc-whitten-merger/

 

Well my signature is fine. It is what Unity's CEO has said I am.

To be clear, I am not offended. I doubt the intent was to offend. It is amusing to me though. Pretty clear I have been a bit of an idiot

 

so insignificant is this small portion of gaming industry that he can't stop think and talk about it.

 

Unity really poisoned the well with this one. They’ve chosen to drag the Unity brand and its reputation through the mud.

To the management: how will you sell ads after your community of developers have abandoned your product en masse for repeated breaches of trust?

 

Yeah I'm smiling because I know how much I'm respected now. That's fine, I only needed clarification.

 

If anyone needed more of an excuse to move to Unreal Engine, here it is. I've started the move already and its not too bad.

 

Same here. We've gotten super fast at using C# and we wouldn't have released as many games if it wasn't for it. But we're a bit fed up of Unity never finishing and polishing anything engine-related the last years.

 

I'm building my game in unreal using the blueprints. Works quite well for me. I know about programming but at basic level, high concept tricks are lost to me. But I've spent one day this week to figure out how to create C++ classes that can be used as blueprint nodes. Was hard but I've managed to do it.

Unity has visual scripting too but you can't compare it. Now that I've used both, I can say that unity visual scripting is limited. Not in what it can do but in how the unity interface is build. The unreal editor is actually build for visual scripting. Most of objects you add to the game have some sort of graph, animations, rigs, other stuff like that and they can connect between them quite well.

 

Hi there. I can't remember the last time I've ever posted here but recent events sort of uh, brought me here.

I have used Unity for years. My first playable, completed project was in Unity after having various false starts with Source and UE mod tools. I am personally invested in this engine and have several projects I want - or wanted - to make with it. I literally have the thing open right now trying to put together a demo of what amounts to years of effort and collaboration.

The combination of this EXTREMELY ill advised merger sending everyone into a panic over IronSource's dubious reputation, combined with the mass layoffs of many talented people making things of actual value for the engine (after making bold faced lies saying you wouldn't) makes me feel like all that's been kicked off the side of the cliff into a river and I'm watching it float away. The anxiety of wondering if I'm throwing good after bad into the river by continuing with this engine is keeping me from my work.

I have worked in several engines both in teams and alone and try to maintain literacy as a professional responsibility to avoid having all the eggs in one basket and all. If need be I can adapt and shift over, but why should I HAVE to? Why should anyone have to? It's not fair to the people who've poured hours and years into building or using this engine that we have to think "Welp ships sinking, where next?" because of a series of decisions made by the companies executives to aim the thing straight into the ground.

It's not just the IronSource thing, it's the friggin multi-combo that keeps coming that has me in a state of "Gee I wonder what horrible direction the company is going to be launched next and what insults the CEO is going to hurl at me and everyone who disagrees with them in the interviews after while also tanking the stock price so hard some OTHER horrible company can come around and cheaply slurp up the entire thing". It's Not. A Great. Or Productive. Atmosphere. Not really great for art OR money making.

 

The biggest bug in the Unity is the management

 

What is this madness?!

 

This might be a good acquisition for mobile game devlopers who want to monetize and generate huge revenue. I think that this is more of a communication problem (which seemed extremely dumb),

the blog post should have clearly mentioned that this is for mobiles, advertisment and more in-depth explanation of how this is good and speaking to the point...

The blog post was extremely vague and on top of that using lines like this "Redefining the game engine – this is more than ads"which at a moment felt like they are talking about development tools and major changes in game engine but they continued talking about advertisments, which will definitely make people misunderstand the engine is going to force devs to use ads in their games and going in that direction..

Also whatever John said wasn't completely wrong, but he should have choose the words more wisely and must have avoided those agressive statements, or news agencies and media are going to f**k that up by making clickbaity title and cherry picking, which they did...

The acquisition also didn't lined up great, the people were alredy very disappointed after the lay offs

 

Very funny.

But lets be realistic, what John has done is probably secure enough money so Unity can carry on paying for DOTS, paying for HDRP.


You'll note for every critical point I make about Unity, it's not to drag Unity down. I really need Unity to succeed. I have almost 30,000 posts helping Unity succeed.

But building a company exclusively around mobile and ads inside marketplaces owned by competing companies is fragile as we have seen.

So Unity needs to come to terms with shooting themselves in the foot, and come back stronger. I'm going to stop posting about this subject now (except in reply to anyone talking to me) and wish Unity put the best foot forward.

That one hasn't been shot yet.

 

Unless management is returned to capable hands with capable autonomy, Unity is done for by a single person. And history repeats.

A meager apology will never fix John's insults to every single dev out there. Only his firing and replacement by an actual competent person who understands and cares about the core value of Unity and it's role in today (i.e. An engineer who actively works on the core Unity Engine) would fix it.

Not to say that the wider public who doesn't bother to know the full story already started associating Unity with malware (whether truth or not), thus severing the producer-consumer loop completely out of control of both Unity and it's user-developers. That is irreversible.

 

My project relies on HIPAA compliance. Can you guarantee in writing that bringing in known malware creators will not create the potential for data breaches and that we can disable ANY data collection you decide to thrust upon us?

I don't like this. I don't like this one millimeter.

EDIT: Oh, and about John's comments, we don't care about monetization in our project. We didn't want this. We didn't ask for this. We have zero need for this and if I'm a "F***ing idiot" for that, then so be it. We don't care.

 

I did cover your first two points in my above post... Regarding malware, if it was a malware, why candy crush and other big games and softwares are using it? And not just that, there are also many people using ironsource services in their games and softwares.. and most importantly unity isn't that dumb to just give out malware to their users, think about that for sometime!!
If whatever John and the blog post said that the tools can help devlopers to make more revenue is true than the money talk isn't bad for mobile game devs!!
And yes most people on twitter are talking about these problems

 

I mean, it did very eloquently confirm all the bad things people have been saying about him for years.

Yeah the title is slightly clickbait, but a more accurate way to rephrase his statement is "If you care about your craft and what you put out in the world, you're a F***ing idiot", which I think is even worse. "Unity is about creators" my ass.

But it makes sense that's what he thinks is the thing to do, right? Because that is what he is doing.

He sold all his shares when the share price was high and made a killing, then the stock price fell into the gutter, because, who cares?

And the engine is a mess, and most key people working on it have already left, but who cares?

He made a ton of money, because he is not a F***ing idiot who cares about his company actually doing well, he just cares about money in his pocket, in which case he is very successful.

And he is just sharing his strategy. You should just peddle S***

 

Even if we deny, but at the end of the day, we do make games for money... U are free to disagree with thiy

 

Yeah, since they've been dropping the democratise development motto these days, I can offer them one for free, which I think they will like very much:

Unity: "Peddle S***"

 

This really is the key. I don't generally care about the source of the company's revenue, their approach to doing business, the types of customers they court, or the banter of their CEO. I only care that the company recognizes and addresses that their crown jewel is crumbling apart. The function and stability of the editor and its libraries necessarily supports every other initiative within the company, but it's the part of their business that appears to receive the most abuse and neglect.

 

Unfortunately there is no other engine that is great at delivering "ad delivery software" or "mobile games" as Unity calls them. (yet?)

 

Epics Online Services are the same; you can use them for any Engine, not just Unreal

 

Most of the biggest Unity successes on Steam were built on the old tech stack which has been frozen in time for the past 4 years. And Godot can replicate nearly all of it even as it is.

Godot actually has stuff that Unity doesn't like a built in tweening system, a standardized parallax system for 2D games, better input than Unity's legacy input system, arguably better GUI system if compared to UGUI, which has about three times as much ready made components akin to Horizontal/Vertical Group to cover all kinds of use cases. The GUI system needs some streamlining, but it is getting done for 4.0 which will release soon'ish. It's not just a worse Unity, they have learned from mistakes made in other engines.

The main downsides of Godot currently is the Inspector, which has limited custom type support, the profiler which is just plain bad, the inability to extend editor with C#, has to be done with GDScript and GDScript itself which is too loosely typed for my liking. A lot of that is getting improved in 4.0 though. And Godot is likely to get .NET 6 support faster than Unity as well.

 

Started looking into Unreal Engine today due to this merger. Can't see a reason not to swap to Unreal. Thanks for nothing Unity.

 

Just be prepared for the nightmare that service is to work with.

 

Oh, look at that!

Spoiler

 

I hate to say it but... most developers leaving for other engines aren't really hurting Unity. They are becoming synonymous with mobile trash app development. That seems to be the bread and butter. If you aren't developing those type of apps, you likely aren't sending money Unity's way anyway.

The video link above I largely agree with. However thats how all corporations work. Every single one I've worked with or for over the last 30 years is like this. Companies are in the business of making money for their execs and their share holders. Full stop.

The only way to get away from that is to write your own software or your own games or create your own studios and not sell out and sell to a corp or go public where you have to appease shareholders.

Exploiting for maximum gains and being selfish is capitalism my friends. Thats what drives our culture.

All that being said, my studio has dropped Unity as well and are looking at Unreal. However, we also aren't working on mobile apps and Unreal is better suited for what we are after producing. Most of my issue is that Unity does not appear to be investing in their engine, they are investing in trash that makes me have no confidence in the future of the engine and I don't want to shackle us to that.

 

care to elaborate? I'm not familiar with this point

 

Well, then that's S*** that should be changed.
Just because something is normal doesn't make it right.

 

THAT is what will bring the death of Unity: the association of it with low quality or disposable games.
Anyone that doesn't see his work like that will not be willing to use Unity just for the stigma.
Some years ago, I would have been proud to put a big "made with Unity" logo at the start of my game.
Now when I'll release it I'm not mentioning Unity anywhere.
That is what Riccitiello has done.

 

I'm gonna put "made despite Unity" at the start of my next game.

 

HAHAHAHAHA!!!
We should all do that!! xD