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Unity going public with IPO? This bloomberg article feels out of touch...

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by MD_Reptile, Jun 4, 2020.

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  1. MD_Reptile

    MD_Reptile

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    Source:
    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...up-unity-is-said-to-prepare-for-ipo-this-year

    I glazed over the article and immediately got the impression these guys just now heard of unity and the word "engine" doesn't appear anywhere in this entire article :X

    What are your thoughts, both about the IPO and also about the fact bloomberg really looked at this from the outside a̶n̶d̶ ̶s̶o̶m̶e̶h̶o̶w̶ ̶m̶i̶s̶s̶e̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶f̶a̶c̶t̶ ̶u̶n̶i̶t̶y̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶g̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶e̶n̶g̶i̶n̶e̶? Also... theres some stuff I somehow missed in the article, like a lawsuit that happened at some point?

    EDIT: After another read I do see:
     
    Last edited: Jun 4, 2020
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  2. LIVENDA_LABS

    LIVENDA_LABS

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    Money makes you do things you don't wan't to do;) People, start learning Unreal Engine
     
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  3. Baste

    Baste

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    Another month, another "Unity will soon have an IPO and everything will be ruined" thread.
     
  4. Murgilod

    Murgilod

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    People have been saying Unity is going public any day now for the past 5 years.
     
  5. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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  6. Joe-Censored

    Joe-Censored

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    Their financial writers know what they know, and that isn't game development technologies.
     
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  7. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    Any day from now till infinity.
     
  8. snacktime

    snacktime

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    Unless Unity really sucks at PR this kind of article is planned and coordinated. So if game engine is not prominent that's likely intentional.
     
  9. Murgilod

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    I hear that there's a big plan to make Linux the premiere desktop operating system right before it happens.
     
  10. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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  11. Joe-Censored

    Joe-Censored

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    Going public doesn't concern me much. Get worried when you see the phrase "leveraged buyout."
     
  12. Yeah, I will feel sorry for it when I see the news that Epic+Tencent bought Unity Technologies. Until then it doesn't concern me.
     
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  13. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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    If every year, some source "predicts" the same thing, they might eventually be right. Tech predictions are awesome!
     
  14. Murgilod

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    I hear the next Nintendo console is going to be called the Revolution and it's going to have a hologram projector built into it.
     
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  15. I_Am_DreReid

    I_Am_DreReid

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    I guess we will just have to wait and see.
     
  16. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    They're a general business news service, so I expect that the vast majority of their audience probably wouldn't understand things like "engine" or other technical terms. From our perspective calling it "graphics software" is wrong, but from the perspective of an arbitrary business person that's a reasonable enough description that they understand it's computer software that helps you make visual stuff.

    The bit that does surprise me is calling it a "startup" when it's 16 years old and very well established in its industry.

    And if it finally becomes right one day they'll forget all the times they've got it wrong. ;)

    - - -

    Note that when the article finally gets to any kind of explanation all it says is that they're "considering an initial public offering that could happen as early as the fall". "Considering" something does not mean they have any plan or intent to follow through, it just means it's one of probably a whole bunch of options identified at some point. And they're a business with shareholders, they need to consider anything that could potentially maximise profit, even if they immediately decide against it. And anything following the word "could" is explicitly just a vague statement of possibility. Nothing written here even suggests any form of intent.

    I'm considering having caviar for dinner, and I could do so as early as 4pm. I don't intend to do either of those things, but there you go... true statement anyway!
     
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  17. Tanner555

    Tanner555

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    Unity should give John his golden parachute and send him off. Hire a new CEO that's passionate about open source technology and providing easy solutions for small indie developers.
     
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  18. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    While we're at it can we trade in the users who don't understand the difference between having access to the source and open source?
     
  19. Tanner555

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    Regardless of what it's called, clearly every other major game engine provides the source code free for developers. And they also don't charge a premium for a dark skin.
     
    Last edited: Jun 5, 2020
  20. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    You're right. Instead they take royalties, or charge for access or functionality, or they just don't give you stuff for free in the first place, or it's open source / public domain / etc. and as a result isn't as well resourced to begin with. If you just want everything for free then there are actual open source engines you could be using instead.

    I agree it's an odd and maybe even silly thing to single out. But it's their thing, and if they don't want to give it away for free than that's up to them.

    "They're not giving me what I want for free" says more about the person doing the complaining than it does the people being complained about.
     
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  21. Tanner555

    Tanner555

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    I believe this is a flawed argument. You are suggesting that me and other developers want the dark skin to be free because we don't want to pay for the engine, and want everything to be free.

    In reality, many developers have given Unity plenty of money from subscription fees and asset store purchases, and want a complete engine that works well, with the source code included. If anything, I'd call Unity greedy for continuing to sell Bolt even though they make plenty of money off subscriptions (royalty fees) and asset store royalties. Not to mention all the other services you have to pay a premium for, like premium support. Unity is even trying to put beginner tutorials behind the subscription paywall.
     
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  22. Lol. And then you go ahead and throw at us a bunch of deeply flawed arguments.

    Yes, on our own free will. It is not mandatory, only if you make a lot of money.

    Again, no one force anyone to buy assets if it doesn't worth it for them. Unity makes money out of it is irrelevant. The priciest asset is shamefully cheap on the Asset Store.

    Irrelevant from this argument's point of view.

    Some developers want that. And it doesn't matter. Unity never was open sourced. Asking for it once is okay, but demanding it is stupid. Every software developer/owner/etc has the right to release their software under any license their wish to do. If you don't like the license, don't use the software. It's that easy. There are plenty of open-source software out there, some of them even well-funded.

    After they paid a bag of money for something, I would expect them to want it back at least a small portion of it. But again, asking for it for free is okay, but demanding it and calling someone 'greedy' just because they want to make their money back is just ridiculous.

    This is irrelevant from the Bolt pricing point of view. And again, Unity Technology is a business. They're selling solutions and software for people. Is it really needed to be explained to people?

    Which has nothing to do with any of this. They are developing and selling solutions to make developers' life easier. Cloud computing is not cheap, you would know if you ever would have paid for it for real. I mean on the service side, not on the free consumer side.

    Well, yes, people are expensive resources. Their time is expensive, if you ask for people to help you be ready to pay for it. Do you work for free?

    This is a simple lie. I won't even touch it.
     
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  23. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    Fair enough. Can you point out the flaws?

    The principle of the point is close enough, but please note that I never made any assumptions about what you want, and I never said "everything".

    Yeah, Unity are giving people stuff that they seem to find value in, for free. For some reason that makes some people (you may or may not be one of them) think that they're somehow obliged to make other stuff also free.

    I guess it's a sign of the times, and maybe even that engines are already engaged in a "race to the bottom" and have been for some time. When I started game dev you either wrote your own engine, used something that wasn't particularly good, or paid many thousands of dollars to license someone else's. Contrast that to today when you can literally just download and try out a variety of engines for free, and then use many of them commercially without paying a dime up front... and people are still complaining about it?

    For a flawed but probably close enough analogy: Imagine if someone was given a perfectly servicable car for free, but it needed a new spare tyre, and they complained about it. What kind of impression would that give?

    I can tell you from experience that good quality learning material costs quite a bit to create and maintain.

    Again, I agree that making people pay for learning materials might be a bit silly. But, again, that's not because I believe I or anyone else am somehow entitled to that work for free. It's for Unity's own long-term commercial benefit. Make it easy to learn by providing accessible materials and you could get loyal customers out of it. Make those materials hard to access (eg: charging money when you know most beginners don't have a lot) and a bunch of those people are going to go to your competitors. And for most Unity games I see I'm not thinking of the same competitor who seems to be on a lot of peoples' minds lately.
     
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  24. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    Lets be clear on this one - that's why it's called "premium" support. If you specifically pay for premium suppor then you're deliberately buying support in addition to whatever comes with your level of licensing in the first place. You still get some level of support without buying that.

    Note that even when working with Unity Personal on projects with little / no funding Unity have had a pretty decent track record of providing support for me.
     
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  25. 99.9999% of the beginner tutorials, tutorial projects are free for everyone. Just need to take a look at the beginners' forum how many projects Unity offers for beginners. What is not free are the more advanced tutorials. Which may or may not interesting to someone. But when you're there, you probably have either the knowledge or you can afford the Plus subscription and get it with the package. Also all the tutorials are free with the educational licenses.
     
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  26. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    That would be awful. Also, making your solution opensource is a great way to stop making money.

    I mean, source code access is a great thing, but actual OpenSource happens to have a meaning associated with it.

    Frostbite, Gamemaker and RPG Maker don't give you source code access for free.

    Continuous requests for dark skin certainly make at least some people feel this way. I certainly feel this way, and still don't get why you'd want it for this particular software.

    There are better things to wish for.
     
  27. angrypenguin

    angrypenguin

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    A while ago I was going through an official Unity course for work. It was the prep stuff for the Unity Certification. A lot of it was definitely beginner level stuff, and they were definitely charging for that.

    I know that there's also a lot of stuff they make available for free. I just don't even try to keep up with what's what these days, as I mostly use the manual and the scripting reference anyway. :)
     
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  28. Tanner555

    Tanner555

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    Imagine applying the same philosophy to a free to play game. I mean it's completely playable and you can play it for free without any money up front. But the game practically begs you to buy various premium items, and the game is pretty much pay to win.

    So you decide to buy all the premium content, like characters, skins, guns, and content packs. Now there's tons of cheaters playing on servers, there's practically no anti cheat system in place to prevent cheaters from ruining your experience. You also notice that various maps are broken, and the developer themselves says they'll never update the maps to be playable.

    On top of all that, the developer decides to nerf the guns you currently own, and offer more practical weapons to use at a premium price point. The server connection is terrible, and the competing games offer much more content and stability.

    That's Unity in a nutshell. In order to have the best tools at your disposal, you have to buy assets from the asset store, bolt included. And once you make a certain amount of money, you have to pay Unity anyways. Unity constantly promises new features and delivers destructive changes that are a pain to set up, and offer very little benefit to the developer. Competing game engines like UE4 won't charge you until you make $1 million off sales. Every single feature is integrated into their engine free of charge.

    Charging up front for a game engine is a dying business model. Most engine makers make their money off of licensing fees, asset store royalties, and premium support. Only a select few niche game engines still charge money up front, and even those engines often times cost much less over the long run than Unity.
     
  29. If something, that would deserve the hate and the pitch-fork. I would never ever touch it even with a twenty-foot pole.
     
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  30. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    And why would you ever do that? I mean, pretty much everyone knows what F2P and P2W is about.

    The thing is, Unity is not a F2P game, it is a tool aimed for business. You can't really make money from F2P game, but unity is made for exactly that. What's more at least some tools on asset store are not simple cosmetics that can be made in a short time, but projects where people spent thousands of hours polishing them. And obviously, given that the company has been maintaining and improving this particular product for 15 years, they need to get paid for their effort.

    So your analogy is unsound. It is not a game, it is tool for making things, one that requires ridiculous amoutn of time and resources to develop it. And you appear to be complaining that you have to pay for using it.

    Ah, but that's false.

    It is not free. You accept agreement with epic games, and said agreement is legally binding. For example, were you aware of this part?
    Or how about...
    Or even:
    Failure to adhere to the agreement can result in a very real lawsuit.

    Even if it is true, unity is not using said business model. Free tier exist and had been empowered compared to fairly limited free version of Unity 4.
     
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  31. Tanner555

    Tanner555

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    Just about every online developer store requires you to provide personal information, and share a margin of your profits.

    UE4's EULA sounds much more fair than an outsourced Unity consultant harassing developers and threatening to revoke Unity privilages unless they upgrade their subscription. This was a true story by the way, and the developers didn't make anywhere close to enough money to warrant an upgrade anyways. Unity support did apologize later on.

    And another story about Unity breaking ties with improbable (spatial os) and banning them outright for refusing to obey their EULA, which can be convieniently updated at anytime. All of that until the whole Unity community threw a fit and Unity was forced to apologize and document their new proprietary EULAs.

    The source code EULA makes complete sense. You can't just copy a whole series of C++ files and paste them into a custom repository, and most help forums will show lines of code that are 30 lines or less anyways. You can still view, modify, and create a fork of the source code on Github. You can't do this with Unity.

    I understand that, the point is Unity is a free to use game engine that makes money off of subscriptions and royalty fees.

    And you have to pay for an essential engine tool that should be included in the engine install for free. Funny how many developers have to reinvent the wheel because visual scripting is still not a free integrated feature that every developer has access to. Unity makes plenty of money off of subscriptions and royalty fees. The article states that Unity has made over 30 percent profit every year, and is growing rapidly. If that's not enough money, Unity should seriously allocate their money in a more productive manner.
     
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  32. MD_Reptile

    MD_Reptile

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    I personally don't know what the result would be if unity does go public - like if that could have some sort of spirit-killing effect and cause everyone to focus on generating the most revenue and less on making the best product... but anyway if it does happen I'll probably buy some stocks :D

    Disclaimer - I have literally no idea how that kind of stuff works and am speaking from a standpoint of pure ignorance - but that doesn't change that I'd like to tell people "I own a little tiny slice of unity!" haha.
     
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  33. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    You don't appear to understand.
    It is not free to use (you sign agreement), and unity does not take royalties.

    If you want Free to Use, that wouldbe Ogre3D, Irrlicht, Cube/Saurbraten2 and so on.

    Dark mode is not a tool and is not essential. It is a visual embellishment. Dark mode also is largely used for phone applications in circumstanes where you want to continue using your phone at midnight under a blanket for some reason. You're basically asking for a pink chainsaw when a normal one can do the job just fine.

    The article also called Unity a startup. The company is 16 years old. Bloomberg also has provided ridiculously incorrect information in the past.

    You're free to apply to position of unity CEO and call the shots.

    To me the situaiton looks as if you somebody let you use their industry grade production machinery so you can work on your startup idea, and then you complained that DMLS printer has wrong color and that they dare to charge a nominal fee for that.
     
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  34. Tanner555

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    I wasn't talking about Dark Mode, I know a dark skin isn't an essential feature. Although Visual Scripting tools are considered essential to many developers these days. And Bolt, which was recently acquired by Unity, is locked behind a paywall.
     
  35. neginfinity

    neginfinity

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    Visual Scripting is not essential either.
     
  36. JohnnyA

    JohnnyA

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    Agree with most of what you are saying but its not uncommon to call a company a startup if its still a private company funding its growth through VC investment, regardless of age.
     
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  37. useraccount1

    useraccount1

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    Unity has been behaving like a public company for a long time. Nothing significant is going to change for us. The reason why would they do this right now is probably because of the economic crisis. Years of no management, no long-term planning or even a solid direction Unity would want to push their stuff forward has been really paying off, especially since unreal engine is in a better position than ever.
     
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  38. elbows

    elbows

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    One thing that could affect us is if Unity have lots of important staff who have been hanging on in there because they were waiting for their stock options to turn into something real. If a fair portion of those leave after that happens, I think we will notice the ramifications.
     
  39. RoughSpaghetti3211

    RoughSpaghetti3211

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    So this Unit is the now confirmed, I see it all over the news
     
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  40. riharr

    riharr

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    Epic will also be public soon - Fortnite is making their business competitive with the major (already public) game studios and Unity going public will be a push from the engine market as well.
     
  41. ippdev

    ippdev

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    He was brought in to do precisely this.
     
  42. Ryiah

    Ryiah

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    I'm doubtful. Unity has been steadily losing money for the past few years. I wouldn't be surprised if they were going public because they exhausted available investors. Epic Games has been the exact opposite with profits way above the Unity's revenue before their losses are taken into consideration. Epic has more money than they likely know what to do with.

    https://techcrunch.com/2020/08/24/unitys-ipo-numbers-look-pretty-unreal/
     
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  43. zombiegorilla

    zombiegorilla

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