Unity going public?

Autodesk would have a very hard time affording Unity what with their total assets being less than the value of Unity and with their income being hundreds of millions in the red. Adobe would have a far better shot at it, but if it came down to it Amazon, Apple, Google, and Microsoft would likely blow away their offers.

 

A Microsoft buyout probably would not negatively affect the engine or community, as Microsoft has a really good track record with providing free access to developer tools to indie devs already.

And I agree, you'd likely see a financial incentive for making games on the Windows or Xbox store. What I wonder though is if Microsoft would go so far as to require Unity, locking out Unreal, for specifically the Xbox store.

 

Seeing as that's literally what F***ed them over in the late 90s, they probably wouldn't.

 

I hope Microsoft buys Unity and then open sources it. We'd be so much farther into the future than the mess we have today. Also make Unity dogfood their engine instead of movies and 40gb FPS "samples".

 

Unity isn't closed source because of the company, it's closed source because of the middle-ware embedded in it. Microsoft would have to strip it all out like Epic Games did with UE4 to be able to open source it.

 

I don't think they would either, but Epic is playing dirty against Valve, and I see some push back is going to come from somewhere at some point.

 

Except that's entirely different because neither Valve nor Epic have a complete grasp on the platform.

 

I didn't say it was the same, or playing fair. Push back rarely is.

 

I think you guys have it very wrong... I think there's a growing marketing of Unity towards movies, and I wouldn't be surprised if Universal would like a piece of that pie.

 

Unity is nowhere near the state it needs to be in order for it to be used for major film production like that. It still requires third party tools to support dual quaternion skinning.

 

So Disney is not major film production?

https://venturebeat.com/2018/08/13/isabelle-riva-how-the-unity-game-engine-will-democratize-film/

Unity has been pushing to get into the movie industry since 2016, there were talks about this already at unite 4 years ago.

 

A series of Disney shorts is not the kind of thing you base purchasing a company around.

 

You're absolutely right, you base purchasing a company around three things

- Sustainability
- Potential for growth
- Synergies

As it stands, Universal has tons of synergies with what Unity has to offer, both in the gaming industry and movies. Unity is well established, is one of the leaders on the market and not about to capsize any time soon, and the potential for growth is huge because it has diversified its target markets (which is one of the big differences with UE who sticks to the gaming industry)

I'm not saying that it's definitely going to be going in that direction, but I think a lot of game devs fail to realize that Unity is much more than a "Game" Engine

 

And I think a lot of people who think it's something that has a chance in the near future (within 5 years) in major film production do not understand the current limitations of Unity or the current software in use in the production workflow, nor the costs that would be incurred in switching away from them.

 

Unreal is already used in the film industry though and they don't stick to the gaming industry. They made Unreal studio and partnered with Vray specifically for the Architectural visualization field.

 

So what happens if it goes public and nobody buys the shares? Then will the valuation of the company go down? And then the investors demand their money back.... and then it goes bankrupt?
Then the liquidators sell Unity for $1 to a non-profit organisation which makes it open source?

It could happen.

 

It could happen, but at the same time, a higgs-boson could quantum tunnel out of a false vacuum state, leading to a total collapse of the universe that expands outwards at the speed of light.

 

I would say my scenario is slightly more likely.

 

Barely.

 

Maybe the apocalypse could arrive, and then Unity would just go open-source since it's not worth selling anything any more. Good luck making money with games in the New World though!

 

Lots of companies get bought by Microsoft and then their projects get shut down, also outside of their core products they tend to eventually lose interest in things and abandon them (not as much as Google though). I would strongly suggest not putting any hopes in that department. I can't think of any large company offhand that would be actually good for Unity.

--Eric

 

Tencent?

 

Yes I can see it now... "Follow our Party. Start your Game." The new motto of unity the day after purchase. That will teach those democratizing bastards.

 

I mean, Unity is already partners with Tencent, so...

 

Unity is partners with just about everyone. It wouldn't surprise me if there is an Epic-Unity partnership agreement out there somewhere. Unity has more partners then they have platforms.

 

I think that's... improbable.

 

Now that we went back to a full circle..
That concludes the most probable buyout potential.

Spoiler

Unreal Unity 2020.1 Confirmed.

 

And Tencent owns 48% of epic so we are all Comrades working for The Party...

 

Touche.

 

Thanks for letting me know. I've deleted my post and I apologize for reviving an old thread.

 

https://forum.unity.com/threads/unity-files-for-ipo.957398/