What the heck is ironSource?

Of course, it's hard to finish when those who knew the project in and out are not there anymore. They were all sacked to save 10-15mil 3-5 mil a year, which is peanuts in the background of multibillion dollar deals.

Unity's leadership concluded that GIGAYA won't make them any money now or in the future, and that the loss on paper for supporting an internal team of developers that work to improve the cohesion of Unity's tools outweighs the gains. Just months ago they had big promos for GIGAYA so the decision was 100% made by paper pushers that don't understand the engine. They only care about short-term profit, which mainly comes from their ad/user acquisition/micro-transaction platforms. Things that don't apply to GIGAYA and projects like it.

 

IMHO Unity needs to not be so dependent on a business model controlled by Google and Apple. That's just so many ways a business without a strong foundation, because Unity cannot control that future.

Worse, advances like raytracing on mobile will not be supported by Unity. I read that on the HDRP part of this forum. So even in mobile, Unity risks falling behind due to under-funding and under-staffing critical graphics at Unity.

This is where we have ended up, and it will take some clever work to grow out of it.

 

How though? At Unity's scale with 5k or however many employees, the engine itself is pretty cheap, all things considered. Asset store is not making them any significant money so ads and micro-transactions is where the money's at these days.

Maybe in 3-4 years when they'll finally combine all the acquisitions into a single subscription service Adobe style, they'll be forced to pay attention to the editor that's supposed to integrate all of it. Because the sub will be profitable.

 

Having used DOTS I think its great and a very welcome edition. It benefits platforms like PC AND mobile greatly.
I also appreciate the work going in to Entities although I think its going to be very hard work in the early days of 1.0.

As has been pointed out many times before these teams are doing a remarkable job with the capacity they have.

But looking where the bulk of the money goes and silly things like the canning the GIGAYA project which would have served at least as an attempt at dog fooding, can you tell me that you are happy and confident that your current and future needs as a PC/Console developer are/will be catered for with Unity?

Unity has allowed me to create things I could only have dreamt of doing when I first start out and I love it for that but I rely on this (or a.n.other engine) to put food on the table so I have to consider its direction and if it tallies mine.

I pop up on these threads from time to time to moan and vent my frustration and it always seems to be about the same things. I've been working on a long term project which is hopefully coming to a close so perhaps I'll be moaning about another engine somewhere else soon

 

hehehe interesting thread. I share many of the same sentiments expressed in this thread (but not all) and it was fun to read some comments diving back in time talking about Blender (I remember trying it out in 1999 when it still had a built in game engine! That's right, Blender was originally trying to be a "game engine + editor" like Unity!)

Anyways, I'm flipping my view of all this and trying to look at it this way: Unity got hit hard by the ad revenue decline caused by Apple (and Google Android?) shutting out device identification in the name of privacy (which incidentally is the same boat Facebook is in, and many other companies) and this MERGER is to save themselves from completely imploding. (Just Google "IDFA apocalypse" and you'll all see this was a big deal). Personally, I'd like Unity to stay in business so if this is what it takes, then I guess that's how it's gotta be. (I don't want my career to go through another "Adobe kills Flash" type of reinvention).

PS: A MERGER valued at $4.4 billion (stock swap) is not the same as SPENDING $4.4 bil in hard cash on a purchase.

PS2: Out of curiosity out of every above saying they will switch to another engine in protest, like Godot or Defold, how many of you are gamedev hobbyists as opposed to actually make a living primarily from using Unity software and services?

 

this merge will be the death of unity if it happens.

 

Not the death of "Unity", but it will for sure be the death of the Unity that we cared about.

 

I'd say going public killed the Unity we cared about. When Unity was private, the investment funds went towards improving the lives of game developers. After Unity went public, the focus is now on profit, which is non-gamedev industries and mobile ads/micro-transactions/user acquisition.

Steam and console games make little money for Unity at this point. And the many Unity success stories were also largely built on the old tech stack that has been frozen in time since 2018.

 

o no plz dont implode Unity, just because of stupid business decisions you made while you moved away from what made you what you are, which resulted in most core talent leaving and an editor in a sorry state and you thinking that what used to be your core users are "F***ing idiots"...

 

I'd say Riccitiello becoming CEO did, honestly. Going public was just a part of the larger issues that started springing up more severely after that.

 

Agree, when Darth Riccitiello slithered onto the scene, it's been pretty much downhill since.

 

Fun fact you might not have known about Unity: they never made a profit pre-IPO. They were always operating in the red. I'm thinking what likely happened is they ran into a dry spell of investors and had no alternative but to go public. Which of course leads to a different can of worms like having to show results.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2020-08-25-what-did-we-learn-from-the-unity-ipo-filing

 

That's basic start-up behavior:
Borrow money, create much buzz, become important, go public, sell actions to make profit and go bankrupt.
That is if they can't manage to get purchased by Google or Microsoft.
So it looks like this may have been the plan all along.

 

Very likely. I think it'd have worked out too but then Apple and the recession pulled the rug out from under them.

 

Oh, look at that:

 

from the youtube comments:

 

I vaguely recall that. I guess when you're giving the engine away for nearly free and do not make anything else such as games, something else has to become the product, i.e. the end user receiving ads and purchasing micro transactions via Unity's backend systems. It makes sense from a business standpoint. I just don't like it.

 

Great, the next piece of manipulative clickbait media you redistribute.
You should go into ad-designing for microtransactions loaded games, as you have a taste for those, it seems.

 

And you should use Unity for that, since those are the kind of games it was designed to make!

Just make sure you tune the compulsion loop. I’ve seen great games fail because they tuned their compulsion loop to two minutes when it should have been an hour.

 

Also this is pretty amazing: https://nomoreheroes.fandom.com/wiki/Damon_Riccitiello

 

This makes me worried. I have multiple Unity projects, and now I am wondering if I have to migrate to Unreal!

Unity isn't going to start having viruses, is it?

 

In my opinion, as I said on the other thread:

No. LOL
Don't worry about that.

In the long run it could include some sort of ads or data harvesting thing on the free version of Unity though.

 

Welp; I guess I am switching to Unreal now!

R.I.P. Unity.

2005 - 2022

Killed by corporate greed and a merger with a malware company.

 

wasn't there just a thread not long ago about some problem with the launcher carrying some sort of virus?

all the cheap used car sales lot emails i used to get spammed with made me suspicious. that was like 3 years ago. I'm not saying there is anything real to be worried about, but if somebody seems 1% suspiious, I assume they might want to murder me. Because I know how people be.

 

Promised my little girl I would teach her Unity this month.
Guess we will change to learn Unreal together instead.

 

Riccitiello as soon as he was appointed CEO stated in his keynote that his vision would be to move Unity to a 'services' company. I understand the strategy but unfortunately many of the service offerings have been abysmal compared to what is offered by competitors..

Error Reporting - Completely blown out of the water in terms of UX and functionality by raygun.io

Unity Build Server - Crappy UX and slow and lacking some important configuration params at least at the time I used it. Much better alternatives such as Azure DevOps and TeamCity.

Analytics - DeltaDNA and DevToDev are better offerings. Instead of taking the tech DeltaDNA offered after they bought them out and merging it into Unity Analytics, they shoehorned it into a separate product that charges at least $1500 a month. What a joke. They could literally just have rebranded DeltaDNA and they would have had what is most likely the best game analytics solution on the market.

Multiplay - Their multiplayer server offering. So useless they don't even respond to emails. They had a big opportunity to hit a home run here, but nothing. I don't know of many games that use Multiplay. They all use other solutions. There was a gap in the market for a turnkey Unity multiplayer build solution.

They could have nailed the above 4 offerings which would have set them up as a solid services company, but on each one of these they fell short.

 

Also the checkbox about editor analytics in preferences used to be "buggy" and was sending stuff anyway.

 

I'm mass downloading everything I have purchased in the asset store since 2011 right now.
You know... just in case.

-edit: hum... some packages that have been removed from the store are no longer downloadable.
That wasn't the case before: once you had added an asset to your account, you could download it forever, even if the asset was taken down.
It's not affecting me that much now, but it could had...

 

One reason they do that is when there was copyright infringement so they are not allowed to distribute further.

 

Which is why when that happens, they refund you the full amount.

Right?

(They don't)

 

So to summarize.

If You are a mobile dev who dont give a flaying f about qualty of game You produce and care only about cash, this news is almost orgasmic, because that will bring more money to You.

Everyone else...whelp...

 

Not even that, because it's not going to be free (of course) and devs that did crap like that already used this kind of services.
This merge would only benefit IronSource, since their stock was worth peanuts before the merge.

 

I thought it would be free for devs and Unity will monetize on ads and % from microtransactions.

 

It's supposed to benefit Unity Technologies stock holders in the long run because it is supposed to bring more income from crappy mobile monetization, but given how low was the stock price of IronSource (it was basically going bankrupt if you look at the charts) I really wonder who could think it will actually be this way.
That's why I think good old John is doing a solid to one of his corporate pals by merging with this stinky pile company.

NOTHING Unity has bought has been offered for free to Unity users.
Not even at a discount LOL
The service will cost you the same, whatever the way it works right now. (which I don't know, since I hate this kind of things)

 

Because an ad service only exists for people who are greedy...

 

Unity's API and docs are still good.

Mergers and CEOs might have an effect in long term future, but we live in the present.

 

I can't believe GIGAYA died and a bunch of engineers were fired only for Unity to merge with a malware company. If I made a list of things of what to expect (after the firings), merging with a malware company would not be very high up on that list.

If that merger is a stab in the heart, then the recent comments of the CEO is the twist of the knife. I guess Unity isn't what I thought it was.

I don't know, maybe I'm just getting old. When I first got into Unity, they were tiny. What made me love them was their dedication to democratize game development - making things easy, innovating, competing with the big guys, even though they were only a fraction of their size. Unity was easy to use, so accessible, so brilliant compared to the alternatives. I mean, there's a reason why everyone has been copying them over the years. It felt like I was part of a revolution.

But this? It signals to me Unity isn't what it used to be. It's not a revolution anymore, it is corporate. It isn't about the art form, not about the passion of making games - it's about the money. It has become the very thing I absolutely despise about the industry. And it is with mixed feelings I come to the realization that my projects are very much reliant on a company that has made this kind of transformation.

If I take a step back and look at this with sober eyes, I suppose it isn't really that surprising. The signs have been there, for years. Perhaps no business can grow to this size without being transformed in the process. Maybe I thought Unity was special, somehow immune to it. Despite all the signs (I guess I chose to ignore them). Unity was still Unity. I felt so at home every time I opened the editor. But with these recent developments, that has become impossible. The writing is on the wall. It can't be denied anymore.

 

I can't agree with you more.
100% my feelings.

 

Edit: I underestimated Unity's yearly revenue

 

So you mean like the money they already get from Plus and Premium? Because $10 a month is way less than they charge for those.

 

I just wonder now, if in the long run the royality business model would not be better for Unity, rather than the subs. Imagine the juice they would get from Genshin Impact.

 

If they handled it anything like Epic Games the answer is none. Just in case you're not aware you can negotiate a custom license to reduce or eliminate the royalties for Unreal Engine. The royalty license only truly exists for solo-to-small studio developers. Companies expecting to make millions just skip it completely.

Ten million people paying $10 per month wouldn't even be a tenth of their income. They would need to have every developer on Unity Pro ($150/mo) for that. Which is precisely why a subscription is impractical.

 

So in reality You cant make cash on engine only. You have to go hard into services, or make Your own game and have 1 on 10000000000000 chance to score a gold node like Fortnite.

 

Evidence definitely suggests that.

 

Not true: Unity could perfectly be profitable based on a payed license model (not even a subscription) if only they weren't throwing their money away purchasing companies and contracting so many people on every continent that don't even contribute in any way to the engine.
The problem here is the mindset of the executives, who want to be Google or Microsoft.

 

This isn't true though. Unity has never turned a profit even before going public, even with paid licenses.

 

https://www.benzinga.com/sec/insider-trades/u/john-riccitiello
Seems profitable in some manner.

 

They could, but they didn't, because start-ups don't need to be profitable to be interesting to the market: they prefer to reinvest all the prpfit and more into growing rather than beong sustainable.
The goal is to grow as fast as possible to become a big fish in the market.
How do you think they grew from small local company to the multinational corporation they are now?

 

Riccitiello became the CEO of Unity seven years after it launched.

 

If they had maintained a sustainable size, they would have made a profit FAST, but that wasn't the goal: the goal was to go public and atract investors, and for that you need to show a chart of positive growth, not sustainability.
Investors are not interested in sustainable businesses, they want growth because growth equals profit when they eventually sell their actions.