2 ms·
Meh. Half true. Capitalism requires up-and-to-the-right progress on stock performance. The main ways to achieve this are through legitimate innovation and/or s
by SeanAnderson 3y ago
Meh. Half true.
Capitalism requires up-and-to-the-right progress on stock performance. The main ways to achieve this are through legitimate innovation and/or squeezing existing innovations.
Unity finds itself becoming an ad-tech company. There aren't a lot of technical innovations in that space, so they're left with squeezing their users. If their business model had stayed more focused on monetizing the sale of their tooling, rather than ads within, then they'd be rewarded more heavily for innovation.
I get the impression that this is exacerbated by us all having existed in a low interest rate world for a while. There wasn't a ton of pressure. You could take on debt for projects that made money, but not a ton of money, and that was still sufficient to appease investors.
Now that money is worth something again, thanks to high interest rates, and with some pressure from inflation - it's not such an easy world. Previous choices now have ramifications that become apparent. One of those is users getting squeezed by companies that don't have reasonable ways to sustainably innovate their way to higher returns. Companies which overplayed their hands will go under as users reject them outright. This makes space for newcomers.
The circle of life :)
- Stealthisbook 3y agoWhile there might not be much innovation available in the ad tech space, there's plenty to address in gaming (and ad tech may have lots of arbitrage given different legal regimes) If Unity made their engine just more usable, much less more capable, than UnReal and others they would gain market share. That's ignoring the other lucrative arenas games engines have entered like movie vfx and vr. The CEO going full tilt into enshittification is just a symptom of terrible leadership
- SeanAnderson 3y agoDo they have the capital to do that, though? My impression is that the Unity software is a quagmire of tech debt. and that napkin math on trying to fix those issues, then wait for sentiment to change, then grow, then capture value from the growth - doesn't pan out. Their stock is trading down 50% from IPO. I can't imagine investors are very supportive of burning a ton on technically complex, long-term initiatives?