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To play devil's advocate... Unity isn't close to profitable, and never has been. At some point money has to be made or the lights get turned off.
by TylerE 3y ago
To play devil's advocate... Unity isn't close to profitable, and never has been. At some point money has to be made or the lights get turned off.
- generalizations 3y agoWell, that kinda makes sense then. If they weren't profitable, then this could be seen as a last-ditch survival strategy.
- gs17 3y agoThis strategy is still pretty awful. If 2.5% revenue share after $1,000,000 would be enough to survive on, they probably could have opened with matching Unreal's 5% instead of all the bullshit and won people over.
- kevingadd 3y agoYeah their new pricing model is quite literally more expensive than Unreal for many of their customers (mostly the ones who make less money - for massive studios it's cheaper) and it's ALSO more complex to comply with. A simple "we're doing revshare now, and the per-seat fee is going away" would have been viewed more favorably I think.
- tetha 3y agoI mean in my naive world, you'd slap some minimum revenue onto the rev-share and you'd have a clear separation between hobbyists, unsuccessful indies, indies, and huge successes. It'd be muddled in the middle, sure, but if some companies hits jackpot with a unity project, you'll know and could act on it.
- TylerE 3y agoThat's what they did though. It was several hundred thousand dollars in revenue before any of it kicked in.
- ROFISH 3y agoUnity has been on a buying spree including traditional TV/Movie CGI firms for some insane reason†. They're just plain _bad_ at spending money. († Yes, I know the growth potential from real-time to rendered. I still think it's a terrible investment.)
- neurostimulant 3y agoIs unity used for movie's CGI? I can only think of one example of shows made with unity (it's bad): https://myanimelist.net/anime/38853/Ex-Arm https://myanimelist.net/anime/38853/Ex-Arm
- kevinmchugh 3y agoUnreal has enjoyed a ton of success for tv/movie production lately, being used in "the Volume", I have to guess they're trying to keep up.
- Daegalus 3y agoI think the Lion King movie was made in Unity
- berkut 3y agoNo it wasn't... Unity used some of their tech in 2022 to create a demo with some lions in it.
- Daegalus 3y agoIncorrect: https://www.engadget.com/2019-07-29-lion-king-remake-vfx-mpc-interview.html https://www.engadget.com/2019-07-29-lion-king-remake-vfx-mpc... The film was shot almost entirely in Unity, then the final render used some extra stuff and other tools. But the scenes, shots, etc were done in Unity. A quick google shows you this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WupuXjvO9uA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WupuXjvO9uA Making of videos on Youtube, you see the Unity editor in many places while they film in VR
- SolarNet 3y ago> Unity isn't close to profitable, and never has been This isn't really true though, their core business is and was profitable if you exclude all the of acquisitions junk, stock shenanigans, and loans to pay for it they have been doing. It just didn't have the margins expected of a public company and so they did all that other junk to pump those numbers.
- maccard 3y ago> This isn't really true though, their core business is and was profitable if you exclude all the of acquisitions junk, stock shenanigans, and loans to pay for it they have been doing. "We're profitable if you ignore all the things we're spending money on"
- fineIllregister 3y agoThe claim here is that none of that spending is generating revenue. They could stop spending that money, their income would remain the same, and then they would be profitable.
- squeaky-clean 3y ago> if you ignore all the things Not all the things, just their unprofitable side business attempts. It's like knowing a guy with a well paying job who always complains he is broke. But he conveniently never mentions that he's spending $4500 per month on a Lamborghini lease.
- qwytw 3y ago> stock shenanigans They pay their employees and executives in stock. They'd have to spend much more cash if they stopped doing that.
- TylerE 3y agoCould it not be argued that the situation they're in is exactly because "big number go brrrr" over building a sustainable business?
- 3y ago
- andrewclunn 3y agoBuild product / service at a loss. Product becomes popular because it provides so much value so cheaply (because is being sold at loss). Maintain through continual investment and chasing "growth." Bill comes due. Investors left holding the bag and ecosystems built around assuming bubble was real have a bad time. In many ways it's the best form of socialism, cheaper products and services provided to the people, paid for by investors who are rolling the dice on a pyramid scheme posing as a business model. Completely voluntary and works even within a capitalist system. Now all we have to do is hope Unity goes under really quickly, then gets bought up for cheap by a business either willing to make far less as their investment was well below the cost of development for the tools... or that another sucker comes along to buy them at a higher price to either enter the market or expand their own dominance in it as they are still on their "chase growth" curve.
- hightrix 3y agoI would argue that Unity is about 10x the size it needs to be. They could shed a significant portion of their employees and still produce a good product. They are in the perpetual growth trap that so many of these companies fall into when they get bigger than a niche audience
- rmbyrro 3y agoThat sounds like a Musk job
- AlexandrB 3y agoHe would just fold it under "X" so he can claim to be closer to an "everything app". I'm sure he's annoyed that "Xbox" is already taken.
- qwytw 3y agoHiring is too much people is much easier than firing them. If you cut 90% of the staff keeping the people you'd want to retain is pretty much impossible (since obviously the management won't have any clue who they are).
- Dylan16807 3y agoHe's done a lot of stupid things with twitter, but having a significant reduction in headcount doesn't seem to have been one of them. (The way he did it was awful, but that's a different matter.)
- marcosdumay 3y ago> Unity isn't close to profitable, and never has been Talk about the consequences of letting a bunch of incompetent MBAs loose at the top. They had more than enough revenue to be profitable.
- chrz 3y agoDoesnt make profit because directors are paying themselves millions, spending 400 million a year on marketing (how??) and buying ironsource for 4billion in exchange for 1billion bonus for directors. They getting rich and dont care about the dried up carcas they will leave behind
- polski-g 3y agoThey could fire 4000 employees and almost meet the count that Epic has (and who has a better engine/ecosystem)...
- asynchronous 3y agoHoly are they really that over staffed?