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Unity Software plans to reduce its workforce by 25%, eliminating ~1,800 jobs
- atesti 3y agohttps://archive.is/l7dp1 https://archive.is/l7dp1
- kmlx 3y agoi remember that in november 2023 they announced their fourth round of layoffs. and closing 14 offices. total layoffs in 2023 were 1100. headcount at the end of 2023 was 7000. considering they are removing another 1800 jobs, they are on track on having 0 employees by ~2027.
- heyoni 3y agoImagine applying for a job there in 2024?
- fxtentacle 3y agoImagine being a skilled employee and then Epic calls you with an offer ... By now, I'm pretty sure that we will see no innovation from Unity (except acquisitions) because everyone capable of leading such a fast-paced market as gaming is long gone.
- ffgjgf1 3y agoEpic or specifically the part of it working on Unreal has several times less employees than Unity does. Even Epic in its entirety still has almost 2x less employees…
- akmittal 3y agoIf you are looking for a new job, how many companies are there which didn't have done any layoff.
- heyoni 3y agoNot every company has had layoffs. Fewer have had as many as Unity. Fewer still have had this many layoffs combined with their reputation rightfully dragged through the mud...and their CEO stepped down too right?
- nine_zeros 3y ago> considering they are removing another 1800 jobs, they are on track on having 0 employees by ~2027. Shareholders be happy...but only until the revenue starts crashing.
- jncfhnb 3y agoWhy would it
- metiscus 3y agoAfter the fees fiasco, many studios began plans to migrate away. I can't help but believe some will move to Unreal or Godot etc for their next projects.
- ffgjgf1 3y agoUnreal is still a lot more expensive even with the fees though?
- jncfhnb 3y agoUnreal is free aside royalties on revenue over a mil
- ffgjgf1 3y ago> aside That’s a massive “aside” though? Unreal’s royalty is 5%? With the pricing changes Unity’s is 2.5% or as low as 0.N% if you go with the instal fees. If each of your developers cost 100-200k or more per year the $2000 yearly license fee is not such a big deal. So for commercial games with at least a few people working on the full-time (and especially if the team is much larger) Unity would still be considerably cheaper than Unreal.. The problem is how arbitrary and uneven their pricing model is. Some users might end up paying considerably more than 5% and some less than 0.5% (even when subscription fee is included). Unreal also has $1,500 per seat/year subscription option if you want actual customer support (IDK how comparable this is what Unity is offering but that’s another matter).
- bfrog 3y agoSurely one of those should be the person who induced their demise?
- jncfhnb 3y agoThe ceo is gone
- ffgjgf1 3y agoI wonder how many millions they paid him to “resign”?
- bfrog 3y agoWhat about the rest of the C suite and board?
- antgly 3y agoSection 174?
- fxtentacle 3y agoI'm surprised that their attempt at double-dipping their customer's revenue backfired into only 25% in expected revenue loss. Among my acquaintances, they are now actively being avoided as an engine. Their asset store is still helpful, though. And with good open source competition like Stride (shown at GDC and C# + visual editor like Unity), I'm guessing that getting anyone to buy into a financially unpredictable and technically unstable engine like Unity is a very tough sell.
- jay_kyburz 3y agoI think Unity still has a large moat. There are many amazing features of Unity that a lot of people take for granted, and its not until you go shopping around that you realize how far ahead Unity is. Don't get me wrong, I would rather be working on any other engine. Unreal is great, but its very heavy, and blueprints - yuck. The core team at Godot don't understand the needs of developers and it's very buggy. You wouldn't choose it if you don't want to be in the business of fixing bugs in your engine.
- kramerger 3y ago> The core team at Godot don't understand the needs of developers Didn't godot start as an in-house engine in a gamedev company?
- bootloop 3y agoYes but from the big picture perspective Unity does get paid by bigger companies for features which trickle down to users. On the other side Godot does not have this bandwidth so at the moment you have to bring your own engine team for your own needs. And because of that many "unsexy" features are not as good as they could be. That said, I see a lot of movement and the Fund raised significantly in the last months. And the fact that stuff is open source helped me so much compared to Unity where you might have documentation but the feature just doesn't work and you can't figure out why..
- 3y ago
- ApolloFortyNine 3y agoObviously the charge per download attempt was moronic, but unity was already losing hundreds of millions a year. Imo they always needed a revenue share, the license model wasn't enough. I believe epic charges 5% for unreal, so it's hardly unheard of. Though doing it retroactively would also be unacceptable.
- valianteffort 3y agoApples to oranges. Unreal has always been a AAA engine that anyone had access to. But fortnite became their meal ticket and could more than cover any losses incurred by reducing fees considerably. Going down to 5% was an attack against Apple/Google over their 30% fees to increase fortnite revenue. Unity have never been serious competition outside of being easier to pickup for indie developers. Trying to compete with Unreal was their mistake.
- ApolloFortyNine 3y ago>Unity have never been serious competition outside of being easier to pickup for indie developers. Trying to compete with Unreal was their mistake. Okay. Any suggestion for how unity could have avoided losing hundreds of millions of dollars? They're a game engine they naturally compete with unreal.
- kramerger 3y ago> Any suggestion for how unity could have avoided losing hundreds of millions of dollars? I dont think it's our job to solve unity's financial problems, but I am feeling generous this morning so here is some pro bono financial advice: Stop adding so much unstable eye candy to unity and focus on the stuff that most devs actually use. Some devs moved to competitors not because of money, but because the editors ridicules startup time and how buggy it was. Thats a pretty good sign of bloat, dont you think?
- johnnyanmac 3y agoas a former worker, not much would have changed. Unity mostly deals in ads and the "adpocalypse" a few years back hurt Unity as much as any of the other big names in adtech. That loss was unavoidable unless Unity made its own Fortnite. In retrospect the acquisitions were a huge mistake, but that was when the whole industry was operating off of "corner the market first" mentality. That ended suddenly and caused all the tech layoffs of 2023. Hindsight is 20:20, but this was an industry problem, not a unity problem. Tech as a whole needed to shift away from promising explosive growth, but with the AI craze we are still far from doing that.
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago[Dupe] More discussion here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38918643 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38918643
- PeterStuer 3y agoSo they have around 7.200 people now? I know beyond a certain size it's mostly about internal empire building, but seriously, what do these prople do on a day to day basis? If it is in line with some observations I see in the industry, the biggest 'boom' in workforce growth has been in internal facing secondary processes. Especially HR related functions a went through the roof, and general administration and finance had a big push as well. In primary processes most growth was in supporting roles; management, strategy & vision, process control etc., not so much in the actual core technical production roles. Do your observations match?
- HellDunkel 3y agoHere is my take: The company could not sustain itself since its beginning and always needed vc money- specially for growth. But growth somehow became the modus operandi and that did not change with the IPO. Fresh money was coming in but certainly not enough to live up to overhyped expectations such as building a creator market, serving a yet to come "metaverse" and competing with fortnite-funded epic games. The company tried to get into many different markets simulanteously and underestimated the associated costs. At the same time technology did not advance as quickly as desired and vr & metaverse went nowhere.
- nicbou 3y agoMy cynical, reactionary and probably incorrect take is that a bunch of people grafted themselves to a successful industry, and got in on the cushy jobs. Tech had enough money to absorb all these new workers that provided little value. This is how you got things like Chief Happiness Officers and inflated manager count. Now the economy is contracting and debt is more expensive, so a lot of fat should get trimmed. The tooth-to-tail ratio has to go up again. However nobody wants to admit that their own job should be cut, so these roles won't just vanish, and these people won't just change careers.
- Kinrany 3y ago> However nobody wants to admit that their own job should be cut, so these roles won't just vanish, and these people won't just change careers. I don't understand this sentence. Jobs are not created by people who want jobs.