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General thoughts on Unity and why this New Plan(tm) is happening:
What's happening now is terrible and misguided but Unity are desperate for cash. I don't think most developers begrudge Unity getting a price increase. It's the implementation of that increase.
But the larger picture is - Unity needs cash. Badly. And that's cause for concern beyond this recent plan.
Unity needs to get their costs under control. They are bleeding cash to the tune of nearly a billion a year (in 2022). Check out page 48 from the February 10K (linked at bottom), last three years 2020-2022 shown below. Headcount and dev spending, sales & marketing, even G&A (legal, finance, IT, services, etc.) are far outpacing the revenue growth.
In early May, they said they planned to lay off 600 employees.
And now we have this cash grab plan to tax game installs, trying to monetize already shipped games by dubious means.
Employee Growth: 4001, 5245, 7703 (+93% in 2 years)
R&D spending: $404M, $696M, $959M (+137% in 2 years)
They acquired Weta Digital in December 2021, so that's presumably a big chunk of 2022's R&D increase.
Sales and marketing: $216M, 345M, $498M (+131% in 2 years)
General and administrative: $255M, $348M, $373M (+46% in 2 years)
Total operating expenses: $875M, 1389M, $1831M (+109% in 2 years)
Revenue: $772M, $1110M, $1391M (+80% in 2 years)
Loss from operations: $275M, $532M, $882M
NOTE: I modified (with permission) a message from a friend and veteran game developer of 25 years. He did all the heavy lifting collecting the data.
#gamedev #indiedev #indiegamedeveloper #indiegamedev #unity3d #madewithunity
What's happening now is terrible and misguided but Unity are desperate for cash. I don't think most developers begrudge Unity getting a price increase. It's the implementation of that increase.
But the larger picture is - Unity needs cash. Badly. And that's cause for concern beyond this recent plan.
Unity needs to get their costs under control. They are bleeding cash to the tune of nearly a billion a year (in 2022). Check out page 48 from the February 10K (linked at bottom), last three years 2020-2022 shown below. Headcount and dev spending, sales & marketing, even G&A (legal, finance, IT, services, etc.) are far outpacing the revenue growth.
In early May, they said they planned to lay off 600 employees.
And now we have this cash grab plan to tax game installs, trying to monetize already shipped games by dubious means.
Employee Growth: 4001, 5245, 7703 (+93% in 2 years)
R&D spending: $404M, $696M, $959M (+137% in 2 years)
They acquired Weta Digital in December 2021, so that's presumably a big chunk of 2022's R&D increase.
Sales and marketing: $216M, 345M, $498M (+131% in 2 years)
General and administrative: $255M, $348M, $373M (+46% in 2 years)
Total operating expenses: $875M, 1389M, $1831M (+109% in 2 years)
Revenue: $772M, $1110M, $1391M (+80% in 2 years)
Loss from operations: $275M, $532M, $882M
NOTE: I modified (with permission) a message from a friend and veteran game developer of 25 years. He did all the heavy lifting collecting the data.
#gamedev #indiedev #indiegamedeveloper #indiegamedev #unity3d #madewithunity
My fear is that Unity is in such a hole that they won't even be able to walk back The Plan too much. They have something like 1.5b in cash and some other things, but at their current burn rate they are in big trouble in 2-3 years.
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