Unity, one of the most popular game engines in the world, has laid off 600 employees and also plans to cut down its office locations from 58 to 30. The global tech industry has already seen a record number of layoffs across major tech firms recently, and this is the third time in the past year thatUnityhas reduced its workforce.
The Unity engine has been used to develop some of the most popular games available today, including titles likePokemon Go,Cuphead,Rust,Genshin Impact, and many others. Apart from console and PC games, it has also been used to develop VR and mobile games, which puts it right next toEpic’s Unreal Engine in terms of widespread usage and popularity. However, Unity was also forced to rethink its strategy amid the global tech slowdown, which eventually led to company-wide layoffs.
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As reported by Wall Street Journal, Unity’s total workforce has been reduced by around 8%, and this takes the tally of laid-off employees to over 1,000. The first round of layoffs came in January 2022, which saw 285 people being let go, and the second one came in June 2022, when anadditional 300 Unity employees were laid off. Unity’s CEO, John Riccitiello, said, “It’s all about setting ourselves up for higher growth” and emphasized that it was a bid to improve the company’s profitability and streamline its operations.
Unity announced its first-ever profitable quarter in 2022 after being established in 2004, with a record revenue of $1.39 billion. However, the forecasts for the month of June 2023 have reportedly gone down and the company’s share price has taken a dip owing to that. This hasn’t stopped it from investing in new technologies asUnity previously acquired Ziva Dynamics, which helps developers create realistic human characters using a combination of machine learning and biomechanics. Before that, it also acquired Peter Jackson’s VFX studio, Weta Digital, which was another strategic move to bolster Unity’s position in the industry.
Unity CEO John Riccitiello also stirred up controversyin the past by claiming that developers who don’t monetize their games are “the most beautiful and pure, brilliant people. They’re also some of the biggest idiots.” Many believed this was an insult to developers, especially considering Riccitiello is the former CEO of EA, which was heavily criticized for its use of loot boxes inStar Wars: Battlefront 2.
With these layoffs, Unity has now joined Microsoft and Amazon, which announced massive layoffs in Xbox and Luna, respectively, alongside other developers like EA and Take-Two Interactive that have also announced several job cuts.
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