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[IbizaPocholo]

Sources: Unity Laying Off Hundreds Of Staffers [Update]

Management at the company behind the free game development engine has been a ‘shit show’ recently, sources say

kotaku.com

Unity, the company behind the popular game development engine of the same name, has recently laid off hundreds of staffers, multiple sources tell Kotaku.

Layoffs have afflicted Unity’s offices across the globe. Sources tell Kotaku that pretty much every corner of the company has taken some sort of hit, though there’s a concentration in the AI and engineering departments. On Blind, the anonymous messaging board commonly used by employees in the tech industry, Unity staffers say that roughly 300 or 400 people have been let go, and that layoffs are still ongoing. Kotaku’s sources have said the same.

Those who lost jobs this week were asked by their bosses to suddenly log into a video call, with no advance notice of what the call was about. But for some of these calls, a member of Unity’s human resources department also logged into the meeting. (In those situations, it’s usually pretty clear what that means.)

Unity is continuing to pay those who’ve been laid off for a month, and offering a further month of severance and COBRA health coverage after that. Affected staffers are also eligible to apply to other open jobs in the firm. But here’s the catch: The company has reportedly enacted a hiring freeze across all departments.

 

[adamsapple]

Fucking sucks. Hope all these folks are able to land on their feet quick.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Now....this is is News.

Edit: "The news about the layoffs contradicts a meeting two weeks ago in front of all of these employees, where CEO John Riccitiello mentions that the company isn’t in any financial trouble, nor would there be layoffs in the company"

 

[Grildon Tundy]

I wonder if Epic's Unreal engine being more accessible to indie developers plays a part in this.

 

[Havoc2049]

Layoffs all over the tech sector right now. Strap in for the ride everyone.

 

[Shifty]

Unity has been a “shit show” lately, one person familiar with the situation, who requested anonymity for fear of reprisal, told Kotaku. Attrition. Mismanagement. Strategic pivots at a rapid, unpredictable rate. Unity has also gone on a bit of an acquisition spree lately. Last year, Unity purchased the digital effects studio Weta—founded by film director Peter Jackson and known for its work on the Avatar and Lord of the Rings films—for $1.62 billion. In August, Unity acquired Parsec, which leverages cloud tech to allow users to stream video games, for $320 million.

Thoughts and prayers to those affected.

BUT

You're lying to me, and lying to yourself, if you don't feel the slightest hint of schadenfreude over the engine that invented asset flips and 'baby's first steam early access game' finally sinking under its own weight.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

Thoughts and prayers to those affected.

BUT

You're lying to me, and lying to yourself, if you don't feel the slightest hint of schadenfreude over the engine that invented asset flips and 'baby's first steam early access game' finally sinking under its weight.

It seems like it was the only competitor to Unreal. Clearly is not. I wonder if there an actual drawback to use unity over unreal. I keep hearing unity is easy to learn.

 

[Black_Stride]

I wonder if Epic's Unreal engine being more accessible to indie developers plays a part in this.

Unity is still the number one engine for indies.
Nothing has really changed in the license between UE4.2x and UE5.

Unitys mobile footprint is still better than Unreals in like for like testing, obviously if you have a Ubisoft sized team to do the profiling and optimizing you could probably get Unreal to run better.

This is likely just to do with Unity Technologies growing too fast and at some point they just asked themselves....why do we need all these people, or that department, what are we even doing?

Unity Technologies just needs some focus.

 

[Shifty]

It seems like it was the only competitor to Unreal. Clearly is not. I wonder if there an actual drawback to use unity over unreal. I keep hearing unity is easy to learn.

There are plenty of engines out there for aspiring indies and pro teams alike, though Unity, Unreal and Godot are arguably the only ones that ship a 'fully integrated' experience with an editor, plugin ecosystem, and various other stuff already in place. They're very approachable, so have ended up as the most well-known.

Though, unpopular opinion, all three of those engines suck balls because of that integrated presentation. Too much surface area black-boxed away behind pretty abstractions that bring in the punters, but don't help for shit when they ship broken or are insufficient to solve a given problem.

'Framework' engines designed to be used as libraries in a programming language (Bevy, for example) are a much better approach. They're not so pick-up-and-play because you need coding experience, and maybe you'll have to build an old-school debug mode into your game instead of having an editor, but not being built UI-first makes a world of difference for their (and by extension, your) software design. It really is the difference maker between you fighting the tools versus the tools fighting for you.

Anecdotally, hearing quotes like "you have to become the engine whisperer" from AAA notables in the context of working with big-name commercial engines - I believe that one was Randy Pitchford talking about Unreal in some making of interview - is the worst. It's only because the tools are so entrenched in decades-old design that the problem has to be solved through attrition.

 

[Three]

It seems like it was the only competitor to Unreal. Clearly is not. I wonder if there an actual drawback to use unity over unreal. I keep hearing unity is easy to learn.

Unity's marketshare of games (mobile) is higher but i suspect its business isn't doing so well compared to Unreal and Epic who have other sources of revenue too.

 

[Elder Legend]

Good. This engine fucking sucks and deserves to go down in the hell hole. Sucks for the job losses but they are better off getting a job in a better place anyways. Fuck Unity.

 

[ChorizoPicozo]

There are plenty of engines out there for aspiring indies and pro teams alike, though Unity, Unreal and Godot are arguably the only ones that ship a 'fully integrated' experience with an editor, plugin ecosystem, and various other stuff already in place. They're very approachable, so have ended up as the most well-known.

Though, unpopular opinion, all three of those engines suck balls because of that integrated presentation. Too much surface area black-boxed away behind pretty abstractions that bring in the punters, but don't help for shit when they ship broken or are insufficient to solve a given problem.

'Framework' engines designed to be used as libraries in a programming language (Bevy, for example) are a much better approach. They're not so pick-up-and-play because you need coding experience, and maybe you'll have to build an old-school debug mode into your game instead of having an editor, but not being built UI-first makes a world of difference for their (and by extension, your) software design. It really is the difference maker between you fighting the tools versus the tools fighting for you.

Anecdotally, hearing quotes like "you have to become the engine whisperer" from AAA notables in the context of working with big-name commercial engines - I believe that one was Randy Pitchford talking about Unreal in some making of interview - is the worst. It's only because the tools are so entrenched in decades-old design that the problem has to be solved through attrition.

Once I had an argument with someone on Twitter. He was saying third party engines were the future, no one will use their "own" engine.

It seems like the moment you a trying to push and engine to their limits or make something the engine "dosen't like" you will struggle with it.

I dunno...if your are trying to make cookie-cutter stuff you could use this engines just fine. The risk of course is even less innovation in mechanics or/and game design.

But who knows. John Lasseter said something about that tools are just tools. They shouldn't drive art...or something like that.

 

[Dane]

Unity was going big when they turned public, bought Weta and Parsec, but from what i've seen in the last few years is that most indies and AA developers which are a major portion of their marketing have been moving since UE4, it tends to be a much easier to deal with at editor level and has superior visual features out of the box, it might have hit them at the long term.

There are plenty of engines out there for aspiring indies and pro teams alike, though Unity, Unreal and Godot are arguably the only ones that ship a 'fully integrated' experience with an editor, plugin ecosystem, and various other stuff already in place. They're very approachable, so have ended up as the most well-known.

Though, unpopular opinion, all three of those engines suck balls because of that integrated presentation. Too much surface area black-boxed away behind pretty abstractions that bring in the punters, but don't help for shit when they ship broken or are insufficient to solve a given problem.

'Framework' engines designed to be used as libraries in a programming language (Bevy, for example) are a much better approach. They're not so pick-up-and-play because you need coding experience, and maybe you'll have to build an old-school debug mode into your game instead of having an editor, but not being built UI-first makes a world of difference for their (and by extension, your) software design. It really is the difference maker between you fighting the tools versus the tools fighting for you.

Anecdotally, hearing quotes like "you have to become the engine whisperer" from AAA notables in the context of working with big-name commercial engines - I believe that one was Randy Pitchford talking about Unreal in some making of interview - is the worst. It's only because the tools are so entrenched in decades-old design that the problem has to be solved through attrition.

The root issue is that companies rarely train, there's a cycle where employees are not loyal to companies, so companies don't train them to save money, but then developers are more unlikely to stay at the company because they weren't trained. That's why you have studios switching to UE4 and now studios who were flaked like CDPR are switching to UE5 despite having state of art technology, because you obviously don't have candidates and new hires with the proprietary engine experience and a very dysfunctional management, so the choice 90% of the time is to save time on tech than solving management issues. Capcom going on the opposite direction (and soon Bandai Namco) is more of an exception to a wave.

 

[fran.fernandez]

luckily I didn’t accept a job for graphics programming last year in Tokyo.

 

[Magic Carpet]

What Unreal Mandalorian style special effects shows are being used with Unity currently?

 

[Schrade]

Can this news be remade in Unreal Engine 5 so I can process it correctly?

 

[Miyazaki’s Slave]

Good. This engine fucking sucks and deserves to go down in the hell hole. Sucks for the job losses but they are better off getting a job in a better place anyways. Fuck Unity.

Tell me you have never been a software developer of any actual merit without telling me you have never been a software developer of any actual merit.

A tool is a tool folks, if you know how to use said tool you can do great things!

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

.

 

[Shifty]

Oh no, I wonder where things went wrong?
Totally unrelated pic btw

A tool is a tool folks

 

[Black_Stride]

Good. This engine fucking sucks and deserves to go down in the hell hole. Sucks for the job losses but they are better off getting a job in a better place anyways. Fuck Unity.

Its like the only viable mobile engine for smaller teams?
Hell id go as far as to say for a really small/new team its the only viable engine to get your product to market with.

I take it you have never actually developed anything before, cuz getting Unreal to work well on weaker hardware is practically impossible without a borderline EA sized time to help with optimization and cleaning all the bloat thats within Unreal.
Godot has hope but theyve someways to go before they have the usability of Unity.
Unigine.....lets not even talk about Unigine.

 

[Skifi28]

Fuck Unity.

Please no, this is how they multiply.

 

[gundalf]

What a coincidence that I got a job offer the other day.
But as someone who wins his bread with Unity since 2014 I have to say that Unity went on a very strange journey since they aimed for IPO and the situation is getting worse.
And I'm sorry to have to say it, but as a paying customer I want Unity to scratch all their stupid sidetracked endeavours and concentrate on the engine and the cinematic stuff and NOTHING else.

 

[FingerBang]

Good. This engine fucking sucks and deserves to go down in the hell hole. Sucks for the job losses but they are better off getting a job in a better place anyways. Fuck Unity.

Non developers be like "DUURRRR THIS ENGINE SUCKS DURRRRR".

Unity actually is a pleasure to work with and it's easier to use than UE, that's why you get a crapton of shitty games. The entry barrier is lower.
But you know what games have been made in Unity? I'll name a few so you can understand how stupid your comment is:

Cuphead
Hollow Knight
Ori and the Blind Forest
Ori and the Will of the Wisp
Subnautica
Inside
Beat Saber
Tunic

Seriously, that's a simple list from the top of my head. If you think those are crappy games then you have bigger problems to worry about than the engine.

 

[GHG]

Winter is coming.

 

[ParaSeoul]

Good. This engine fucking sucks and deserves to go down in the hell hole. Sucks for the job losses but they are better off getting a job in a better place anyways. Fuck Unity.

Non developers be like "DUURRRR THIS ENGINE SUCKS DURRRRR".

Unity actually is a pleasure to work with and it's easier to use than UE, that's why you get a crapton of shitty games. The entry barrier is lower.
But you know what games have been made in Unity? I'll name a few so you can understand how stupid your comment is:

Cuphead
Hollow Knight
Ori and the Blind Forest
Ori and the Will of the Wisp
Subnautica
Inside
Beat Saber
Tunic

Seriously, that's a simple list from the top of my head. If you think those are crappy games then you have bigger problems to worry about than the engine.

Its like the only viable mobile engine for smaller teams?
Hell id go as far as to say for a really small/new team its the only viable engine to get your product to market with.

I take it you have never actually developed anything before, cuz getting Unreal to work well on weaker hardware is practically impossible without a borderline EA sized time to help with optimization and cleaning all the bloat thats within Unreal.
Godot has hope but theyve someways to go before they have the usability of Unity.
Unigine.....lets not even talk about Unigine.

Yeah I've noticed this a lot. People who don't know much about game engines love ragging on Unity. Youtubers also like spreading shit like that. Recent big example.

 

[Black_Stride]

Yeah I've noticed this a lot. People who don't know much about game engines love ragging on Unity. Youtubers also like spreading shit like that. Recent big example.

15 seconds of fucking bullshit.
Yuck.
Cant replicate the feel....its tool, you could make a Unity game feel like practically anything.
Its extensible and its renderer is sufficiently powerful you could make a game look like whatever you want really.

 

[Fredrik]

Non developers be like "DUURRRR THIS ENGINE SUCKS DURRRRR".

Unity actually is a pleasure to work with and it's easier to use than UE, that's why you get a crapton of shitty games. The entry barrier is lower.
But you know what games have been made in Unity? I'll name a few so you can understand how stupid your comment is:

Cuphead
Hollow Knight
Ori and the Blind Forest
Ori and the Will of the Wisp
Subnautica
Inside
Beat Saber
Tunic

Seriously, that's a simple list from the top of my head. If you think those are crappy games then you have bigger problems to worry about than the engine.

Yeah, Unity is great, and it makes me sad to see they’re struggling. The hobby dev community is amazing, extremely welcoming if you have specific C# questions and there are tons of detailed guides on Youtube. It’s so easy to get started. I just jumped in using the pack-in platformer template and evolved from there, even got it running on Steam Deck.

 

[CitizenZ]

Hundreds why would Unity have hundreds of employees? As a comparison Valve only has like 300 and Epic, prior to their online store, was like 100.

Also to those who diss, little game called EfT yesterday had over 350k watching on Twitch alone and you guessed it, was made with Unity.

 

[TVexperto]

"you can apply at other parts of unity" yeah how are they supposed to do that when they have no access to mails or slack after getting laid of and have to return their laptops within 48 hours?

 

[Black_Stride]

Hundreds why would Unity have hundreds of employees? As a comparison Valve only has like 300 and Epic, prior to their online store, was like 100.

Also to those who diss, little game called EfT yesterday had over 350k watching on Twitch alone and you guessed it, was made with Unity.

You what love?
Epic had atleast 1000 employees as far back as 2018.
Im sure now counting acquisitions and all they should easily be at 4000.

 

[Wildebeest]

I've really grown to respect Unity engine as the quality of Unity engine games has gone up over time. If anything, I dislike Unreal Engine more due to their opaque in game settings and ugly looking default post-processing filters. I suppose the next generation engine is supposed to be much improved, but I still feel that the average dev messes up less with Unity.

 

[SoloKingRobert]

I wonder if Epic's Unreal engine being more accessible to indie developers plays a part in this.

No, there's more open source Game engines like Godot...

 

[IbizaPocholo]

Unity is Laying Off Nearly 300 Employees

Unity Software, the company behind one of the most popular video game engines in the world, is letting almost 300 employees go.

gamerant.com

The CEO of Unity Software has confirmed that the company will be laying off almost 300 employees, with the brunt of these cuts impacting those working in more administrative roles like marketing and IT security.

Sadly, despite how much the company has grown over the years, a report from The Wall Street Journal says that 284 people will be let go from Unity. Company CEO John Riccitiello says there's been some reassessment in terms of "objectives, strategies, goals, and priorities," particularly given the current "economic conditions." He goes on to say that there will be some projects getting shelved, though no further details on this have been given. This comes just months after the tech firm laid off 225 employees. Riccitiello insists that these layoffs are not "to punish" employees, but have been actioned due to a refocusing of energy.

 

[64bitmodels]

guess you could say that they have no.... Unity?

 

[diffusionx]

Thoughts and prayers to those affected.

BUT

You're lying to me, and lying to yourself, if you don't feel the slightest hint of schadenfreude over the engine that invented asset flips and 'baby's first steam early access game' finally sinking under its own weight.

For me it’s the engine that struggles on every single platform and piece of hardware when things like “shadows” and “lighting” gets introduced to the frame

 

[64bitmodels]

and maybe you'll have to build an old-school debug mode into your game instead of having an editor

yea hell no id rather go for the UI approach if it means that i don't have to do that shit.

 

[SlimeGooGoo]

He goes on to say that there will be some projects getting shelved, though no further details on this have been given. This comes just months after the tech firm laid off 225 employees.

"Time to make another UI, ECS, Audio, Physics framework from scratch and deprecate the current one!"

 

[Griffon]

I'm not shocked.

Those tech companies have hired way too many people, and I have no doubt in my mind that 99% of the actual work is only done by a fraction of them.

 

[AltogetherAndrews]

With Unreal Engine being what it is, and what it’s becoming, Unity is bound to just vanish. Competition is always preferable, but the feature and accessibility gap is just insane, and it’s just going to increase.

 

[Unknown Soldier]

With Unreal Engine being what it is, and what it’s becoming, Unity is bound to just vanish. Competition is always preferable, but the feature and accessibility gap is just insane, and it’s just going to increase.

This is how I know no one in GAF has phones. Unreal Engine basically doesn't exist on mobile. Unity is the de-facto mobile games engine. It also has the largest share of the nascent VR games market.

Unreal Engine is good for making AAAA console games but that's a stagnant or declining market. Unity is the engine of growing future markets.

 

[AltogetherAndrews]

Considering the shit ton of resources that Unity has pumped into trying (and brutally failing) to compete at that ”declining” (larf) top end market with the misery that is hdrp and vfx graph, I think you may have to polish up that little crystal ball of yours.

 

[Doomtrain]

Unity is great. Unreal is also great in different ways. Unity gets a bad rap because it has a lower barrier to entry and because they force you to use their splash screen unless you pay a fee, which means lots of incredibly amateur projects get the Unity logo displayed on them. Ironically, larger studios making better products can afford to pay the fee to remove it, and thus no one knows their games use Unity.

As someone said above, you can make fantastic (or terrible) games in pretty much any engine.

 

[Feel Like I'm On 42]

Yeah I've noticed this a lot. People who don't know much about game engines love ragging on Unity. Youtubers also like spreading shit like that. Recent big example.

What a clown