Founding and early success (2004–2008) Unity Technologies was founded as Over the Edge I/S (doing business as Over the Edge Entertainment) in
Copenhagen on 2 August 2004 by David Helgason (
chief executive officer), Nicholas Francis (
chief creative officer), and Joachim Ante (
chief technology officer). Over the Edge released its first game,
GooBall, in 2005. The company sought to "democratize" game development and make the development of 2D and 3D interactive content more accessible. Unity was named the runner-up for Best Use of Mac OS X Graphics at the 2006
Apple Design Awards. The company grew with the 2007 release of the
iPhone, as Unity Technologies produced one of the first engines supporting the platform in full. Because the games industry was focused on console games when the iPhone and App Store were released, Unity was positioned to support developers looking to create mobile games. Its dominance on the iPhone was largely uncontested for a couple of years.
New platforms and expansion (2009–2019) The technology was developed for different platforms. Unity games can also be deployed on the Web. In April 2012, Unity reportedly had 1 million registered developers, 300,000 of whom used Unity on a monthly basis. In May of the same year, a survey by
Game Developer revealed that approximately 53% of mobile game developers were using Unity. By 2016, the company reported more than 5.5 million registered users. Part of Unity's appeal is that it allows people who lack the technical knowledge to program games from scratch to create games and other simulations. The kit featured tools that allowed tracking advertising campaigns and
deep linking, where users were directly linked from social media posts to specific portions within games, and in-game-image sharing. Two more acquisitions followed later in 2014: Playnomics, a data analysis platform for developers (now Unity Analytics), and Tsugi, whose continuous integration service became known as Unity Cloud Build. In October 2014, Helgason announced in a blog post that he would be stepping down as CEO with
John Riccitiello, the former CEO of game company
Electronic Arts, replacing him. Helgason remained with the company as executive vice-president. Unity Technologies made a brief foray into virtual reality with their support for Chinese company
AntVR in late 2014. Unity co-developed
Legend of the Curse for the Jitao headset, but the hardware never achieved mainstream popularity. Software developer
Niantic released
Pokémon Go, which was built using Unity engine, in 2016. Following the success of
Pokémon Go, Unity Technologies held several rounds of funding that increased the company's valuation: In July 2016, a $181 million round of funding valued the company at approximately $1.5 billion; and in 2018 Unity's CEO confirmed a $145 million round that valued the company at approximately $3 billion. Also in 2016, Facebook developed PC gaming platform
Facebook Gameroom with Unity. In 2017, Unity Technologies acquired
Multiplay, a business that offers multiplayer server game hosting, from retailer
Game for £19 million. Unity Technologies released the Unity 2017 version of its platform in 2017. Unity worked with Google on ARCore in 2017 to develop
augmented reality tools for Android devices and apps. The following year, Unity Technologies worked with
Google Cloud to offer services for online game developers and
Alphabet Inc. subsidiary
DeepMind to develop virtual world artificial intelligence. The Unity platform is used to help machines through reinforced learning. For the automotive industry, carmakers use Unity's virtual reality platform for design and virtual world car testing simulations. Unity Technologies created the Unity Icon Collective in November 2018. The team creates assets for sale in the Unity Asset Store for PC and consoles. The assets—characters, environments, art, and animation—can be used in high-quality games; the move was seen as an attempt to compete with Unity's rivals, such as
Epic Games'
Unreal Engine. The company acquired
Vivox, a cross-platform voice and text chat provider based in
Framingham, Massachusetts, in January 2019. At an acquisition price of $123.4 million, the company became a wholly owned subsidiary of Unity Technologies and operates independently. In May 2019, the company confirmed a $150 million Series E funding round that increased its valuation to $6 billion. In July that year, it announced that together with
D1 Capital Partners,
CPP Investment Board, Light Street Capital,
Sequoia Capital and
Silver Lake Partners, it would fund a $525 million tender to allow Unity's common shareholders to sell their shares in the company. Unity Technologies additionally purchased game analytics company
deltaDNA in September 2019, which was later reported at a value of $53.1 million. and 3D application streaming service Furioos creator Obvioos in November 2019. That same year, Unity paid $48.8 million to acquire Artomatix, Despite growing revenues of $541.8 million, Unity also posted growing losses of $163.2 million. The company's IPO filing revealed that they reported losses of over $162.3 million in 2019, and have consistently lost money since its founding in 2004. Despite the losses, the company has consistently grown in terms of revenue and employee numbers.
Going public and further acquisitions (2020–2022) In June 2020, Unity announced that they had partnered with Apple to update the Unity Engine to run on
Apple silicon-equipped Macs with the 2020.2 release, allowing game developers to update their games to support the new hardware platform. An Apple silicon-ported version of the Unity Editor was demoed during the WWDC 2020 Platforms State of the Union event. On 17 August of that year, Unity stated that it had acquired Codice Software, who make the
distributed version control system
Plastic SCM. That same year, Unity acquired Finger Food Advanced Technology Group for $46.8 million. At the time, the company reported 1.5 million monthly users, with 150,000 new projects started daily. In December 2020, Unity announced the acquisition of the
multiplayer networking framework, MLAPI, and RestAR, a
computer vision and
deep learning company. In June 2021, it acquired Pixyz Software, a developer of 3D data optimization technology. The company announced plans to acquire
Parsec, desktop streaming software, in August 2021 for . In a cash and shares deal Unity acquired
Weta Digital for $1.63 billion in November 2021. Unity added the "Wellington-based company's 275 engineers to its workforce". The latter's visual special effects and animation teams "will continue to exist as a standalone entity", becoming Unity's "largest customer in the media and entertainment space". WetaFX remains majority owned by
Peter Jackson. November 2021 represented the high point in Unity's share price, which was likely overvalued at the time, and was followed by years of decline. In January 2022, Unity announced the acquisition of Ziva Dynamics, a Vancouver-based
VFX company. In March 2022, they announced a partnership with
Insomniac to create interactive online concerts and events. In June 2022, Unity laid off 4% of its workforce, estimated to be over 200 workers. In July 2022, Unity agreed to buy
ironSource in an all-stock deal worth US$4.4 billion. On completion of the deal, Unity shareholders will own about 73.5% of the combined company and current ironSource shareholders will keep about 26.5%. Unity will also receive a $1 billion investment from
Sequoia Capital and
Silver Lake once the deal is closed. In August 2022,
AppLovin made an unsolicited offer to buy Unity in exchange for $17.54 billion in an all-stock deal. The proposed merger would result in the former Unity CEO
John Riccitiello becoming the CEO of the combined entity. AppLovin's bid excludes ironSource, that Unity agreed to buy in July. Later that month, Unity's board rejected the offer and committed to complete its acquisition of ironSource. The ironSource merger was completed in November 2022.
Controversy, layoffs, new leadership (2023–present) In January 2023, 284 employees were
laid off. In May, Unity announced it would layoff 600 jobs, about 8% of its global workforce.
Pricing controversy In September 2023, Unity announced changes to its pricing model, introducing new Unity Runtime Fees, which charges developers based on installs past a certain threshold, depending on their Unity plan. These changes were met with negative reactions from the developer community, with many expressing dissatisfaction and concerns regarding the increased financial burden as a result of the new pricing structure, including possible damages from inaccurate installation count estimates or malicious actors, as well as fee thresholds applying retroactively. Offices across the United States were temporarily shut down and authorities were contacted due to targeted death threats. Unity released revised terms in response to the negative feedback on September 22, 2023. These changes include having no fees for Unity Personal, which can be used for projects funded up to $200,000 instead of $100,000, fees would only apply to games developed with Unity 2024 and onward without any retroactive fees, and that the fee would be based on self-reporting, the lesser of 2.5% of monthly revenue or a calculated amount based on monthly engagements. Despite the partial walkback, according to
Wired, the company's reputation could be irreparably damaged, with some developers having stated they would not return to using the company's services or products over lack of trust going forward. On October 9, 2023, Unity announced that Riccitiello would be leaving the company amid controversy, appointing
James M. Whitehurst as interim CEO and president. Another round of layoffs was announced in January 2024. Unity cut 1,800 jobs, or 25% of its workforce, as part of a "company reset". In May 2024 the company announced that Matthew Bromberg had been appointed to the role of permanent CEO, with Jim Whitehurst taking the position of Executive Chair of the board and Roelof Botha resuming his duties as Lead Independent Director of the board. In the year to May 2024, the stock price for Unity declined over 60%, with the decline attributed to business decisions over the period including the runtime fee policy. From its peak valuation of 57 billion dollars in November 2021, it had declined to 6 billion dollars by September 2024, with further revenue declines expected by market analysts.
Divestitures In November 2023, Unity announced that they would dismiss 265 employees as part of a termination of its agreement with
Weta Digital, an acquisition that they previously spent US$1.63 billion on in 2021. Unity also announced in March 2026 that they would shut down
ironSource which they previously acquired in 2022 for US$4.4 billion. == Corporate affairs ==