Hacker News Reader

How much does/did Unity charge for the top games that use their engine? How else do they generate revenue (and profit)? How do they compete with Unreal? Is Unreal more successful of the two?

View on HN

The thing with Unreal is that it doesn’t really even have to be very profitable. Epic would need a game engine of their own anyway. As long as their own games that use it make money, everything else is just extra gravy.

Unity’s only revenue streams are their game engine and their advertising platform.

Edit: I forgot they also have an asset store.

They also have a services product line for gameserver hosting (Apex Legends uses it), voice/text chat (Riot Games uses it), and a few other things.

https://unity.com/solutions/gaming-services

If I remember right, Unity's largest revenue source is their asset store, followed by mobile in-game ads.

That's not correct. They don't even mention the asset store in their annual reports or shareholder letters any more, but in 2020 the Asset Store revenue was part of a category that was less than 8% of revenue. Their main revenue drivers are their ad solutions and engine licensing for large studios.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com