Unity really showing the world how to tank a business by letting a few MBA’s at the top make a decision for profit.
Sure, you can argue that said investors are treating the business as nothing but a vehicle "for profit", but that framing loses something essential. You can have profit and be a player in something mutually beneficial. In fact you need profit to be sustainable.
(† Yes, I know the growth potential from real-time to rendered. I still think it's a terrible investment.)
Unity used some of their tech in 2022 to create a demo with some lions in it.
The film was shot almost entirely in Unity, then the final render used some extra stuff and other tools. But the scenes, shots, etc were done in Unity. A quick google shows you this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WupuXjvO9uA Making of videos on Youtube, you see the Unity editor in many places while they film in VR
In contrast, Unreal Engine rendered scenes seems to be used in actual footages on some recent shows. Was Unity acquisitions of CGI firms meant to pursue this direction, or boost Unity editor usage during firm production like in Lion King?
It is possible but I don't know. Just was trying to point out that it's more than just some demo that it was used for.
This isn't really true though, their core business is and was profitable if you exclude all the of acquisitions junk, stock shenanigans, and loans to pay for it they have been doing.
It just didn't have the margins expected of a public company and so they did all that other junk to pump those numbers.
"We're profitable if you ignore all the things we're spending money on"
Not all the things, just their unprofitable side business attempts. It's like knowing a guy with a well paying job who always complains he is broke. But he conveniently never mentions that he's spending $4500 per month on a Lamborghini lease.
They pay their employees and executives in stock. They'd have to spend much more cash if they stopped doing that.
I implore devs to watch any of the business 101 class they think they’re too smart for
In many ways it's the best form of socialism, cheaper products and services provided to the people, paid for by investors who are rolling the dice on a pyramid scheme posing as a business model. Completely voluntary and works even within a capitalist system.
Now all we have to do is hope Unity goes under really quickly, then gets bought up for cheap by a business either willing to make far less as their investment was well below the cost of development for the tools... or that another sucker comes along to buy them at a higher price to either enter the market or expand their own dominance in it as they are still on their "chase growth" curve.
They are in the perpetual growth trap that so many of these companies fall into when they get bigger than a niche audience
Talk about the consequences of letting a bunch of incompetent MBAs loose at the top.
They had more than enough revenue to be profitable.
Avid survived. Unity will too
Ghe whole situation is somewhat similar to when GameMaker Studio switched to subscription model.
95% of shitty tech industry practices can be root caused to people identify more strongly with their employer than with their profession. We desperately need a professional organization / union with teeth and the main thing that should be shunned is rhetoric that divides rather than unites it .
Engineers can hang together or hang separately.
Other cases include if you've got a house that's not paid off, a child on the way... that's where common sense says to not change anything major due to the consequences of shit going down very very VERY hard.
It's a several hundred dollar product that supports a dev team in the low double digits. It's niche, but it's not THAT niche.
Oh... and... "Not all MBAs"
I mean, Unity's just the latest example. Before it came Hashicorp and Docker. I'm sure we could think of many more examples if we tried.
And what's really frustrating is that if these businesses had focused on simply "building a product the community wanted, supporting that community, and making enough money to comfortably keep going" - all of them could have been successful.
I'd really love to see the tech community try more models that simply aim for comfortable sustainability - not astronomical growth. You know, enough to pay a modest engineering team market salaries indefinitely while they continue to support and develop the product.
Canonical example: MailChimp
The founders retained essentially all the equity (Atlanta), so when push came to shove they decided "Fuck it, we'd rather be rich than work" and sold the company.
It feels like the only way to avoid this would be aligning the equity structure with employees and customers in a better way.
I think the takeaway is that businesses built around a community really should not go public.
I'm not sure the profit part will work out for them in the long run.