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By the end of March, a quarter of the employees of Unity Software will be let go. This is in a nutshell the information revealed by the group this week in an internal memo and a regulatory filing.
1,800 jobs will be affected, making this layoff plan the largest in Unity’s history. It follows several waves of layoffs at Unity last year. The company told Reuters that all teams and geographical areas where Unity is established will be impacted.
To understand why Unity announced these layoffs, let’s take a step back. Last year, the announcement of a new pricing policy caused an uproar among customers, forcing Unity to backtrack. In parallel, Unity’s financial results were not looking good: despite massive revenue, Unity is losing a lot of money (in the third financial quarter of 2023, $544 million in revenue, $125 million in net losses).
Following these setbacks, CEO John Riccitiello was replaced by interim CEO Jim Whitehurst.
Jim Whitehurst announced in November a ‘reset’ of the company. This included the end of the agreement with Wētā around software tools, and the closing of some offices. This layoff plan should be seen as the next step of this ‘reset.’
It remains to be seen whether this announcement will allow the group to straighten out its finances, and the impact of the layoffs on the development and support of the Unity game engine. We can also expect a continuation of the restructuring in the coming months.
