IronSource is known for leveraging their ad network and installers to distribute spam, malware, and adware bundlers. What the fuck Unity.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.benedelman.org/news-021815/" rel="nofollow">https://www.benedelman.org/news-021815/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://blog.infostruction.com/2018/10/26/adware-empire-ironsource-and-installcore/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.infostruction.com/2018/10/26/adware-empire-iron...</a>
It's the end of the road for Unity. ( at least what most of us think Unity still is, but it's not )<p>The technology was always more or less "fine". Unreal Engine didn't "kill" Unity and it will not in the future.<p>For the better part of a decade, Unity tried to become not-sure-what but way more than "just a game engine", and that's the problem, I don't know exactly what and neither do they.<p>To be clear, Unity is not "dead" and will not be dead for a while, but the writing is on the wall with this "merger".<p>I'm not sure how is Boeing and who is McDonnell Douglas but I already wrote the off my mind.
<i>> If you don’t know ironSource, they bring a proven record of helping creators focus on what creators do best – bringing great apps and user experiences to life – while enabling business expansion in the app economy. ironSource’s suite of tools and solutions provides the majority of the world’s top games and many of the leading non-gaming apps with the monetization, marketing, analytics, and discovery capabilities they need to build and run scalable app-based businesses.</i><p>I'm sorry. I must be dense. I still don't understand what IronSource does. I thought, from the name, that it was like Perforce, but that is obviously not correct.
They have a sub-title in their article "Redefining the game engine – this is more than ads"<p>Then they go on to say "Advertising has long been and we believe will continue to be the economic engine for mobile games, driving players into their games and driving revenue at scale"<p>Then finally "It also reinforces our strong conviction in the long-term strength and growth of the in-game advertising business"<p>Seems like they are just doubling down on the ads in games mainstream...
> With ironSource, Unity will take the linear process of making games and RT3D content and experiences and make it an interconnected and interactive one - creating the opportunity to innovate and improve at every step of the cycle.<p>> What if that process was no longer "first create; then monetize?” What if creators had an engine for live games that by default enabled them to gain early indicators of success for their games through user acquisition of their prototype, and gave them a feedback loop to improve their games based on real player interactions as early in the process as possible?<p>Sounds like utter nonsense to me. Does anyone have an optimistic take on what this is trying to say in a good direction? I'm reading it as shipping more unfinished games, possibly with more ads
Been using Unity for almost 2 years. Had no wavering when Unreal demoed lumen, metahumans, etc, nor when Unity doubled down on mobile games (even though it's not my market). I've always liked how Unity doesn't respond to what other engines are doing and instead has just forged forward with what they've always worked toward; it's always been ol' reliable in terms of functionality and future.<p>However, I don't know how to interpret this in any other way than an exit plan for Unity. It's not an aquisition of ironSource, but a merger; this alone is a big change, but the release itself paints a clear picture of a complete reversal for unity: rather than being a capable dev tool for all platforms + non-games, it looks like they're now going to focus entirely on mobile and non-game applications? That's finally enough for me to consider a new engine (probably Unreal, maybe Godot).<p>I'm not inherently against whatever this hand-wavy solution to "first create; then monetize" is they're proposing, even though it'll 100% result in more low-effort, highly-monetized games that already plague the industry. I still have a lot of faith in Unity as a company and a paradigm pivot like this <i>could</i> result in something new if they play their cards right but... this being a merger puts a big question mark on what cards they'll have left to play when merging their deck with ironSource.<p>In short: there's a small chance this news will be very good long-term, but a high chance this news will turn out very bad for the future of Unity and unity devs that don't want to work with the kind of scammy monetization ironSource is known for.
I, for one, am happy for this merger / acquisition.<p>As a mobile games developer, I feel that Unity as a <i>game engine</i> has lost its way in the last few years, and the recent acquisitions reflect that. Instead of capitalizing on its merits and strengths - an easy-to-bootstrap multi-platform engine which is <i>perfect</i> for mobile development - Unity has opted to try and compete in the AAA/AAA-like market against Unreal. The recent announcments and the features actually being delivered from Unity support that strategic transition, and this leaves the engine in a state of constant conflict with itself.<p>Ask anyone who tried to integrate a 3rd party advertisment engine into their game and you'll understand why including a 'default' or an easy-to-bootstrap advertising and user-acquisition tool is a good move. This will hopefully streamline what is nowadays a less than ideal process. That is, if the merger will be capitalized upon instead of just serving the stock owners.
I don't recognize this company anymore. What a gibberish announcement. Their game engine is hardly discussed. Apparently the future is ads on mobile apps.
Some folks in this thread are characterizing this as a one-sided acquisition but what I did not realize was that ironSource is a public company<p>ironSource ltd: mkt cap ~3bn
Unity ltd: mkt cap 10bn<p>This is an all-stock deal <a href="https://seekingalpha.com/news/3856307-ironsource-surges-after-unity-agrees-to-acquire-in-44b-all-stock-deal" rel="nofollow">https://seekingalpha.com/news/3856307-ironsource-surges-afte...</a><p>Ironsource also has 30-50% the number of employees as Unity:<p><a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ironsource" rel="nofollow">https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/ironsource</a>
<a href="https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/unity-technologies" rel="nofollow">https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/unity-technologies</a><p>So this definitely can be characterized as a merger.
<i>"This tighter integration between Unity’s Create and Operate means a more powerful flywheel and data feedback loop that further supports creators’ success and understanding of what’s working between gameplay, design and their monetization efforts."</i><p>Aargh. Now what, built-in NFTs?<p>Ads in games have mostly been failures. You can sell items to your users, but ads in games are a bad fit. Either they interrupt gameplay, or they're ignored in-game product placement. This is also true for "metaverse" systems. It's not clear there's any role for "brands" in the metaverse. The systems which are profitable don't have them.
This is an ad platform, like unity ads.<p><a href="https://developers.is.com/ironsource-mobile/unity/unity-plugin/#step-1" rel="nofollow">https://developers.is.com/ironsource-mobile/unity/unity-plug...</a>
Nit for @dang or OP - it's ironSource not IronSource<p>(This comment is not an endorsement of the merger which I'm personally not a fan of - we get an ad/installer company merging with the biggest non-AAA game engine company which creates all sort of problematic incentives)
Unity must be in more trouble than I thought. There's no way a game engine company that's doing well would merge with a company like this. They're reporting earnings in a month, so it must be pretty bad.
For those who are considering other engines, try Godot Engine. It's open source and free to use.
<a href="https://godotengine.org/" rel="nofollow">https://godotengine.org/</a>
Not sure what to think about this.<p>I was hoping unity would be <i>the way</i> for the indie studio to build AAA experiences (and indeed it seems to have already achieved that in some areas), but this kind of <i>merger</i> makes me skeptical about the long-term viability of that vision.<p>I do currently hold a long position in Unity, but this whole thing is starting to feel a bit yucky to me. Between Godot, UE, and the vast unknown of undeveloped engines, I think I need to re-evaluate my strategy.
Does anyone have experience shipping monetized games that do not rely on ads? Were any of these titles successful? What are your monetization models?<p>I, for one, hate ads. I will do anything to avoid using ads, but I also need to put food on the table at some point.
Unity is the most popular game engine on Steam and has majority share of the mobile game market.<p>The fact that <i>they</i> can't survive two years of a pandemic without losing hundreds of employees and accepting a merger is indicative of the relative illness of the entire game tool service industry. This is a decades-old company that didn't have enough war-chest to float a few bad years.<p>Given these market realities, one should not expect quality of life in the games industry to improve without unionization or government intervention.
If anyone is looking for a Unity alternative, the guys at rbfx are doing a great job revamping the old Urho3D codebase: <a href="https://github.com/rbfx/rbfx" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/rbfx/rbfx</a><p>It has good C# scripting support, a nice editor and modern rendering pipeline.
Unreal Engine having a field day with this one. Honestly I'm super disappointed in Unity and I regret having purchased so many plugins on their store that I never even used.<p>Soon we will only have Unreal Engine dominating the scene as Unity essentially just signed their own demise.
So glad I ditched unity for unreal a year ago.<p>Instead of chasing the ecs waterfalls they should have been iterating on their product... Or actually shipped one of their next gen features within a reasonable timeline.
From Wikipedia:<p><pre><code> ironSource focuses on developing technologies for app
monetization and distribution, with its core products
focused on the app economy.</code></pre>
This, right after laying off HUNDREDS of staff ...<p>Source: <a href="https://kotaku.com/unity-ironsource-merger-ad-tech-layoffs-1849173304" rel="nofollow">https://kotaku.com/unity-ironsource-merger-ad-tech-layoffs-1...</a>
It'll be very interesting to see the impact on the games market 5 years from now on this, no competant business is going to use Unity for new projects after this.