AppLovin will be caught in up in an ad fraud scandal within two years. I can't share the data but we've stopped spending any money through them due to obvious fraud. Previously we were spending ~20k/day with them.<p>To be fair, unity isn't clean either. For over a month in Q1 of this year they had a whole lot of ads where the "x" button to close was actually covered by the ad, so ~50% of ads were being clicked when a user wanted to close them.
It's a weird decision.<p>Unreal Engine is redefining game engines into something capable of creating both movies and games, and pushing the state of the art to somewhere amazing.<p>Whilst..... Unity is laying off people and leaning into low quality advertising.<p>It's weird also that the big players like Microsoft didn't swing in to buy Unity and do the same thing that Unreal is doing.<p>It's like the future of high end media is being created in this space and Unity is tossing away their second place position entirely.
Either way, Unity += ads.<p>dupe<p>2022-08-09 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32397510" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32397510</a> (AppLovin offers to buy Unity Software in $17.5 bln deal)<p>> <i>For people wondering what happens with the ironSource deal, this bid is meant to derail it.</i><p>see also<p>2022-07-14 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32097752" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32097752</a> (Gamedevs not baking in monetization are “fucking idiots”, says Unity CEO)<p>2022-07-14 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32096371" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32096371</a> (Unity is acquiring a company who made a malware installer)<p>2022-07-13 <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32081051" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32081051</a> (Unity merges with IronSource)
For those discussing the dollar amounts, it's really just a merger with AppLovin as the dominant partner [1]. It's an all-stock deal, so I don't think there's any need for external money.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/applovin-submits-bid-to-buy-unity-software-in-a-deal-valued-at-20-billion-2022-08-09" rel="nofollow">https://www.marketwatch.com/story/applovin-submits-bid-to-bu...</a>
This probably have an amazing background story.<p>AppLovin and Unity has a similar market cap, making this merger almost equal in power - which typically leads to an uphill battle in management of who has the power.<p>This first and foremost blocks the IronSource merger, and it's probably something that Unity management don't want to do. But the board must consider it or otherwise it will suffer hell of litigation from shareholders.<p>It's super interesting to see where this all leads.
Why do I get a sense that some of these companies making acquisitions are just fronts for acquisitions. Regardless, personally I see a lot more value in Unity than Twitter.