We’re barely two weeks into 2024, and we’re already seeing more layoffs, this time from Unity. The company – which said it would cut jobs not long after the “runtime fee” controversy – is set to lay off 25% of its staff.
Referred to as a “company reset”
A regulatory filing (as reported by Reuters) states that Unity will be cutting back by letting approximately a quarter of its workforce go. This equates to around 1,800 jobs in total, according to the file, as the company “restructures and refocuses its core business.”
The report from Reuters states that, shortly after this announcement, Unity shares went up nearly 5%.
The company already had to issue branch closures towards the end of last year, so the news that many people are being laid off is unlikely to be a surprise.
This all seems to stem from the wake of Unity’s new fee, which forces studios to pay an additional charge whenever a game built on the Unity toolkit is installed on a user’s device. This led to a huge backlash from developers and the community.
Unity did backtrack a little bit, but many were concerned that the “runtime fee” didn’t take into account how it would handle people installing pirated copies of games. As such, a lot of independent teams and individuals felt they would be financially disadvantaged, and many promised to abandon Unity altogether.
Following the controversy, the then-CEO and chairman John Riccitiello resigned. Former IBM President is the current interim CEO of Unity at the time of writing.
