Unity Software is slashing about 25% of its workforce just eight months after announcing its prior round of layoffs.
Unity Software said Monday that it would lay off about 1,800 employees, or 25% of its overall workforce, as part of a corporate restructuring plan.
The company said it is unable to “reasonably estimate the costs and charges in connection with this reduction, which it expects will be substantially incurred in the first quarter of 2024.”
In October, John Riccitiello retired as Unity’s CEO, while former Red Hat CEO James Whitehurst became interim CEO.
It's great to see the majority of workers paying for the mistakes of that big pricing fuckup that was approved by a minority of people in power. Just a normal day for capitalism, nothing to see here.
How do you expect a business to run? Every major business decision go to a vote? Or should a company that is bleeding cash not lay off anyone until the company shuts down and everyone is out of a job?
Yes, especially when you plan to fuck over all your existing customer base, as was the case here. A lot of Unity employees knew this was a major fuck up, and would have never went with the plan
Others have already stated the second option as preferred, I'm going to offer up some more context. The obvious contemporary example of this sort of structure is a co-op. There is usually some general manager or CEO-like position that handles day-to-day operations, and major business decisions are decided by a member vote. If that is a little too on the nose, it is not uncommon to have a shareholder vote for major business changes in a more traditional, publically traded, company.
Or should a company that is bleeding cash not lay off anyone until the company shuts down and everyone is out of a job?
Y. E. S.
This isnt as absurd as you think, its not the goddamn employees fault the execs suck ass. If there are performance issues from an employee that is different, but in general these moves are wholely driven by failure at the exec level.
TBF godot is open source and has over 2300 contributors on github. Still less than unity and most of those don't get paid for their work, but saying that there are only 10 developers is not true and not fair to all of the people contributing in their free time
Not all 2300 worked full time on godot tho. Most contributors either want to add a feature and leave, or bugfix and then leave. But those 7700 unity employees sounds like full time or at least part timer to me.
It looks like Unity Software provides a lot of services related to Unity and Cloud usage of the engine. I'm guessing this is a ton of consultants.
Godot is being pushed as an alternative for indie developers who likely weren't using those services. Those services are likely being used by developers making more mainstream games like Pokemon Go and Call of Duty Mobile.
Most of their employees are likely in that realm and marketing/sales
Hoping it's not a mistake but I'm early enough in my career I'm still prepping for my first indie game and I'm currently pivoting to godot. I want to make pc and mobile titles, and I was already upset over how unity treated their customers and now they're laying off 25%... I'd rather try something else while I have time to learn
This actually could have been much worse. I heard they are trialing a system where they lay off one employee every time unity is installed, but luckily there have only been 1800 installs since September.