Unity Technologies, the company behind ridiculously popular proprietary game engine Unity has announced a merger with another company called ironSource which is raising some eyebrows.
The first thing is that Unity has been acquiring a few other companies, but this time their wording is completely different with it being a "merger". Problem is, we don't know what that really means for Unity or game developers as their press release was one of the biggest jumbles of technobabble buzzwords I've ever read. With this coming not long after Unity just sent hundreds of their staff packing, it's likely not going to be received too well.
For those who don't know ironSource, they were behind a piece of software called installCore, an installer that bundled other apps with it. Basically, it was one of those horrible pieces of tech that looked like a proper official installer but it was pretty-much nasty adware / malware and ended up getting a poor reputation (as it was abused) and started getting blocked by Microsoft and others. It's no longer around but it does make the deal between Unity and ironSource look a bit odd. Don't take my word for it either, there's plenty of articles out there about how bad it was, a basic search for "installcore malware" and similar gives lots of details on it (#1, #2, #3).
I do wonder what this means for the future of Unity. If you're a game developer, maybe it's time to consider a free and open source kit like Godot Engine. Just a thought.
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Cloversheen Jul 13, 2022
edit: Latest news is that this is no longer a merger but Unity is buying IronSource for $4.4bn in Unity stocks where share holders in IronSource will receive 0.1089 shares in the new company for each 1 share in IronSource that they currently own while Unity share holders will receive 1 share in the new company for each 1 share in Unity that they currently own.
Will be interesting to see who will be CEO and Chairman in the new combined company, my take is still that this is IronSource buying Unity with Unity:s own stock but we'll see.
Last edited by F.Ultra on 13 July 2022 at 11:15 pm UTC
TheRiddick Jul 13, 2022
A wait and see situation.
I'm not saying others don't do their share, but it always seems Unity isn't just flowing with the trend.
I so wish products had an obligation to state what engines and middleware they were built with, and to which telemetry servers they connect, before purchase and installation. I might still decide that I want to bite the apple, but please do let me know that it's poisoned, thank you.
SilverCode Jul 14, 2022
Quoting: denyasisI read the release, is there really that big of a market of devs that want to put more ads in games? Cause they seem really into making that a possibility for devs.
The question is: are ads going to be forced into the free license, or even some of the paid ones?
We could run into the situation that the end-user pays for a game and gets served ads because the dev doesn't have a financially viable option to prevent it.
Last edited by emphy on 14 July 2022 at 7:54 am UTC
Quoting: emphyQuoting: denyasisI read the release, is there really that big of a market of devs that want to put more ads in games? Cause they seem really into making that a possibility for devs.
The question is: are ads going to be forced into the free license, or even some of the paid ones?
We could run into the situation that the end-user pays for a game and gets served ads because the dev doesn't have a financially viable option to prevent it.
They way I read it, this is for the dev to choose. It doesn't make sense to force ads (force the dev to make money?). And I doubt they are adding ads to their products. That doesn't make sense to me either. It seems like they are adding more ad integration (is that the right word?) options.
Perkeleen_Vittupää Jul 14, 2022
Quoting: ImantsI was thinking about ditching unity and I tried Godot Engine and after 40h of tinkering I returned to Unity. Mostly I did not like they're scripting language and they're C# integration is not as good as in Unity. Maybe I will check Godot 4 when it comes out but for now Godot 3 it is hard pass for me
Oh no, i was under the impression that Godot is very smooth and pleasant experience, and the only problem is that devs are not aware it exists! Looks like there's a reason for it not getting more then. Not user friendly enough
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