Unity Net Worth: Will Unity Recover Following Major Pricing Controversy?

With $78 billion spent on mobile game apps every year, and 70% of the top apps built on Unity’s game engine, you might expect Unity’s net worth to be soaring right now. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

Unity’s market cap has fallen by more than 80% since its peak in November 2021, and in August 2024 it dipped to a record low of $5.5 billion. As of November 2024, Unity’s net worth stands at $7.97 billion.

In this article, we bring you an up-to-date look at Unity’s financial performance and the state of the company behind the scenes. We’ll also delve into the history of Unity Software Inc. to understand what has brought the company to its current position.

What is Unity’s Net Worth? 

The net worth of Unity Software Inc, the parent company of Unity Technologies, is $7.97 billion. This figure is also known as the company’s market cap. This is based on a stock price of $20.08 and 396.86 million share outstanding.

Unity Software has been publicly traded since September 17, 2020. At its IPO, the company was valued at $13.7 billion, with 25 million shares sold for $52 each; the value having been raised from an initial target of $34-$42 per share.

Unity continued to perform well in the months following its IPO, buoyed by the pandemic gaming boom and hype around the metaverse. In November 2021, its market capitalization reached $55 billion and its stock price peaked at over $200.

However, the first half of 2022 saw Unity stock plunge by 74% as its excessive valuation came to light and investors lost interest in the metaverse. The company has failed to recover since then. The situation was made worse when, at the end of 2023, Unity controversially announced a new pricing structure that it has since had to roll back under pressure from its developer community.

As of Q2 2024, Unity is yet to report a profitable quarter. The company’s market cap dropped to a new low of $5.5 billion on August 7, 2024 – just 10% of the value it had previously achieved.

Unity Software Inc. usually releases its end-of-year financial results around mid-February the following calendar year.

Unity Software Revenue

Unity reported revenue of $2.19 billion in 2023, an increase of 57.25% from the previous year. However, this record income was offset by increased costs and the company posted a net loss of $822 million.

Unity reports its revenue in two segments:

• Create Solutions: Tools and services for developers to build and run real-time 2D and 3D content across a range of industries, enhanced by cloud services.
  • 2023 revenue for Create Solutions: $859 million
• Grow Solutions: Products to help users publish and monetize their content and grow their customer base.
  • 2023 revenue for Grow Solutions: $1,328 million

Unity Software currently doesn’t pay dividends to investors and, according to its most recent annual report, does not intend to for the foreseeable future. This leaves investors to rely on increases in share value for any return on investment.

Who Owns Unity?

The Unity game engine is owned by Unity Technologies. As a publicly traded company, its parent company Unity Software Inc. is owned by a number of institutional and individual shareholders. As of October 2024, 65.3% of Unity’s shares outstanding are held by institutions.

The largest institutional shareholder is Sequoia Capital with a 9.95% share worth around $895 million. The largest individual shareholder is company Director Tomer Bar-Zeev, also CEO and co-founder of ironSource, who owns 5.6 million shares.

Prior to going public, Unity Software had several rounds of funding that helped raise the company’s value and enable it to expand into new areas.

The first round, led by Sequoia Capital in 2009, raised $5.5 million and was pivotal in helping Unity expand beyond indie game developers to support large-scale game developers.

In 2016, a round of Series C funding led by DFJ Growth raised $181 million and valued the company at $1.5 billion, cementing its unicorn status. This capital was used to invest further in AR/VR, while also expanding beyond gaming into film, automotive, and architecture applications.

By May 2019, the company’s valuation had quadrupled to $6 billion when Series E funding raised another $150 million. Shortly after this, a secondary offer allowed existing shareholders to sell $525 million of shares to new investors.

Who is the Unity CEO?

The CEO of Unity Software is Matthew Bromberg. He was appointed in May 2024 to take over from Interim CEO Jim Whitehurst. Bromberg previously spent six years as COO of the mobile gaming monolith Zynga and has over 20 years of experience in the gaming industry.

Whitehurst was appointed to the interim role when Unity’s previous CEO, John Riccitiello, left abruptly having served in the role for nine years. We will look at the pricing controversy and other factors that led to Riccitiello’s departure in more detail later.

The following table shows the full history of Unity’s CEOs:

Unity’s Company History

From its founding over 20 years ago to its short-lived success post-IPO and its recent turmoil, the history of Unity Software throws up some interesting lessons for business owners and potential investors.

2004-2009: Founding and Early Growth

In August 2004, Over the Edge Entertainment (OTEE) was founded as an indie game studio by three Danish friends: David Helgason, Nicholas Francis, and Joachim Ante.

The studio’s first game, GooBall, was designed to showcase an early version of the Unity engine. Despite being well-received, the game was commercially unsuccessful.

This led the team to reconsider their company’s approach, and they switched focus from developing games to developing their game engine and making it available to support other independent developers. They knew that the gaming market was on the brink of tremendous growth so instead of mining for gold themselves, they decided to start selling shovels.

In 2007, OTEE rebranded as Unity Technologies.

Much of Unity’s early success came from it being the only fully-powered game engine for the iPhone. After being recognized with an Apple Design Award in 2006, Unity stood largely uncontested in this space for several years as its rivals had been more focused on console gaming.

2010-2014: Expansion and Mobile Growth

When Unity 3.0 launched in September 2010, it expanded beyond mobile to desktop and console applications, cementing its position as the go-to multi-platform game engine. This update allowed developers to access premium features such as real-time lighting and automatic UV mapping at a fraction of the price offered by high-end tools.

The same year, Unity Software was awarded the Wall Street Journal 2010 Technology Innovation Award for software.

In November 2010, the Unity Asset Store launched as part of Unity 4.0, creating an online marketplace for developers to buy and sell assets such as artwork, audio, and code.

Unity reached 1 million users in April 2012, having reached the 750,000 milestone just three months earlier. It reported that 300,000 of its users were active monthly at this time.

2015-2019: Rise to Industry Leadership

The release of Unity 5 in 2015 marked a new leap forward in the industry. This update brought advancements in graphics, physics, audio, and efficiency – and supported 21 platforms including the Samsung Gear VR.

Here are some of the games that would go on to be made with Unity VR as it dominated this space:

Unity was still behind its main competitor, Epic Games’ Unreal Engine, in terms of breathtaking visuals, but it maintained its focus on making game development accessible to everyone. Most of the features in its Pro plan were also available for Personal plan users for free.

Also released with Unity 5 was Unity Services, the company’s first offering of cloud-based tools and services.

In 2016, developer Niantic released the hugely successful Pokémon Go, which was built using Unity and AR technology. This spurred several rounds of funding that accelerated the growth of Unity’s net worth.

In 2017, Unity changed its version numbering system to correspond to the year of release. 2017 and 2018 brought improvements to rendering and visual effects, as well as introduced machine learning to enhance gameplay.

That same year also marked the first in a series of acquisitions for Unity; the £19 million ($24.47 million at the time) purchase of multiplayer game server hosting provider Multiplay Ltd from UK retailer GAME. This was followed in 2019 by the acquisition of Vivox, a text and voice chat provider whose technology is used in games like Fortnite and League of Legends. Details of the deal were not disclosed at the time, but later filings revealed that Unity had paid $123.4 million in cash and stock.

By the end of 2019, apps created with Unity were being downloaded 3 billion times per month on 1.5 billion unique devices.

2020-2021: IPO and Hyped-Up Expansion

In August 2020 Unity announced plans for its IPO, which we’ve covered above. This was completed the following month, with the company valued at an estimated $13.7 billion.

2021 saw the launch of a new specialist AR tool, Unity MARS. This made AR creation more accessible to people without much technical knowledge and opened up new applications in education, training, architecture, and more.

In November 2021, Unity made its largest acquisition to date, purchasing special effects studio Weta Digital for $1.63 billion. The studio, co-founded by Peter Jackson, was responsible for the effects behind The Suicide Squad, Planet of the Apes, and Lord of the Rings character Gollum.

In a press release issued at the time, Unity said the new partnership would “deliver tools to unlock the full potential of the metaverse”.

The company continued to innovate and to position itself at the forefront of the metaverse hype; a strategy that ultimately backfired when enthusiasm dried up and investors realized Unity’s stock price had become overvalued.

2022-Present: Post-IPO Challenges and Innovation

Unity’s market cap plummeted during the first half of 2022, and it reacted by laying off 4% of its workforce, estimated at about 200 employees, to “realign resources”.

In July 2022, Unity announced plans to acquire mobile advertising technology firm ironSource in an all-stock deal worth $4.4 billion.

However, before this deal was completed, game developer AppLovin made an unsolicited offer to purchase Unity for a $17.54 billion all-stock deal that would exclude ironSource. Unity’s board rejected the offer and continued with the ironSource merger, which was completed in November that year.

2023 brought more layoffs, with the largest round in May bringing the total to over 1,080 in 12 months.

Then, on September 12, 2023, came the announcement of a pricing update that sparked outrage and caused irreparable damage to Unity’s reputation.

In a nutshell, Unity announced that it was introducing runtime fees that would charge developers a fixed amount per installation over a certain threshold. Its users raised widespread concerns about how this move would affect their business model, and many said they were leaving the platform entirely.

The following video captures the reaction from gamers, developers, and publishers at the time of the announcement.

10 days later, Unity partially rolled back the changes – but for many users, the damage had already been done.

Amid the fallout, it was announced that CEO John Riccitiello would step down immediately, with outsider James Whitehurst taking the role of interim CEO while the company searched for a permanent replacement.

In early 2024, Unity announced that it was cutting a further 1,800 jobs – 25% of its workforce – which Whitehurst said would “create a sustainable economic model” and finally make Unity profitable.

Matthew Bromberg became Unity’s new CEO in May 2024, bringing experience from Zynga and EA to the company. In September, Unity announced that it was abandoning the controversial runtime fee entirely, instead opting to increase subscription fees.

The release of Unity 6 in October 2024 brought some promise back to the company as it tries to compete with Unreal Engine’s high-quality graphics, with added enhancements from generative AI features. It remains to be seen, though, whether experienced developers are ready to trust Unity Software once more.

Listen to the team behind Unity 6 discuss its new features in this podcast:

Unity Controversies

The main Unity controversy, which we’ve already touched on, involved a poorly-received amendment to the company’s pricing structure in September 2023. You can read full details of this Unity controversy here, but here is a quick summary of how it unfolded:

• September 12, 2023: Unity announces changes to its pricing model, effective January 1, 2024. This introduces a new “runtime fee”; a charge of $0.20 per install once certain revenue and download thresholds are passed.
• The announcement is widely criticized, with developers large and small raising concerns about effective measurement and possible abuse of the system by malicious actors.
• It also emerges that Unity had changed its terms of service and removed previous versions from a GitHub repository, further eroding trust among users.
• Some indie developers announce that they are moving from Unity to its competitors, including Godot and Unreal Engine.
• September 22, 2023: Unity announces some amendments, removing the runtime fee from Personal plans and raising thresholds for the fee. It also confirms that the fee will not apply to games already released, unless they upgrade to the new version.
• January 1, 2024: Unity introduces the new fee structure, with an option to choose from the fixed runtime fee or a 2.5% revenue share for games exceeding the thresholds.
• September 12, 2024: Unity announces that it is scrapping the runtime fee entirely, instead introducing subscription price increases effective January 1, 2025.

To add insult to injury, it came to light that several top executives at Unity had sold significant numbers of shares in the weeks ahead of the announcement.

What Can We Learn From Unity? 

Unity Software would be in quite a different position by now if it hadn’t been for losses related to the disastrous pricing fiasco.

The whole ordeal highlights the critical importance of transparent communication and stakeholder engagement when implementing major policy changes. John Riccitiello’s resignation underscores the accountability leaders face for unpopular decisions and the need for companies to carefully balance innovation with the interests of their users.

Prior to this, Unity’s rollercoaster market value came from it pinning its hopes on a concept that was yet to be clearly defined: the metaverse. Companies at the cutting edge of technology need to be mindful of meeting real needs while still pushing forward with innovation.

Despite the hit that Unity took to its reputation because of the pricing debacle, it remains in a strong position in a market that is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 10.17% over the next five years. Its adaptability to VR and AR gaming platforms, as well as consoles, mobile, and desktop, still make it an attractive and versatile engine for developers to use.

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