Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Unity's stock sheds 15% after disappointing earnings

marketwatch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 43 posts

Re: Unity's stock sheds 15% after disappointing earnings

#11

Post by bmitc »

programmarchy wrote: post #7
datavirtue wrote: post #6

Is there any possible redemption for a publicly traded company that is on their back foot like this? Seems like this would have been a stellar business without the hassle of going public. How did they fuck this up? All they had to do was keep customers happy and collect money.

Yes, Apple could bail them out. They might need to because, judging by recent WWDCs, they’ve already placed bets on Unity as the game engine of choice for Apple Vision Pro.

There is zero chance Apple would buy Unity. One programs and scripts in C# and an outdated version of .NET via Mono.

Re: Unity's stock sheds 15% after disappointing earnings

#12

Post by chongli »

frfl wrote: post #8
datavirtue wrote: post #6

Is there any possible redemption for a publicly traded company that is on their back foot like this? Seems like this would have been a stellar business without the hassle of going public. How did they fuck this up? All they had to do was keep customers happy and collect money.

From Wikipedia, > Software developer Niantic released Pokémon Go, which was built using Unity engine, in 2016.[26] Following the success of Pokémon Go, Unity Technologies held several rounds of funding that increased the company's valuation: In July 2016, a $181 million round of funding valued the company at approximately $1.5 billion;[26] in May 2017, the company raised $400 million that valued the company at $2.8 b…

I would love to know what sort of pitch they made to bring in that amount of capital. There seems to have been no business plan whatsoever besides enshittify to the max and alienate customers with ham-fisted retroactive cash grabs.

Re: Unity's stock sheds 15% after disappointing earnings

#13

Post by __loam »

lazypenguin wrote: post #2

In 2014 until 20218 I would have started any new game dev project in Unity without a second thought. Somewhere along the way Epic really invested in making Unreal better while the Unity engine became a meme of half-finished new initiatives. It’s still a good engine but I think mostly because it’s riding the very strong core built by its original teams. I’m curious how many of them are still at the company?

I switched my project to godot last year and have no regrets

Re: Unity's stock sheds 15% after disappointing earnings

#14

Post by frfl »

chongli wrote: post #12
frfl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Wikipedia, > Software developer Niantic released Pokémon Go, which was built using Unity engine, in 2016.[26] Following the success of Pokémon Go, Unity Technologies held several rounds of funding that increased the company's valuation: In July 2016, a $181 million round of funding valued the company at approximately $1.5 billion;[26] in May 2017, the company raised $400 million that valued the company at $2.8 b…

I would love to know what sort of pitch they made to bring in that amount of capital. There seems to have been no business plan whatsoever besides enshittify to the max and alienate customers with ham-fisted retroactive cash grabs.

$3B in 2018 seems quite modest for the amount of hype and mind-share/market-share they had from early 2010s to 2021. Since 2020, there are (were) probably a hundred companies valued at over $1B with less market fit, less product and less revenue in comparison. You have to remember pre 2022, it was all about growth. The economics and business dynamics of startups completely shifted with rates at 5% vs when they were sub-1%.

Re: Unity's stock sheds 15% after disappointing earnings

#15

Post by mjevans »

lazypenguin wrote: post #2

In 2014 until 20218 I would have started any new game dev project in Unity without a second thought. Somewhere along the way Epic really invested in making Unreal better while the Unity engine became a meme of half-finished new initiatives. It’s still a good engine but I think mostly because it’s riding the very strong core built by its original teams. I’m curious how many of them are still at the company?

Unity also burned a LOT of good will with the licensing changes we heard about over the past year or two.

Re: Unity's stock sheds 15% after disappointing earnings

#16

Post by tyrfing »

chongli wrote: post #12
frfl wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From Wikipedia, > Software developer Niantic released Pokémon Go, which was built using Unity engine, in 2016.[26] Following the success of Pokémon Go, Unity Technologies held several rounds of funding that increased the company's valuation: In July 2016, a $181 million round of funding valued the company at approximately $1.5 billion;[26] in May 2017, the company raised $400 million that valued the company at $2.8 b…

I would love to know what sort of pitch they made to bring in that amount of capital. There seems to have been no business plan whatsoever besides enshittify to the max and alienate customers with ham-fisted retroactive cash grabs.

They IPOed in 2020 at a valuation of 13.7B. Any investors in those rounds made fantastic profits. Dress it up, talk about revenue growth, dump it on the public markets and make it someone else's problem: the venture capital recipe.

There were, however, plenty of worse investments in those years: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-12-27/spac-mani...

Re: Unity's stock sheds 15% after disappointing earnings

#17

Post by hinkley »

datavirtue wrote: post #6

Is there any possible redemption for a publicly traded company that is on their back foot like this? Seems like this would have been a stellar business without the hassle of going public. How did they fuck this up? All they had to do was keep customers happy and collect money.

Reverse merger with someone smaller but with a sane board of directors.

Re: Unity's stock sheds 15% after disappointing earnings

#18

Post by gcampos »

datavirtue wrote: post #6

Is there any possible redemption for a publicly traded company that is on their back foot like this? Seems like this would have been a stellar business without the hassle of going public. How did they fuck this up? All they had to do was keep customers happy and collect money.

Unity was never profitable and was always dependent on vc money.

For sure it's a great product, but the truth is that it was subsidized by vc capital and is not a sustainable business

Re: Unity's stock sheds 15% after disappointing earnings

#19

Post by coffeebeqn »

gcampos wrote: post #18
datavirtue wrote: post #6

Is there any possible redemption for a publicly traded company that is on their back foot like this? Seems like this would have been a stellar business without the hassle of going public. How did they fuck this up? All they had to do was keep customers happy and collect money.

Unity was never profitable and was always dependent on vc money. For sure it's a great product, but the truth is that it was subsidized by vc capital and is not a sustainable business

It certainly could be a smaller profitable company but that’s not how the world works apparently

Re: Unity's stock sheds 15% after disappointing earnings

#20

Post by danielmarkbruce »

gcampos wrote: post #18
datavirtue wrote: post #6

Is there any possible redemption for a publicly traded company that is on their back foot like this? Seems like this would have been a stellar business without the hassle of going public. How did they fuck this up? All they had to do was keep customers happy and collect money.

Unity was never profitable and was always dependent on vc money. For sure it's a great product, but the truth is that it was subsidized by vc capital and is not a sustainable business

It's slightly better than operating cashflow neutral. It's growing at a very healthy rate. It's definitely sustainable.

The debate is around is it worth $5 billion or $50 billion. It's not as easy as one might think to figure which.

Post reply on HN