Game engine maker Unity lays off 600 employees and plans to close half its offices worldwide

Game engine maker Unity lays off 600 employees and plans to close half its offices worldwide

Time Stamp: May 4, 2023 5:18 PM
Source Node: 2629544

Unity has laid off approximately 600 employees in its third round of layoffs over the past year, according to a Wall Street Journal (opens in new tab) report, which says the company is also looking to cut the number of offices it maintains worldwide nearly in half over the next few years, from 58 to 30.

According to Unity, the layoffs are part of an effort to reduce layers of management, streamline its operations, and improve the company’s profitability. “It’s all about setting ourselves up for higher growth,” Unity CEO John Riccitiello said.

Unity Software was founded in 2004 and is best known as the developer of the Unity game engine, a cross-platform engine used for PC, console, mobile, and VR game development. The software is also used in non-gaming fields, including film (opens in new tab), the automotive industry (opens in new tab), and AI development (opens in new tab).

The job cuts follow two previous rounds of layoffs, one in January and one in June 2022, which saw more than 500 people put out of work. The 600 employees let go in this round represent a little more than 8% of Unity’s total workforce.

The layoffs come shortly after Unity reported its first profitable quarter since going public in 2022: The company earned revenues of $451 million (opens in new tab) for its fourth quarter, which ended on December 31, 2022, and “record revenue” of $1.39 billion for the full year. That’s an awful lot of money, but apparently not enough: Unity’s growth apparently slowed last year, and revenue forecasts for the company’s next quarter are lower than expected. That’s taken a toll on the company’s share price, which is down 11% so far this year, while the NASDAQ stock exchange as a whole is up 15%.

Unity is the latest in a long line of tech companies who have cut significant numbers of employees in recent months: Meta (opens in new tab), Amazon (opens in new tab), Microsoft (opens in new tab), Google (opens in new tab), Dell (opens in new tab), and game publishers Electronic Arts (opens in new tab) and Take-Two Interactive (opens in new tab) have collectively put tens of thousands of people out of work in an endless quest for growth and profit.

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