Unity IPO reveals massive losses

Unity IPO? Yes!

Unity, the creator of the famous Unity Game Engine, is a big gun in the gaming industry. Games and software developed with the help of Unity and its platform is running on more than 1.5 billion devices worldwide. It is without any doubt one of the most significant technologies in the gaming industry. More than 50% of top mobile games on both Apple App Store and Google Play are made on the Unity platform.

The engine company has decided to go IPO, meaning public, when its arch-rival Epic is entangled in a legal battle against Apple. With 2 billion monthly active users and 1.5 million game creators, Unity is considered as a formidable competitor of Epic’s Unreal Engine.

Despite the gigantic success of engine company, it hasn’t been all rainbows and sunshine for them. It seems to me that Unity is crumbling before Unreal Engine and the competition between the two has gotten the better of Unity. With huge losses in 2019, Unity has finally decided to go public with its financials and has filed for Initial Public Offering.

This decision didn’t come by surprise, rather rumor was around for quite some time. Unity, for the first time, has publicly revealed their finances which show a massive loss of $163.2 million from total revenue of $541.8 million. The company also revealed losses it bore in 2018; $131.6 million on revenues of $380.7 million.

Though the company reigns supreme its public losses reports say otherwise and 2020 was no exception; $54.1 million loss in six months. Unity’s arch-nemesis is Unreal Engine which has a massive support of Epic’s Fortnite, a money-making machine. Besides Fortnite, Epic Games has successful rounds of funding valued at a whopping $17.3 billion. 

Unity is still hopeful for its continued success and growth but they also highlighted some of the risk factors, and one that stands out the most was, “If we or our customers were to violate, or an operating system platform provider or application store believes that we or our customers have violated, its terms of service or policies, that operating system platform provider or application store could limit or discontinue our or our customers’ access to its platform or store.”

Sounds familiar, right? Epic VS Apple.

If you wanna call dibs then watch for the symbol “U” in NYSE.

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With over 20+ years of experience, well known publishers, AAA+ game developers, serial gaming entrepreneurs and management teams of gaming corporations consult him on matters that behold financial, technical, operational, strategic and commercial.

I am observing and overseeing several boards of gaming companies. My trademark is to listen, strategize and give feedback to the stakeholders involved. I also represent management/founders towards shareholders and vice versa.