After earning $544 million in its most recent quarter, Unity says even more layoffs are 'likely'

pcgamer.com:

It looks like game engine maker Unity is going to be laying off even more employees. Six months after putting 600 people out of work in the year's third round of layoffs and announcing plans to close half its offices worldwide, the company said in its most recent quarterly financial report that despite a 69% year-over-year increase in revenue in its third quarter, it's still bleeding money, and more people will probably have to go.

It hasn't been going well at Unity for a good while now. In June 2022, Unity laid off at least 200 people, and in January 2023 nearly 300 more were put out of work. Things came to a head in September when the company announced a surprise new "Runtime Fee" that would charge developers on a per-install basis. The blowback was beyond furious, and just a month later longtime CEO John Riccitiello—in case you'd forgotten, the guy who'd enraged the world a year earlier by calling developers who don't properly consider how to monetize their games "fucking idiots"—stepped down.

Unity said the negative reaction to its pricing did not «materially impact» its financial results for this quarter, and that it still expects «a potential benefit from this change over the long term.» It also acknowledged, however, that «the ultimate impact [of the response] on our business remains uncertain.»

The bigger issue, though, is that interim CEO James M. Whitehurst just doesn't like the current state of the company. «We are currently doing too much, we are not achieving the synergies that exist across our portfolio, and we are not executing to our full potential,» Whitehurst said in a message to Unity shareholders. «We aim to address these opportunities to emerge as a leaner, more agile, and faster growing company. We