Unity make another round of job cuts as CEO acknowledges "exhaustion associated with prior changes"

rockpapershotgun.com:

Game engine company Unity are making yet another round of job cuts across various departments, from software development to advertising. They've yet to specify how many people have been affected - according to a leaked memo from Unity CEO Matthew Bromberg, those concerned will be notified today - but several Unity employees have confirmed that they're now looking for work on LinkedIn, amongst them senior technical artist Peter Roe and senior software developer Coline Turquin. In his LinkedIn post, Roe describes the layoffs as "completely abrupt and impersonal". Apparently, a noreply address contacted him at 5am local time to reveal that he'd lose access to systems by the end of the day. Funny stuff.

A post on Unity's official forums also suggests that the entirety of the team behind Unity Behavior - a visual tool for writing behaviours for NPCs or objects - have been let go. "Unfortunately, we were told today that our team is included in the latest round of layoffs and we will not be able to support you any longer. I've reached out to leadership to ask if they can open-source the project, but there is no guarantee," writes Behavior tech lead Shanee Nishry.

As noted by 80.lv - who broke the story and subsequently got hold of Bromberg's memo - this is Unity's sixth reported wave of mass layoffs since 2022. It's part of an existential struggle at the engine company that saw Unity announce plans to charge certain devs a fee per installation of a Unity game, then dump those plans a year later following a comprehensive backlash. In November 2023, Unity got rid of 265 people and broke up with VFX studio Wētā FX in a company "reset". In January 2024, they binned off a further 1800 people - 25% of their workforce at the time - in the name of profit growth.

Going by Bromberg's leaked memo, Unity's restructurings have yet to right the ship, from the point of view of executives and investors at least. "I know that there is some exhaustion associated with prior changes at Unity