Unity Technologies Inc. Going Public?

A report on the Bloomberg website has announced the intention of Unity Technologies Inc. – the US-based arm of the international company – to go public and appear as a listing on the US Stock Market.

The report states that San Francisco-based Unity is working with a financial advisor to prepare an initial public offering (IPO) that will launch the company on the US stock market and set it aside as an investable company. Unity is already privately valued at $6.3 billion, and a floatation could make its worth expand rapidly as public interest in this high technology company makes the stock worth investing in.

Unity launched as a game engine in 2005, with the intention of giving everyone interested access to a strong development platform. At the time, game development was only accessible to established game houses, which wasn’t good for diversification and expansion of the industry. While the engine was heavily used to develop for Apple’s iPhones after launching App Store in 2008, the version 3.0 released in 2010 included support for Android platform.

Unity was always envisaged as being a simple to use engine that would give even the relatively novice user the ability to create games and apps in both 2D and 3D. The intention was to bring gaming potential to the massed market and help anyone with the imagination – and a bit of development experience – to create and launch new games and apps. In doing this, the monopoly held by the big gaming houses would be fractured, hopefully bringing the price of games down.

But there was a second reason for including the gaming community too; the game market was created by large organisations and populated with adventures that they believed the gaming public want. However, by giving that same public the ability to create their own games, Unity felt that the sheer variety of material would help push the gaming community to new heights of development and expression. In short, if gamers could imagine it, Unity gave them the ability to build it!

And the concept of this easy to use engine quickly ignited the artistic talents of developers to make Unity the fastest growing and most popular game engine. Unity is now spreading out into both AR and VR, and there are even top movie directors looking at how Unity-generated virtual backdrops can be incorporated into mainstream films. As an mixed reality tool, Unity is now used to create 60% of all augmented and virtual reality experiences, and is the engine to beat.

All of this makes Unity extremely valuable on the open market, hence the apparent moves to float the company to the public. In doing this, the company will be able to finance new and exciting additions to the core engine, and look at the possibility of further development in up and coming areas of app and game development.

While the IPO hasn’t yet been officially acknowledged by Unity, it is thought that they are working closely with Goldman Sachs Group. We’ll keep you posted on developments in this exciting development as they happen.