Unity Plans to Eliminate 1,800 Jobs in Q1 2024

It appears that the controversy surrounding Unity throughout the second half of 2023 is poised to extend into 2024, with a new report revealing that the company plans to fire 1,800 employees, around 25% of its entire workforce, in Q1 2024.

As reported by Reuters, this extensive round of layoffs, the largest in the company's history, was unveiled through a regulatory filing and an internal memo shared on Monday. According to Unity, these job cuts will impact all teams, regions, and aspects of the business and are expected to be completed by the end of March 2024.

The layoffs come as a part of the "company reset" announced by Unity's interim CEO, Jim Whitehurst, in November 2023, which, besides the layoffs, is also said to entail the discontinuation of certain products.

Over the past few months, the company has made a series of perplexing decisions the community fails to comprehend to this day. It all began in September 2023 with the introduction of Unity's new Runtime Fee program for game creators, essentially requiring developers to pay an additional "tax" to the company based on the frequency of their games' downloads.

Following the announcement, a wave of criticism from thousands of developers, Unity users, and others invested in the gaming industry prompted the team to issue another announcement to provide additional clarity on the matter. Despite widespread disapproval, the company decided not to abandon the idea altogether, opting instead to simply make adjustments to parts of the new pricing policy.

The introduction of new fees eventually led to the resignation of John Riccitiello, who held key roles as Unity President, CEO, Chairman, and a member of the Board of Directors, and caused the company to face "some revenue softness" in Q3 2023. Shortly after Riccitiello's departure, the aforementioned "company reset" was officially announced, with the plan being to restructure the company and focus primarily on Unity Editor and Runtime, Monetization Solutions, and digital twins.

At this point, it is unclear whether this restructuring is Unity's response to the issues that prompted the wave of layoffs plaguing the tech industry in 2023 or is a consequence of the damage to Unity's reputation caused by the fee policy.

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