>Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.
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The fact that they were struggling for revenue just made the massive spend seem even weirder to me, but I suppose it could make sense if they truly expected to somehow get >4.4 billion back from ad revenue eventually. They also bought Wētā FX for $1.6 billion around the same time and did basically nothing with it.[1]
no, unity was dying for low profitability and ads had higher margin
I argued against the acquisition at the time, including against accepting the framing that it was a "merger", and I think everything that's transpired since then has validated my views.
Sadly, I was outnumbered and “it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it” applied as it always does.
John Riccitiello was a terrible CEO
I think there's non-zero chance this company will go down in flames. I think its only hope at this point is a sufficiently motivated activist shareholder.
I have to say it made the later "Runtime Fee" announcement seem even more in poor taste as well, given that it might have had a big effect on the users paying it, but ultimately mean almost nothing to Unity against the billions paid for IronSource and WetaFX.
At 2¢ per install, with a million Unity games installed every year, they'd make a profit in 300,000 years.
Yes the Unity 3D engine company wow.