#Is Unity Industry taking off?

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

vital wharf
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Hi,

I'm pretty new to Unity and I'm ready to put in the time and energy to really learn the engine. I visited Unite 2023 and was really amazed by the welcoming community.

I found out about Unity Industry as well, and that it is used in Architecture, Automotive, Energy and other industries for the creation of Digital Twins. And in 2022 a partnership between Unity and Capgemini was announced.

However, most of the content and articles about it are pretty dated, so my question: Did Unity Industry really take off, or is it still on the brink of doing so? Is it already widely used in all the industries and are there companies specialised in implementing Digital twins?

Really looking forward to your thoughts on this!

Greetings!

cold verge
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Yeah, Unity touches many industries outside of games. There are a lot of opportunities out there doing all sorts of things.

maiden kestrel
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In my opinion, yes and no.

Unity Industry changed a lot. It is now used as mandatory pricing for anyone working on non-games (i.e. even building something for a museum), and just used so Unity can mandate charging 3x as much for their pro licenses.

To try and make it seem valuable, they added a bunch of services that few companies used and to artificially boost usage numbers.

I'm sure the 19 companies in the world actually using the mandated extra features see value in them - personally I do not.

The truth is: very few people besides Unity mention Unity Industry - as it's just a service tier.

That aside, using Unity as a tool for non-game projects --- it absolutely has value and is used a lot and has a lot of potential.

maiden kestrel
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You can see a bit of it here:
https://forum.unity.com/threads/question-to-unity-industry-changes.1420997/

But the more recent issue is they started sending demand letters to startups and non game companies last year. If you use it in a non game context, you cannot use personal edition (must buy pro) regardless of revenue, including all contractors.

Once you exceed the 1m revenue threshold, you need Unity Industry (3x increase) on a yearly subscription for all employees and (as well as freelancers).

It has caused a lot of tension with them and upcoming industry clients.

I get it, they want Ford for example to pay a lot more if they use Unity as a car configurator. But the reality is - outside of prototypes - they wouldn't and won't. They would want a fast lightweight online config tool, and used their own thing or a-frame etc to build a fast meaningful experience.

The only time I've seen clients actually using industry tooling, is when they are subcontracting staff from Unity, and it gets worked on that way.

Anyway, it had a lot of potential. But it has a pretty rough reputation right now, and they have soured a lot of the upcoming companies against their product. I don't see it lasting long term in terms of usage, but staying long term in terms of a service fee.

Unity Forum
Question to Unity Industry changes

I just found the announcment of the whole new "Unity Industry" thing - and if I read that correctly, it leaves me shocked:

Are you seriously just...

vital wharf
cold verge
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Impossible to say where to go, sorry. It's all dependant on your local studio availability. But you can always look up jobs on indded/linkedin and the likes.

vital wharf
# maiden kestrel You can see a bit of it here: https://forum.unity.com/threads/question-to-unity-...

Thanks for your insights. It's really helpful. I think since their IPO in 2020, Unity is desperately seeking for ways to monetize on their products, which result in these type of actions, inclusing charging customers for thing they don't need/want. However, I do believe (and hope you do agree) that in it's core, Unity is still a solid engine, but with these actions there is a risk that they loose their userbase (non-game and game). And an engine without a userbase will eventually decay.

vital wharf
pine scroll
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Look up current metrics around Unity adoption and usage. The runtime fee debacle actually didn't decrease adoption at all... which is very surprising. Look over the last couple of worldwide game jams and you'll see that the behemoth is still Unity. Schools are still teaching it in their programs, employers are still using it in their studios. However all of that said, you shouldn't tie your skill sets to any engine. Your skills should be agnostic of Unity or Unreal or Godot. Doesn't matter if that's writing code, authoring 3D models, writing shaders, or animating. Learn those core fundamentals FIRST and then apply them to whatever toolset you are comfortable with. If you feel you want to pursue working at a studio that uses Unreal or Godot, then by all means use those engines. Unity should only be one engine in your arsenal and you should be somewhat familiar with most of the major ones.

maiden kestrel
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So I would say, current metrics actually support there is a decrease.

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It's actually the least amount of Unity games created for global game jam in the last 4 years, and the lowest percentage of games being Unity in the last 4 years. I'd say that is a measurable impact and certainly a concern, regardless of the Unity Industry pricing.

pine scroll
# maiden kestrel I didn't see anyone in the thread really asking about the runtime fee, it was ab...

I used the runtime fee as an example. I work in Unity Industry. Yes there was a minor decrease in usage, but it's clear by those metrics Unity is still massively popular over the other engines. There isn't even a comparison really. For all users you see moving to other engines, Unity gains thousands of new ones as new young folks discover the engine. Despite natural attrition Unity's strengths are what make it a go to engine. I'd say all companies experience ebbs and flows, ups and downs and there has been an impact. After seeing what we have lined up at Unite it's very exciting to see how powerful and performant the engine is becoming. Naturally I'd expect new generations will continue to flock to these tools. But to answer the OP question, yes Unity Industry is doing well and I've worked on numerous awesome projects with our client partners. The public never sees most of this work and some of it is under NDA or is private for obvious business reasons.

maiden kestrel