The investors who took EA private may have their eye on the engine a large part of the games industry builds on, and that makes a possible sale of Unity a story about more than one company.
VGC reports, citing Reuters, that Unity recently held talks with a consortium including Silver Lake and Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund. It says the discussions, sourced to people familiar with the matter, involved a valuation of around $25 billion. No decision has been made, and VGC adds that the terms may change or the deal may not go through at all.
xarmo couldn't check the Reuters report directly, so everything here is attributed to the outlets that relayed it.
What is reported
PocketGamer.biz says the investors approached Unity in recent weeks and that Unity has been working with an investment bank to assess its options. Silver Lake is not a stranger here: VGC notes it invested up to $400 million in Unity in 2017 and still holds around 8%, and that its chief executive, Egon Durban, sits on Unity's board. VGC says that would typically mean stepping back from board discussions about a sale.
Game Developer adds that, according to the sources for the Reuters report, the deal would take the form of a leveraged buyout, like the EA deal, which it describes as funded with money that would need to be recouped from operating profit.
Why it would matter beyond Wall Street
The timing is the first thing that stands out. The same pair were part of the group that took Electronic Arts private in a deal worth around $55 billion, completed in August. VGC reports that left PIF with 93.4% of EA, Silver Lake with 5.5% and Affinity Partners with 1.1%, and says Reuters makes no mention of Affinity in the Unity talks.
The second is what Unity is. PocketGamer.biz calls it one of the most widely used engines in the industry, with customers including Monopoly Go developer Scopely and Niantic, the company behind Pokémon Go, now called Scopely Explore. Game Developer says Unity's own accounting puts the engine in over half of all mobile games. PocketGamer.biz also notes that PIF subsidiary Savvy Games Group already works with Unity under a memorandum of understanding to support game development in Saudi Arabia.
Unity has also seen developers turn on it before. VGC recalls that its plan to charge developers each time a game was installed set off a backlash in 2023, that chief executive John Riccitiello left weeks later, and that the Runtime Fee was scrapped altogether in September 2024. Game Developer argues that Unity, unlike EA, deals directly with individual developers, so new and controversial owners could unsettle its core business.
The talks come as the numbers improve. PocketGamer.biz reports third-quarter revenue rose 32% to $622.1 million, with growth in advertising and game development, and that Unity recorded its first quarterly GAAP profit since going public in 2020.
Mason's take: I think the number to watch isn't $25 billion, it's how much of that is debt. This is my prediction, not reporting: if a leveraged deal happens, the pressure lands on pricing long before it lands on the engine, and developers will read the first change to Unity's terms as the real statement of intent. Unity spent about a year walking back a fee its own customers rejected, and I don't think it has the goodwill to do that twice.
Reporting notes
