Unity To Cut 600 Jobs, Plans To Reduce Number Of Offices: Report

Unity Software will lay off roughly 600 workers and is also planning to reduce its global network of offices, a new report has revealed. It will be the San Francisco-based company's third and largest round of layoffs in less than a year.

People with knowledge of the matter told the Wall Street Journal that the software company was planning to cut about 8% of its workforce or around 600 employees. The company is also considering shutting down some of its international offices from 58 to 30 in the next few years.

Unity first laid off around 300 to 400 people in June 2022. At the time, employees told Kotaku that nearly every unit of the company was affected. The engineering and AI divisions were the hardest hit. The gaming software maker told Protocol that around 4% of its total workforce, or slightly more than 200 jobs, was affected by the June layoffs. Just two weeks before the layoffs, CEO John Riccitiello reportedly told workers that the company would not implement workforce reductions as it was in good financial standing.

The second round of layoffs was implemented in January when around 284 employees lost their jobs.

"We went through a rigorous prioritization process as part of 2023 planning, taking into account that we're in a very tough economic cycle," a spokesperson told SFGate at the time.

The spokesperson further explained the process resulted in decisions that affected "programs and people," and also allowed the company to determine which initiatives were "closer to our goals."

Weeks after its January layoffs, CEO Riccitiello told CNBC's "Closing Bell" that Unity was implementing "sharp cost containment" to ensure profitability goals were met.

The video game development company is also looking to open a generative AI software marketplace. It wants to allow developers to select an AI product through the Unity marketplace and use it to instantly generate content. The AI marketplace would also help developers to create characters with personality or dialogue without the need for a writer, Riccitiello told Reuters in March.

Unity isn't the only software company that's been affected by the ongoing wider tech workforce reckoning.

In February, trucking software company Convoy reduced its workforce, citing "increased automation" that affected the startup's staffing needs. The exact number of affected workers is not known.

"We will have significantly fewer Atlanta based employees, and we can no longer justify maintaining our current office space in Atlanta," Convoy CEO Dan Lewis wrote in a LinkedIn post at the time.

Another software company that implemented staff reductions the same month was Sprinklr. The company eliminated more than 100 jobs, citing staffing realignment and the economic downturn, according to TechCrunch.

Software consultancy firm ThoughtWorks let go of around 500 employees in March. The same month, Sydney-based Atlassian announced that it was laying off around 500 workers, or approximately 5% of its workforce. Atlassian said many teams were affected, but most were from the program management, research and insights and talent acquisition units.

In the broader tech space, 637 tech companies have laid off employees so far in 2023, according to layoffs.fyi. More than 186,000 tech workers have lost their jobs as more companies in the industry feel the brunt of the economic slowdown.