San Francisco-based game engine developer Unity Technologies has closed a series C funding round worth $181 million.

Led by DFJ Growth - whose Partner Barry Schuler will join Unity's board of directors - and also including China Investment Corporation, FreeS Fund, Thrive Capital, and Max Levchin, it's the largest funding round Unity has ever raised.

Shifting the balance?

However, such a large investment does raise questions as to how much power is being given over to investors - and is certainly a stark contrast to the smaller funding rounds favoured by former CEO David Helgason.

"Unity's platform has revolutionized the game industry by allowing any size studio from Indie to Triple-A to create beautiful and compelling games and experiences and monetize them with their advertising and analytics services," said Schuler.

"Now Unity is poised to accelerate the advance of AR/VR with their unique 'write once/ publish many' engine which allows studios to easily support all hardware platforms without having to attempt to choose a winner."

A clear message

Unity has indeed been a vocal backer of virtual reality, but remains a key player in PC and mobile development, too.

A recent, prominent example is Niantic and Nintendo's location-based game Pokemon GO, which was made using Unity.

For CEO John Riccitiello, the key Unity message hasn't changed following this funding round: "We continue to focus on helping developers in every way we can," he said.

"We do this by focusing on our three core principles; democratizing development, solving hard problems and enabling developer success."