Update: Unity lays off staff and axes Behavior team

Unity has reportedly carried out another round of layoffs and axed its Behavior team.

As reported by Gamigion, one senior software developer shared on LinkedIn they had been let go after five years at Unity “as part of a recent layoff".

A now former senior technical artist also confirmed Unity's layoffs, sharing that they received a 5am email informing them of their termination and immediate loss of system access. 

Job losses

Meanwhile, a post on Unity’s official forum claimed that the company has reportedly laid off the entire team behind Unity Behavior, a visual tool for NPC and object control.

Developer Shanee Nishry confirmed the job cuts, stating they could no longer support the project and had requested leadership to consider open-sourcing it.

The exact number of employees affected by Unity's latest round of layoffs remains unclear.

PocketGamer.biz has reached out for comment but has not received a response at the time of publication. 

Unity has cut numerous jobs in recent years as it looks to achieve profitability and dealt with the fallout of the infamous Runtime Fee, which has since been shelved.

In January 2024, Unity said it planned to lay off approximately 1,800 staff as part of its restructuring plans.

Update: Unity CEO Matthew Bromberg has confirmed the company's latest job cuts in an internal memo to staff.

As reported by 80 Level, amongst the changes are a consolidation of the Unity Ads leadership team in the US. Nadav Ashkenazy will step down as chief revenue officer in the coming months after the transition is complete. He will be replaced in the role by a new executive in North America.

“We are making some important organisational changes today within the CTO, Engine Product, and Ads teams," said Bromberg. “These changes are a response to choices we’re making about what direction Unity will take in the future, and some of our colleagues’ jobs will be impacted." 

“People whose roles are being eliminated or those entering an employment consultation period will be notified over the course of the next couple of days, with instructions on next steps. We expect all notifications to be completed by EOD on Feb 12." 

Unifying ads services

Bromberg said that the company's product and engineering teams are spread too thin across multiple projects, leading to complexity and reduced impact.

“We also added people and created operating structures that were meant to speed us up, only to find they were slowing us down," he said.

“I know that there is some exhaustion associated with prior changes at Unity that haven’t delivered the promised results, but 2025 is going to be the year where we bring to market products and services that will transform our position in the marketplace and provide a springboard to long-term growth"

This year, Unity said it will complete its machine learning stack rebuild and integrate Unity Ads, Unity LevelPlay, and Tapjoy into a unified cloud and data platform. This will align all ad services under a single data set. 

“Our Ads revenue teams will then require some modification to align fully with our product and engineering teams, and we’ll be able to streamline our data science and ad serving teams as well," said Bromberg. 

“We are splitting the revenue organization into two global teams - Supply and Demand - which will be led from EMEA and the U.S., respectively.

“This will allow the Demand leader in the US to be closer to the PE teams working on the machine learning and data initiatives that will have the greatest impact on our advertising customers.

“The Supply team will align more closely with the relevant PE teams in Tel Aviv and EMEA for smoother coordination, and will own supply sales, LevelPlay and Offerwall integrations, and tech support.”