Unity turns 10 years old

The dates of the Unite Europe 2015, which takes place on June 24-25 in Amsterdam, are partly timed to the anniversary of Unity. One of the most popular game development tools is turning ten years old.

The first version of the engine – Unity 1.0.1 – was released on June 25, 2005. However, the current CEO of the company, John Riccitello, in his opening speech at Unite 2015, did not focus on this.

Unshaven, tired, in a simple black jumper, John Richittelo somewhat reminded Jobs. The latter is perhaps a fashion statement, or perhaps a desire to demonstrate the very democracy that Unity developers have always talked about and continue to insist on.

John Riccitello

His speech at the opening of Unite Europe is something like a report on the work done. The fact that he took the helm of the company as CEO nine months ago only reinforces this feeling.

Having stated that the company has always focused on three principles — the very “democracy”, “implementation of technical solutions for development” and “assistance in finding an audience”, John immediately begins to tell what Unity has achieved now.

You will laugh, but one of the achievements is just an increase in the level of democracy.
Unity lifted a number of restrictions on the use of the engine in the spring. Recall that one of the main innovations then was the opportunity to use it for free for the development of mobile games. At the same time, Richittelo still noted in his speech that the engine was free for students.

The second important point he noted is that Unity today makes not just beautiful games (and it’s not just about technology, but also about their artistic level), but which at the same time are recognized by critics (as one example, he cited Pillars of Eternity) and which are very successful in the market (for his at that moment, the slide turned out to be a slide, including with Hearthstone).

Riccitello didn’t talk about the numbers, leaving them to John Cheng, an analyst at Unity and one of the founders of Playnomics, which Unity acquired last year.

And the numbers, in fact, are striking in a good way.

To date, the MAU of the engine is 1 million developers, monthly users download 750 million copies of games created on Unity. The total base of unique mobile devices on which Unity games stand has reached 1 billion.

These are the results (if we talk only about numbers) that the company has achieved in a not so long ten-year period.