Software developer Unity Technologies has published a new report detailing its successes over the last 12 months. The Unity Gaming Report provides a plethora of information that was previously unknown. This includes the claim that over the last year the Unity game engine saw a 93% increase in development use.
The report also states that this increase is universal across almost all genres, with “hyper-casual games” receiving the biggest bump up by 137%. Popular genres, like simulation, saw a 14.7% increase in usage, while adventure games were developed using Unity 12.6% more often. Only casino and sports games saw small dips in usage.
(Source: Unity).
Unity does attribute a degree of this success to the COVID-19 pandemic. With more players at home and therefore more demand for games, Unity believes that the pandemic contributed towards its 30% spike in revenue generated. Interestingly, it expects this growth to continue, citing a noticeable increase in advertisement consumption and retention rates among its player base as the reason.
Unity benefits all developers
The second half of the Unity Gaming Report focuses on how Unity Technologies will encourage further growth. It identifies a trend that developers are “tearing down the walled gardens around platforms,” and are favoring multiplatform releases. This is a movement that the PC platform has benefited from with the majority of newer first-party Xbox games making their way to us. Even Sony has begun a similar process, going as far as to acquire Nixxes Software specifically for porting purposes.
Unity is an incredibly popular game engine with 230,000 developers creating over 750,000 apps. What might surprise you is that it is just as popular with indie developers as it is AAA publishers. Unity itself is keen to emphasize this using Valheim as an example of how a small indie team can become incredibly successful using its software.
The same stands true for other games released in 2021 with Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl, Super Animal Royale, and Crab Game all performing well. Unity hypothesizes that games of this nature manage to stand out from the crowd thanks to their “experimental gameplay designs.”
