Unity Lays Off Entire Team Behind Behavior AI Tool
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- Unity laid off an undetermined number of employees including the whole Behavior team.
- The company still hasn’t acknowledged that layoffs are happening.
- Last year Unity laid almost 25% of its workforce.
Unity has laid off the team responsible for Unity Behavior, a visual tool that can be used to control NPCs and objects. The number of laid off individuals are currently undertermined.
First spotted by Gamigion, the layoffs were announced by the employees themselves. Nikita Zatsepin, a Senior Product Marketing Manager on Unity posted on LinkedIn that Unity has laid off “many talented and highly experienced people”. Soon enough, another post on LinkedIn gained traction, from a Senior Software Developer.
“After nearly 5 years @ Unity Technologies, I’m saddened to share that I am part of the recent layoffs.” read the post by Coline. It was only found out after ShaneeNishry, a Senior Software Engineer, posted about the layoffs on Unity’s forums.
The forum post is a farewell post saying that they cannot continue the development of the Behavior tool as the whole team is being laid off. According to Shanee, they also asked if the project could be open-sourced, however the company still hasn’t replied.
The Behavior tool can be used by developers to program NPCs or objects. However, the tool works on a graphical interface which means that it eliminates the need to meticulously type code to program each NPC to do certain tasks. Simply put, it saves a lot of time.
In January 2024, Unity implemented its largest round of layoffs to date, cutting approximately 1,800 jobs—roughly 25% of its workforce. The decision was described as a “company reset” by Unity chairman Jim Whitehurst, who framed it as a necessary restructuring effort. The layoffs came as part of a broader corporate shift following internal challenges and declining financial performance.
On November 7, 2024, Unity released their financial results for the third quarter. The company’s overall revenue was down 18% year-over-year, however their net loss went down from $126 million to $125 million quarter-over-quarter.
Unity’s layoffs are just one example of the wave of job cuts that have hit the gaming industry in recent months. A week ago, BioWare (Mass Effect, Dragon Age series) and Hi-Rez Studios (Smite 2) also announced staff reductions, with BioWare losing more than half of its workforce. Meanwhile, Microsoft—one of the industry’s biggest players—revealed its own layoffs less than a month ago, adding to the growing uncertainty within the sector.
