If you’ve ever come across a video game nowadays, chances are it’s made with Unity software.

An unknown gaming studio turned into a global leader providing the gaming industry with the most sophisticated cross-platform engine for 2D and 3D content.

What started as a teenage dream in a basement in Copenhagen with just three employees is now a company with a net worth of $42.75B. Founded in 2000, Unity Software is best known for its game engine for creating video games.

The three minds behind Unity are David Helgason, Nicholas Francis, and Joachim Ante. These three friends were inspired to create an engine that will be accessible to as many game developers as possible.

Hard work always delivers, so the three friends joined forces to revolutionize the gaming industry by giving developers the tools to create virtual realities.

Read on to know more about the modern-day greats that turned their visions into reality.

The Knowledge and the Commitment

David Helgason is born and raised in Iceland where he spent the first 10 years of his life. His interest in computers started in his early childhood. Once David’s family moved to Denmark, his mother bought him his first computer. Overwhelmed and excited, David studied the computer inside out. Eager to start building games he could play, he began learning programming languages.

A computer expert, but not into school, David completed his high school education in Denmark. However, the university was simply not in the cards for him. Altering between 4 majors and dropping out of them all, David tried his luck in the fields of computer science, psychology, physics, Arabic language, and middle eastern studies.

The first Executive Producer and Graphics Designer of Unity Technologies, Nicholas Francis, wanted to be a film director in his early days. But life always has other plans for us and in Nicholas’s case, it was the creative world of video games. Today, Nicholas is a successful designer, programmer, and co-founder of Framebunker.

The third brilliant mind behind the Unity idea is Joachim Ante. A citizen of Germany and a Danish resident, Joachim was just a teenager when he started working on the core of Unity. Working just as vigorously on the Unity engine, the Chief Technology Officer of Unity Technologies now owns nearly 7% of the company.

Small Beginning Lead to Great Endings

Over the Edge Entertainment, the predecessor of Unity Software was founded in 2000 by three friends living and working in a basement in Denmark. It was a spur-of-the-moment business idea, and the co-founders, Joachim, Nicholas, and David didn’t have a plan of how they wanted to develop the company.

In the beginning, they all worked part-time jobs in order to pay the rent and other company expenses.

Joachim, Nicholas, and David’s game GooBall was supposed to be the first breakthrough in 2005, but the success deflated like a balloon. The game itself was supported only by Mac leading to the mentioned disaster. The youngsters realized though that the game engine had value for others.

Deciding to start fresh, the company name was changed to Unity Technologies in 2007. David Helgason stepped up as Chief Executive Officer and found himself in the middle of a storm.

David claims that he had to learn to be an organized person in order to move things along. For him, 2009 was a hectic year when the company expanded its offices in Copenhagen and Seattle, while David was based in San Francisco.

By the year 2013, Nicholas Francis decided to withdraw from the position of Chief Creative Officer and leave the company. Nicholas was craving to dedicate his time and energy to actually using Unity rather than developing it.

A year later, the company was employing 500 people and David Helgason decided that it’s time to hand over the CEO position to John

Riccitiello. Joachim Ante was the only one of the original founders that remained in the company. Through the years, Unity made many acquisitions through which it expanded. Inevitably, Unity was headed to become a public company in September 2020. The shares were released on the New York Stock Exchange at a price of $52.00 per share. The company’s estimated value measured through the initial public offering came to US$13.7B. Today, the stocks can be bought at $151.96 per stock.

Unity's total funding amounts to $1.3B in over 11 funding rounds. After the success of the game Pokemon Go, several rounds of fundings increased the value of the company. It is funded by 19 investors and has acquired 23 organizations. The latest investors to join the Unity Technologies family are D1 Capital Partners and FinSight Ventures.

Based in San Francisco, California, the work of Unity Technologies is overseen by a Board of Directors. The revenues mainly come from licensing fees for Unity Platform, Unity Asset Store, and the Unity game engine. Sequoia Capital, China Investment Corporation, Silver Lake, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson are just some of the investors of Unity Technologies.

Unity Worlds Coming Together

To put it simply, Unity is intended to facilitate the working process of all those artistic minds working to create virtual gaming worlds that leave us speechless.

The game creation process is made easy through the combination of the provided art tools and game coding. Checking how a game is running and perceiving any malfunctions is only a button away.

Developers have the possibility to see the game in different environments. Seeing how characters behave, and use code to alter anything they feel will improve the game quality and content, developers are given a true gift.

The variety of platforms for Unity games increased and it includes consoles, desktops, and mobiles. Windows, iOS, WebGL, PlayStation, and Oculus are just a few of the officially supported platforms.

A game that was made with Unity and released in 2016 is the famous Pokemon Go. The world simply couldn’t get enough of the game. Artists and designers also used Unity to make Osiris: New Dawn, Trinity, Escape from Tarkov, and Rick and Morty: Virtual Rick-ality.

Unity also entered the filmmaking and automotive industries. Virtual vehicle testing simulations were created to provide customers with a better presentation of the products.

Loyalty Pays Off

Unity offers Individual, Team, and Industrial & Enterprise subscription plans. These plans vary based on the industry and the expertise of the developers and are royalty-free.

The Individual package contains the Student and Unity Personal subscriptions, where the Student subscription is free for those aged 16 and older. Unity Personal subscription is also free, but only for developers whose revenue is below $100K in the last 12 months.

The Teams package consists of Unity Plus and Unity Pro. The Unity Plus subscription is $40 /month per seat or $399/year per seat. The Unity Pro on the other hand is $150 /month per seat or $1,800 /year per seat.

And the last plan which is also the most expensive one is the Industrial & Enterprise, where the Industrial Collection is a $2,520 /year seat and the Enterprise at $2,400 / year seat.

Success Inspires Others

It will be an understatement to say that Unity made an impact in the video game world. It had an impact on the whole world of graphics, giving everything there is to every developer, equally. Unity Software Inc. treats its users as family, and family members grow and improve together. Before making it really big in the gaming industry, Unity had to surpass the competition coming from companies like Blender, Maya, and Cinema 4D, among others.

By 2020, Unity covered over 190 countries worldwide with 2.5B monthly active users. The fact that there are 5B monthly downloads of applications that were built by Unity speaks volumes. Unity is the building block of around 71% of mobile games and over 50% of games played on consoles, mobiles, and PCs.

Making a difference in 45 offices in 18 countries, the number of 4,613 creative employees will soon be surpassed. Unity is changing the world daily by bringing the real and virtual worlds closer than ever.