Unity has officially merged with IronSource, bringing the takeover drama of the summer to an end.
As originally proposed, the deal values IronSource at $4.4bn and means that IronSource CEO Tomer Bar-Zeev will join Unity’s board of directors and executive leadership team.
Speaking after the proposed deal was announced, Unity CEO Riccitiello got in hot water for saying that developers not baking monetisation into the creative process are “fucking idiots”. He later apologised.
A few weeks later Applovin got involved and tried to hijack the deal with the offer of a merger with Unity worth $20bn, which Unity rejected. Applovin officially gave up on the proposed merger a month later.
Unity CEO John Riccitiello said in a blog that the official coming together of the two companies’ tools will enable devs to “get real-world player and market feedback earlier in the development process, which means that they can learn what players really want, make better games and be on track for a more successful game businesses.”
He added: “The benefits from the merger with ironSource are, indeed, particularly strong for mobile game developers who choose advertising as their business model. Gamers are a highly engaged audience but only a small minority (less than 2%) utilize in-app purchase in the games they play.”
“Advertising and in-app-purchases are the ways most mobile game developers choose to monetize their games. And most players welcome ads as a way to discover new games to play. This provides developers with the revenue to not only pay the bills, but also fund their growing teams – and build more beautiful games.”
