Unity, famously known for its video game development engine has signed a contract with the US military to provide its simulation technology for defense purposes.
The Unity Engine developer announced the three-year multi-million dollar deal this week, reported Bloomberg. The contract is in partnership with the IT firm, CACI International Inc., which has already provided military intelligence in the past.
Marc Whitten, senior VP of Unity, said that this new venture will “help the government define human-machine interfaces or HMI for aerospace applications and beyond, these applications demand an interactive, robust user experience very much like games.”
Last year some employees at Unity had ethical concerns relating to the company’s military and non-military ventures. John Riccitello, the CEO of Unity, explained that the company’s military contracts are very restrictive and that the company “would not support programs where we knowingly violate our principles and values”.
This statement caused some internal backlash since many of the people working at Unity didn’t even know about these dealings. Riccitello said that they’d discuss this in further detail in the next “town hall meeting”.
The Unity Engine’s Future
The developer of the Unity Engine has had some tough times recently. The company let go of hundreds of employees saying they wanted to “realign” resources. And then, most notably, the company decided to merge with a company well known for creating MalWare, IronSource.
The CEO apologized for calling developers “idiots” during an interview. And recently AppLovin offered to acquire Unity for $17.5 billion. The deal has not yet seen any progress, but Unity’s board is looking into it in detail.
It is not yet known how this will affect Unity as a company, whether this acquisition goes through or not. But one thing is for certain, regardless of how the employees react, Unity will continue to work how it always has, continuing its military contracts.
The Unity Engine developer mentioned in an earnings report that this military deal is the “single largest digital twin solution deal for Unity to date.”
