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I would 1000% live in a world where Facebook bought Unity. Ignoring how shitty they are otherwise, they could let Unity be Unity and remove the distraction of monetization from a game engine company.

Alas, Unity leadership (CEO) had delusions of world domination and here is where they find themselves. I’m sure Facebook even made a prelim offer behind the scenes and Unity scoffed because they thought they would be a $50b company.

they could let Unity be Unity

Like they let whatsapp be whatsapp and instagram be instagram?

With current market incentives we should expect these companies to become less benevolent, not more.

I'm far from a frequent user of either, but Instagram and especially WhatsApp don't seem to have suffered terribly under Facebook. Instagram has obviously changed, but it would have changed as an independent app too. What's particularly "Facebooky" about its evolution?

WhatsApp feels exactly the same to me. Do I just have a short memory?

Not the companies suffer but the users. Facebook would use Unity to get more user data just like they did with WhatsApp, Instagram and Oculus

Unity is not used by endusers

But the games developed with it are. It's not about tracking of developers but users.

And nothing stops them adding facebook (they already are doing it)

With FB as owner there would be no choice because it's already part of the engine.

they could let Unity be Unity

Some Oculus users would disagree with you.

As much as gamers critique Meta's handling of Oculus, Oculus would be dead/gone by now if not for the acquisition. Meta has been dumping fuel/cash on Oculus to keep VR alive and the VR experience has mostly improved over the years.

Yeah, there's no way the Quest would even exist if it wasn't for Meta's multi-billion VR money bonfire. The whole industry would be poorer without an affordable standalone roomscale VR unit.

An independent, gaming-centric Oculus probably wouldn't have survived 2016 when HTC Vive shipped a much more advanced product than the Rift.

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