Rumour: The Unity Engine Is For Sale

As in, the whole bally company. Clearly anyone's been able to buy a copy of the engine for yonks.

Unity is the go-to gamemaking tool for a vast number of developers, big and small (around three million of 'em, in fact, with Blizzard's Hearthstone its highest-profile title, at least until one of my games comes out), and it was perhaps only a matter of time before it became an even greater concern. That time may be very soon, if reports that the game engine company's angling to be sold are true.

Clearly, we can have no idea what this will mean for PC gamers and PC game-makers as yet, but rare's the case where a corporate buyout doesn't have eventual repercussions. Watches Mojang closely.

I couldn't count how many games we've covered here have used Unity, so this might just turn out to be as major an event in PCgameland as the Minecraft sale was. Of course, Unity is essentially an all-platforms tool these days, so it goes far beyond our big little corner of the world. That could very well change if its eventual buyer owns or has a vested interest in a particular platform.

There may very well be no buyer, of course, as right now public talk of a sale stems purely from a CNET report claiming that Unity has "shared presentations with possible acquirers including Google, according to people familiar with the matter." Man, is there anything those Google guys won't try to buy?

"Serious talks" with a particular buyer also went down recently, allegedly, though the outcome is not reported, and neither are any sources for this information named.

As yet, Unity have made no comment on the matter. Well, they wouldn't, would they?