We never enjoy writing about layoffs. There’s been a lot of that in the video game industry lately, and the latest news on the matter comes from Unity. It looks like a new round of layoffs within the company saw the entire team behind Behavior be let go. Details are a bit scarce at the moment, but here’s what we know so far.
Thanks to Insider Gaming, we’re learning that the team working on Behavior at Unity was recently laid off. This news comes from a post on the official forums by Shanee Nishry, who alerted fans that the project was scrapped and the team was being laid off. According to Nishry, the team was just alerted that they were the latest in the round of layoffs, and it’s uncertain what the future of Behavior holds.
Apparently, Nishry asked Unity to make the project open source so that others could continue with the build. However, they are uncertain if Unity will go through with that request. So, it’s purely a waiting game right now to see if anything comes from the Behavior build. Of course, we’re hopeful that this will end up being open-sourced for those interested in helping bring this project to fruition.
“Thank you for your love and support for our project. Unfortunately we were told today that our team is included in the latest round of layoffs and we will not be able to support you any longer. I’ve reached out to leadership to ask if they can open source the project, but there is no guarantee. I’d like to thank you so much again for your kindness and support and your amazing engagement and feedback. I wish we could take Behavior to the finish line we wanted to get it to.” – Shanee Nishry
For those unaware, Unity Behavior was supposed to be a visual tool for developers to control NPCs or objects. This would also allow developers to control interactions with multiple characters, create cinematic scenes, react to player actions, or trigger timed events. Essentially, it would have made behavior authoring a lot easier when developing games in Unity.
As reported by Insider Gaming, Unity has not issued an official statement on the matter right now. Likewise, we don’t have any insight into how many employees were recently laid off from the company.
