Unity rejects $17.5 billion takeover

Unity has turned down a takeover bid from mobile software giants, AppLovin.

The Unity board of directors unanimously rejected the offer of $17.5 billion, stating that the takeover would be “not in the best interests of Unity shareholders.” Instead, the company has decided to continue with its own acquisition of AppLovin’s competitor, ironSource.

“The board continues to believe that the ironSource transaction is compelling and will deliver an opportunity to generate long-term value through the creation of a unique end-to-end platform that allows creators to develop, publish, run, monetize, and grow live games and real-time 3D content seamlessly,” said Unity CEO John Riccitiello.

AppLovin publicly declared its bid just last week, offering $55.85 per share. That’s 18% more than Unity’s closing price that week. The company, from Palo Alto, California, specializes in-app monetization – a key focus of Unity CEO John Riccitiello in recent months.

But it looks as though the company is focused on forging ahead with its own acquisition of ironSource to enable growth in this area.

“Looking at ironSource, they came with the same ideas,” said Unity Create senior vice president and general manager Marc Whitten. “Making feedback and publishing more transparent, as opposed to locked in a black box of marketing people.”

“Now creators can look at minute information about monetization and feedback in the same way they would look at load times or where they need to optimize their C# code.”

Riccitiello recently came under fire when he called developers who don’t focus on monetization the “biggest f****** idiots”. He was subsequently forced to apologize for his comments. Nevertheless, it looks as though Unity is continuing to focus on monetization with the ironSource deal.

If this goes ahead, it will see Unity shareholders keep 74% of the combined shares with ironSource shareholders making up the remaining 26%. The AppLovin deal would have left Unity in the minority, holding onto 49% of the company while AppLovin retained the controlling 51%.

Source: IGN