[stuart78]

I understand the reservation about an IPO changing their motivations, but it seems like a pretty predictable path for a company that has raised >$600m.

It does not seem to me obviously better (for developers or their customers) for Unity to stay private or be acquired. Acquisition could threaten the cross-platform appeal and perpetual private state would not deliver a return to investors.

And I don't think there is an inherent threat to either the freemium model or a perversion of the roadmap. There seems to be real competition between game engines and the value the free offering provides is one of the easiest entry points to game development. This delivers a huge number of potential developers, which is the foundation that sustains the paying developers above it.

Somebody there told me once that their mission was to 'have half the world's creative content created in Unity', meaning not only video games, but films and presumably traditional CAD markets such as architecture and product design. If this is true, I think the real threat to developers irrespective of IPO is one of focus. Can Unity evolve the product for their core market, or will they become too horizontally committed and lose focus?

This is a place where the market could 'correct' a land grab strategy by driving the company to focus on the core business.