Capgemini acquires Unity's digital twin advisory arm

Capgemini, a France-based management and technology consulting firm, has agreed to acquire the digital twin professional services arm of Unity Technologies, a San Francisco-based video game engine developer.

Unity’s digital twin consulting team has in the last five years worked with companies across industries to develop real-time 3D solutions, with a focus on industrial application of digital twins.

As part of the transaction, the practice will join Capgemini to create one of the largest teams of Unity enterprise developers in the world.

The Paris-headquartered consultancy said in a press release that the acquisition will enhance its ability to support clients with RT3D solutions to build and scale immersive experiences.

On the back of the deal, Capgemini intends to scale a range of high-demand solutions for clients across sectors including aerospace, automotive, healthcare, manufacturing, energy, and retail. These include:

• Simulation, a digital representation of an asset that uses advanced modeling to simulate future scenarios and deliver insights.
• Human-machine interfaces that provide interactive experience in-vehicle, on meters, and on additional screens.
• Immersive training that leverages interactive 3D or augmented/virtual reality to improve knowledge transfer.

“This new agreement with Unity will allow Capgemini to embed 3D visualization software capabilities into our end-to-end business transformation services, to help clients realize the immediate and longer-term benefits of intelligent industry,” said William Rozé, CEO of Capgemini Engineering and group executive board member.

Capgemini in August 2022 announced a global partnership alliance with Unity to collaborate on supporting organizations in creating immersive and metaverse experiences.

“Unity has reached a point in its growth where the opportunity for us in the enterprise market has outpaced our ability to scale fast enough to meet client demand,” said Jim Whitehurst, CEO, Unity. “With its scale and breadth of services – from design and engineering to business transformation and data expertise, Capgemini is well placed to unleash the full potential of Unity technology for enterprise clients across industries with specific use cases.”

Unity has gone through several waves of layoffs in the last three years, including a 25% slash announced in January that cut 1,800 employees and was described by a spokesperson as a “company reset."

The wider video game industry has been undergoing a period of significant layoffs in the last number of months as a pandemic popularity spike has proven unsustainable. But Unity’s troubles go beyond that.

The firm in September 2023 announced a number of controversial changes for video game developers who use its engine, including a new pay-per-game-download pricing scheme. This resulted in a massive backlash and prompted numerous prominent indie studios such as “Among Us” developer Innersloth and “Slay the Spire” developer Mega Crit to announce a switch to other game engines.

Though CEO John Riccitiello subsequently resigned and the company walked back some parts of its new pricing model, the reputational damage cannot as easily be undone.