Highlights
- Unity stock surged 13% after preliminary Q1 2026 revenue of $508M beat guidance.
- Adjusted EBITDA jumped 58% year-over-year, reaching a projected $135M.
- CEO Matt Bromberg is streamlining Unity by phasing out non-strategic ad businesses.
Highlights
Fueling Modern Gaming: Over 8,500 Steam Releases
Behind these financial wins is the simple fact that Unity is still the beating heart of modern gaming. According to SteamDB, over 8,500 Unity-powered games were published to Steam in each of the past two years, making it the reliable backbone for both indie darlings and blockbuster releases.
The engine is currently fueling absolute juggernauts. Take Team Cherry's Hollow Knight: Silksong, which was profitable on day one and saw a staggering peak of 535,000 concurrent players, or the co-op climbing sensation Peak, which has sold well over a million copies since its massive 2025 launch. Other recent notable hits like LEGO Voyagers, PowerWash Simulator 2, and Terminator 2D: No Fate were built on the tech, alongside highly anticipated 2026 releases dropping next month, like Mouse: P.I. for Hire and Replaced.
To keep this momentum rolling, CEO Matt Bromberg and his leadership team are making some major business moves behind the scenes to streamline operations. Unity is ditching its non-strategic ad businesses, aka the IronSource Ads Network, which will be phased out by April 30, with minimal revenue expected from it after the first quarter.
Team Cherry
Overcoming the Runtime Fee Backlash
Furthermore, the company has brought on a financial advisor to help divest its mobile game publishing arm, Supersonic. By shedding these extra wings, leadership expects to speed up Vector's impact, driving faster overall revenue growth and even higher profit margins down the line.
These impressive results feel like a hard-won victory considering where the company was just two years ago. Unity navigated incredibly choppy waters following a widely controversial policy change that introduced a "Unity Runtime Fee," aiming to charge developers based on game installs and revenue.
The backlash was fierce. Developer Mega Crit famously ditched Unity to build Slay the Spire 2 in Godot—a free, open-source engine—partly due to the fee. While the policy was eventually reversed, the fallout led to the retirement of then-CEO John Riccitiello.
The turnaround truly kicked off in Fall 2024 with the rollout of Unity 6. Bromberg stepped in to replace Riccitiello and called the release a major reset moment. “We want to be a fundamentally different and better company,” Bromberg told IGN at the time. “And I know that we can be. It is what we want. We want to have a fundamentally different relationship with our customers and our community, and we want to develop and deliver products in a fundamentally different way.” Looking at today's numbers, it seems that reset is finally paying off.
