Video game software company Unity signed a major contract with CACI International, a $6 billion technology entity that works with the US government, providing expertise and new technologies on defense initiatives and military intelligence.
Related: Unity announced Q2 2022 financial results, no word on the Applovin merger
The software provider announced the deal as “a three-year, multi-million dollar partnership” and added that “This is the single largest digital twin solutions deal for Unity to date,” The gaming giant has been expanding to other industries for a while now and embraced a digital twin strategy.
Unity has been working on a number of military projects recently, and several employees openly criticized the company’s “new focus”. They said the possibility of their game-related work ending up in military applications was a major concern among the team. The US military has been using Unity and its solutions for simulating various combat scenarios and training both human personnel and drones.
The US Government and Militaryworking together with video game companies is nothing new. The US Army even developed and published America’s Army and its several iterations; used the game as a recruitment tool, but it was finally shut down after 20 years.
Czechia-based Bohemia Interactive, makers of ARMA and DayZ, also worked with the US government (among others) for a number of years and even started a division called Bohemia Interactive Simulations with a focus on military simulations, which eventually became a separate entity in 2013 and was recently acquired by BAE Systems, a UK-based multinational arms, security, and aerospace company
Marc Whitten, Vice President at Unity said:
“Through this relationship, Unity will help the government define human-machine interfaces or HMI for aerospace applications and beyond. These applications demand an interactive, robust user experience very much like games.”
Unity has been going through a very active period in the last few weeks as well. The game engine maker agreed to enter into a merger with ironSource and partnered up with Microsoft Azure to empower video game developers across the world. Only a few days after, mobile marketing platform Applovin proposed a merger with Unity, but the latter said it won’t make any comments about the proposal at this time.
Bloomberg tried reaching both Unity and CACI for comments, however, both companies declined to comment on the deal.
