Unity acquires player research firm Playnomics

Unity has acquired the user research company Playnomics to help solve the challenges developers face in understanding their audiences.

The firm collates player analytics to decide why and how they take on games in the way they do, giving developers the means to use the data to increase their audience engagement.

Writing on Unity’s blog, CEO David Helgason said the engine maker’s latest acquisition showed it will not "sit back and be happy with the impact our tools and business decisions have made in games development overall”.

As part of Unity, Playnomics will continues to develop its technology, which will be integrated into the suite of services for Unity Cloud.

Just before GDC, Unity purchased Applifier, the developer of mobile video sharing platform Everyplay. Helgason said that, similar to Everyplay, Playnomics will help Unity developers by solving challenges that they face in “unique ways”.

“Playnomics has developed tools that help identify the ways that players interact with games and help you as a developer to make real-time decisions on how to interact with the community to keep them having fun and coming back for more,” he said.

“The new integration of the Playnomics services into Unity Cloud is a work in progress, but once ready, you’ll have another tool in our increasingly comprehensive toolbelt of services you guys need to be successful across the board.”

Unity has encouraged developers to take a look at Playnomics’ new Unity SDK.