Unity Comeback, Tools Behind
Sara Beykpour@sara
−0.2%
since Sep 5
The idea
I believe indie storytellers are coming back to build on Unity as trust rebuilds, pricing resets, and AI tools make creation easier, so it anchors this basket at max weight. The rest owns the chain that gets those games made and played: art and code tools, the chips that render them, the cloud rails they run on, and the storefronts that sell them. I hold about 12% in cash to add on dips, since a concentrated one to two year bet like this will swing hard along the way.
What it owns
- Small studios rent their servers, code hosting, and multiplayer infrastructure from these cloud and networking providers instead of building it themselves, so usage grows as more indie games ship online. · MicrosoftIt hosts most game code on GitHub, runs game servers on Azure, and puts indie games in front of a paid audience through Game Pass on day one., AmazonIts AWS cloud runs the multiplayer servers behind many indie games that need to scale on launch day, so more online indie titles means more cloud spending., AlphabetIt takes a cut of every indie game sold on Play Store and rents cloud servers underneath many of them, so mobile indies create a toll booth on both sides., CloudflareIt moves multiplayer traffic fast and cheaply for small studios that like starting free and scaling up, so more online indie games means more paying developer customers., DatadogIt monitors game servers when they fall over on launch day, so more live indie games means more customers paying for observability and usage-based services.22%
- Every game shipped by indie teams gets rendered on a GPU, and these chipmakers supply the processors that most players and developers own across PCs, consoles, and phones. · NVIDIAIt makes the GPUs that render nearly every game an indie team ships, and sits inside most of the gaming hardware that players and developers own., Advanced Micro DevicesIts chips sit inside PlayStation and Xbox consoles, so indie games selling on those platforms puts money in its pocket, and its Radeon cards serve budget-minded developers., Taiwan SemiconductorIt physically manufactures the gaming chips that NVIDIA, AMD, and Arm partners design, so any growth in game hardware flows through its fabs., Arm HoldingsNearly every phone chip is built on its designs, and most indie games that reach big audiences do it on mobile, so this sits under the engine anchor bet.21%
- A finished indie game still needs storefronts, marketing, player acquisition, and hired talent to reach an audience, and these companies operate those distribution and labor pipes. · AppLovinIt is the mobile ad platform where small indie games find players and make money, which is exactly what a Unity comeback would produce more of on phones., Sony GroupIt takes a cut of every indie game sold on PlayStation Store, and has been actively courting indie storytellers with friendly policies and funding., Take-Two InteractiveIt publishes and funds smaller narrative-driven titles through its labels, so it wins when story-driven games sell whether made by large teams or small ones., UpworkIndie teams hire character artists for short projects rather than full-time employees, so more small studios means more freelance game work flowing through the platform.16%
- The take bets that story-driven indie game creators return to this engine after the runtime fee controversy, and that new pricing plus AI-assisted tools bring developers back to the platform most of them already know. · Unity SoftwareIt is the engine most indie developers already know, and the take bets it wins back sentiment after recent pricing changes and ships AI-assisted creation tools to bring storytellers back., RobloxIt proves from a different angle that everyday people making games is a growing business, and would show whether the indie creation wave is really coming by climbing creator payouts and engagement.15%
- Indie teams build their worlds in these software tools regardless of which game engine wins, so the toolmakers capture recurring revenue from more creators entering the market. · AdobeIts Substance 3D tools are the standard for game textures and materials, so more indie teams launching means more monthly subscriptions to Creative Cloud and Substance., AutodeskIts Maya and 3ds Max software is where game models and animation get made, so a wave of new indie projects means more paid seats in its media and entertainment business., GitLabIt sells code hosting to teams who don't want Microsoft's GitHub, so more small studios forming means more paid seats and AI coding feature adoption.14%
- Cash12%