Unity Technologies has announced that the company has acquired Vivox, the provider of cross-platform voice and text communication tools for games. Under the terms of the acquisition, Vivox will become a wholly owned subsidiary and operate independently, continuing to offer cross-platform communication services to game studios and developers of any size. The entire Vivox team will be joining Unity, including Founder & Chief Executive Officer Rob Seaver, and will remain headquartered in Framingham, MA.
The addition of Vivox to the Unity Technologies core platform offering coalesces with Unity’s mission to make it easier and faster to create connected games and experiences for all developers. Vivox offers the industry’s only cross-platform, 3D positional audio technology, which gives game players a real-time voice and text experience, whether on mobile, PC or console. Vivox has been integrated into more than 125 games worldwide and has over of 100M monthly active users.
“Vivox and Unity share a common mission: to empower creators and developers with the most powerful and accessible tools and services,” said John Riccitiello, Chief Executive Officer, Unity Technologies. “The ability for gamers to speak to each other, in real-time, is a requirement in connected games because players want to enjoy great moments together. With Vivox part of Unity, we’re excited to work with the team to make connected communications a seamless integration for devs and develop a future roadmap that takes in-game communications to exciting new places.”
In September 2018, Vivox introduced its Developer Portal, providing the service for free up to 5,000 peak concurrent users (PCUs), cementing its leadership as the communication tool for everyone from small indie game developers to large-scale, AAA game studios.
“It has always been our mission to provide game developers the easiest communications services for their games, regardless of platform, scale, or size,” said Rob Seaver, Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Vivox. “Unity touches more than 3 billion devices worldwide and over half of all mobile games are made on Unity, which means our partnership gives developers across the globe an easy entry point into building the creation of their dreams. We’re thrilled to become part of the Unity team.”
Unity exists to empower success of the world’s creators with the most accessible and powerful real-time 3D development and monetization platform. Games and experiences made with Unity have reached more than 3 billion devices worldwide this year and were installed more than 28 billion times in the last 12 months. For more information, please visit www.unity3d.com.