CACI International, for context, is an IT company which provides technology to various US federal and state government agencies. Marc Whitten, senior vice president at Unity and general manager of Unity Create, explained Unity’s role in the contract as “defining human machine interfaces or HMI for aerospace applications and beyond” in the company’s follow-up earnings call, as reported by Bloomberg. “These applications demand an interactive, robust user experience very much like games,” he continued, justifying Unity’s suitability for the role. The reason why this contract has been gaining attention is because last year, employees at Unity revealed the poor transparency of clients they work for. Speaking to Waypoint, three sources divulged that employees could be working on technology under the impression that it would be for use by video game developers, but instead would be provided to military clients instead. Workers at Unity were unhappy both with the company’s contracts with the military and the lack of transparency in who their work would serve. Waypoint later obtained internal documents detailing a project that Unity created for the US Air Force, providing an example of what exactly Unity’s output for the military looks like. Unity recently was offered a $17.54bn acquisition deal by AppLovin, which is estimated to generate over $3bn of adjusted operating profit should the proposal go through.
