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Unity acquires streaming service Parsec for $320 million

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Unity Technologies, maker of the Unity game engine, has entered an agreement to acquire the streaming service Parsec.

Parsec has proven to be rather popular, especially with quarantines forcing people to work remotely. Not only that but Parsec also does gaming services too, allowing you to rent a server from them to host games that you then connect to which works like GeForce NOW and Stadia but it uses all of your own stuff. We actually tested Parsec on Linux back in 2017 and it was really impressive.

Another interesting use of Parsec has been AAA studios using it to demo their games. Again, due to the quarantines going on thanks to COVID-19. Some, like Ubisoft, had accounts with Parsec setup and ready for press to take a look. There's lot of different ways it's being used and they've seen strong year-over-year growth.

Unity are buying them for around $320 million in cash, with the deal expected to close (pending all the usual regulation stuff) during their third quarter.

From the press release:

“In the past year, companies and their employees have been collaborating and working together in fundamentally different ways,” said Marc Whitten, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Create Solutions at Unity. “With the workplace becoming more flexible, teams expanding and collaborating across multiple locations and creators leveraging a myriad of new devices, it’s clear that the creative process will evolve from on premise devices to flexible and cost effective cloud architectures. Parsec has addressed the unique requirements to support this type of high-performance processing no matter where creators are, showcasing technology that is both highly innovative and prescient. We believe Parsec is a rocketship and we’re very excited to support their future growth.”

"When Chris Dickson and I started Parsec, we believed Parsec's ultra-low latency streaming technology could allow anyone in the world to remotely interact with real-time 3D content," said Benjy Boxer, Parsec's CEO and co-founder. "In the past year, Parsec has empowered the world's most inspiring and creative companies to freely work and play from anywhere, on any device, on their own terms. We're thrilled to partner with Unity, where we can offer even more creators this same kind of liberating access to content and technology."

It will be interesting to see what Unity do with Parsec from game engine integrations to being available in games, the Parsec tech has a lot of possible uses. Right now Unity are saying nothing will change for Parsec users.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly came back to check on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. Find me on Mastodon.
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5 comments

pb Aug 11, 2021
Wasn't unity in the red and looking to be acquired not long ago?
Mezron Aug 13, 2021
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Man. If Unity can resolve the Linux hosting issue, it's going to be a wrap!
14 Aug 14, 2021
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I don't really understand what they're going to do with this.
Eike Aug 14, 2021
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Quoting: 14I don't really understand what they're going to do with this.

Offering not only a game engine, but also the hosting when you've created an online game? Does that make sense? :-)
Protektor Aug 19, 2021
Plex has been using Parsec to offer their game streaming server setup to stream games with Plex. Game companies have been using it a way to stream a game to reporters and others to play it without having to send out a copy of the game that others could end up passing around before it was released. This would in theory allow any game company to stream their own games instead or perhaps Unity is going to offer servers to stream games just like Parsec has already been doing.

Parsec already made a Mac server for Plex as well. It would be interesting to see if they work on the Linux hosting server that Parsec talked about a year or more ago.

https://twitter.com/parsecteam/status/1189682101257482248?lang=en


Last edited by Protektor on 19 August 2021 at 3:00 am UTC
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