David Helgason of Unity and Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat at Quo Vadis 2016.
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Unity’s David Helgason on game design, VR, and mobile’s future

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 13 min

David Helgason cofounded Unity Technologies in 2003 to make a game engine that could help democratize game development. Over more than a decade, he guided the company on that mission and achieved great success.

Unity is now one of the world’s most popular game engines, with more than 5.5 million registered users. Games built with Unity account for 30 percent of the top 1000 grossing games and reach more than 1.5 billion devices. Things went so well that Helgason stepped down from Unity’s CEO job in October 2014, and he turned the job over to John Riccitiello, former CEO of Electronic Arts. (Riccitiello will speak at our GamesBeat Summit event on May 3-4 in Sausalito, Calif.). And Unity is reportedly seeking to raise a round of money at a valuation of $1.5 billion.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.