Microsoft's Larry Hryb Joins Unity Community Team
TapTechNews on June 18, former Xbox communications director at Microsoft, Larry Hryb, also known as Major Nelson, after leaving his post in September 2023, tweeted yesterday (June 17) announcing that he has joined the Unity community team, but did not specify his exact position.
He said in his tweet, I am extremely honored to join the Unity community team. I have always supported the Xbox developer community, and now I am excited to work with developers again and use our collective creativity to shape the future of real-time games and experiences. Let's create miracles together.
TapTechNews looked up public information, Hryb has extremely high popularity in the Xbox community, nicknamed Major Nelson, and he has worked at Microsoft for more than 20 years. He joined the Xbox division in 2003, hosting live broadcasts and streaming events, running his MajorNelson podcast, etc., and became a familiar face. He was appointed senior director of corporate communications for the Xbox division in 2012.
The addition of Hryb comes at an interesting time in the history of Unity. In September 2023, Unity announced a change in the pricing of its UnityRuntime code, which included a charge per installation. This change sparked strong opposition from Unity developers. The company quickly reversed most of the changes.
Over the past few months, Unity has also suffered some major layoffs. In November 2023, due to the company terminating part of the earlier agreement with WetaDigital, Unity laid off 265 team members. In January this year, Unity announced a larger round of layoffs, with the number of layoffs reaching 1800, about 25% of the then total number of employees.
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