TheGamingEconomy’s Daily Digest brings you the prevalent business stories in gaming. In today’s news: Unity seeks over USD$1bn (£774m) from IPO; Razer customer details reportedly exposed; and Juked.gg opens crowdfunding campaign.

Unity seeks over USD$1bn (£774m) from IPO

Unity Technologies has set its price range for its upcoming initial public offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange at between USD$34 (£26) and USD$42 (£32) per share, which would net the game engine technology firm USD$1.05bn at the upper boundary and a market capitalisation of just under USD$11.1bn (£812m). As detailed in its S-1 statement issued last month, Unity will use the raised funds for general corporate purposes, including the repayment of debt, handling operating expenses, and potentially placing strategic investments in complementary firms. Unity is yet to confirm the date of its IPO, though it is expected to fall on or around Friday 18th September.

Moreover, Unity is experimenting with an alternative to the traditional IPO process, according to a report published by The Financial Times. According to a notice circulated by Unity, prospective investors can submit multiple specific bids for the amount and price of shares which they intend to purchase, rather than simply placing orders for unpriced blocks of shares. The rationale behind the approach is to give Unity more power in determining the pricing and investor make-up than under the traditional IPO process. According to a notice circulated to prospective investors, "Indications of interest that are below the selected price will not result in the allocation of any shares."

Razer customer details reportedly exposed

Razer customer details including full name, telephone number, and billing address, have potentially been exposed as part of a misconfiguration of log data, which was then indexed by public search engines. According to security consultant Bob Diachenko, who discovered the flaw, up to 100,000 customers may be affected, with the information available for three weeks before being pulled.

Writing on LinkedIn, Diachenko posted, "I have immediately notified the company via their support channel on the exposure, however my message never reached right people inside the company and was processed by non-technical support managers for more than three weeks until the instance was secured from public access."

Update (Friday 11th September, 13:50): A Razer spokesperson has issued the following statement to TheGamingEconomy, "We were made aware by a security researcher of a server misconfiguration that potentially exposed order details, customer and shipping information. No sensitive data such as credit card numbers or passwords was exposed. The server misconfiguration was fixed on the 9th September. We sincerely apologise for the lapse and have taken all necessary steps to fix the issue, as well as conduct a thorough review of our IT security and systems. We remain committed to ensuring the digital safety and security of all our customers. Customers who have questions about this can reach out to DPO@razer.com."

Juked.gg opens crowdfunding campaign

Esports content platform Juked.gg has opened an equity crowdfunding campaign via the Republic.co platform with the intention of raising a maximum of USD$1.07m (£828,000) by 1st May 2021. According to the pitch to prospective investors, Juked is estimating that it could generate USD$100m in annual recurring revenue (ARR) from just 0.3% of the global esports viewership market via a combination of monetisation streams, including user subscriptions, fantasy esports services, advertising, and sponsorships. Juked has already surpassed its minimum fundraising goal of USD$25,000 (£19,300) with USD$75,926 (£58,738) at the time of writing, with the San Fransisco-based firm having previously secured USD$1m (£774,000) in pre-seed funding from the 500 Startups accelerator and a host of angel investors.

Speaking to The Esports Observer, Juked CEO Benjamin Goldhaber clarified why the firm had decided to persue crowdfunding over VC involvement, stating, "We faced significant challenges raising via VCs due to COVID-19 that made us much more bullish on the potential of crowd equity – the flow of capital nearly dried up for a few months, and in general, VCs were looking for surer bets (i.e. post-revenue companies). So this felt like a better alternative given the situation."