Games middleware giant Unity Technologies is setting its sights on an initial public offering.

A report by Cheddar, citing people familiar with the matter, claims that the engine firm is planning on going public in the first six months of 2020.

In its last round of funding in June 2018, the company was valued at a whopping $3bn. That's up from the $2.6bn the company was valued at in May 2017. CEO John Riccitiello claims that Unity generates a huge $300m in revenue each year.

Rumours of Unity going public have been swirling for a few years now. It's possible that with the exponential increase in success that the firm's big rival Epic has had off the back of Fortnite is a factor in going public in order to try and secure future growth.

Pressure from the Unreal maker is clearly a concern for Unity, seen in its move to offer triple-A assets via its Icon Collective initiative. This follows Epic rolling out assets from its MOBA Paragon to its Unreal Engine 4 users after that title was cancelled.

Unity would be the latest in a - relatively recent - long line of games companies heading towards an IPO.

On the UK side of things, Frontier Developments and Keywords Studios both went public in 2013, with Sumo Digital kicking off a new UK IPO trend at the end of 2017.

Last year saw both racing specialist Codemasters and indie label Team17 float. Digital retailer Green Man Gaming announced its intention to go public, but these plans were delayed due to market conditions.

Speaking to PCGamesInsider.biz last year, the managing director of investment bank Liberum Neil Patel - who helped both Codemasters and Frontier with their IPOs - said that the finance community is looking for companies that are at the top of a specific niche. This is certainly true for Unity, being one of the most widely-used game engines around.

That's not all the company offers, too. In November 2017, Unity bought the Multiplay server and infrastructure business from UK High Street retailer GAME.