Walmart Teams Up with Unity for E-commerce in Gaming

Walmart has teamed up with Unity, a leader in real-time 3D content creation, to integrate Walmart’s commercial APIs into games and applications developed by Unity. This partnership aims to bridge the gap between customers’ virtual and physical lifestyles by allowing creators to market physical products in real-time 3D experiences across more than 20 platforms. Moreover, it introduces new monetization avenues in games and experiences created with Unity.

The partnership empowers developers and enhances user engagement by leveraging Unity’s significant user base, with over 1.1 million developers using the Unity editor monthly. These developers contribute to an average of 3.6 billion downloads of “Made with Unity” apps each month, highlighting the broad reach and impact of this collaboration. Walmart aims to bring its retail capabilities to the virtual space, presenting new business opportunities within these digital platforms.

Tom Kang, Vice President and General Manager of Metaverse Commerce at Walmart Store No. 8, articulated the potential of this collaboration. “We have the opportunity to connect the physical and digital realms in a way that only Walmart can, providing our customers and members with authentic experiences where they already are,” he said. This initiative allows developers to create more engaging user experiences by allowing in-game transactions for physical products, thus maintaining the immersive nature of digital environments.

The President of Create at Unity, Marc Whitten, echoed these sentiments and highlighted the partnership’s potential to foster commercial innovation in games and virtual experiences. “We’re excited to be able to offer Unity developers the option of another new revenue stream while keeping players inside their games and experiences,” he said.

Walmart’s recent forays into immersive commerce have included collaborations on three Unity-based experiences: fun-gi’s ‘House Flip,’ Lockwood Publishing’s ‘Avakin Life,’ and Naver Z’s ZEPETO. These integrations allow users to purchase real-life counterparts of in-game items, merging virtual activities with physical purchases.

For example, with ‘House Flip,’ users of this mobile game, designed to renovate, decorate, and sell virtual properties, have the option to buy real versions of the items they use in the game.

The introduction of Walmart’s Unity software development kit (SDK) aims to enable creators to further integrate Walmart’s commerce APIs into their projects. This approach seeks to enhance gaming experiences by allowing in-game purchases of physical goods, expanding player engagement, and introducing affiliate commissions as a new method of monetization.