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Unity - TV Tropes

  • ️Fri Feb 23 2024

MediaNotes / Unity

Unity (a.k.a. Unity 3D) is a cross-genre cross-platform Game Engine with built-in level and script editors that's been around in some form since 2005. While initially not as optimized for high-end CPUs and GPUs as the big engines (Unreal Engine, id Tech, CryEngine, etc.), it enjoys a lot of love in the Indie Game scene thanks to its ease of use, flexibility, and, most of all, its liberal licensing policies. The basic version is free for anyone, and the pro version with more nifty features costs just $1500 per license note  (with additional add-on licenses needed for console and Mobile Phone Game development).

The engine has experienced a particular boom after the rise of Kickstarter as a game-funding platform in 2012, with the success of Unity-based KS heavyweights Wasteland 2 and Pillars of Eternity paving the way, making it a Spiritual Successor of sorts to Adobe Flash in terms of lightweight game development, with Unity being free to use also helping in that regard. The boom lasted until ca. 2015, when Epic Games' drastic loosening of Unreal Engine 4's licensing policies made it just as attractive to indie devs. Unfortunately, the boom has also given Unity something of a stigma amongst gamers, associating Unity with poorly optimized games and low-quality Shovelware titles on Google Play and Steam, at least some of which were made with stolen assets and/or are developed more for ad revenue from impressionable children or unwitting users.note 

Further souring things were how Unity CEO John Ritticiello note  called game developers who refused to embrace microtransactions "stupid", and later in September 2023 announced a change to the licensing terms in that they will be billing developers for each "installation" of the game engine (on top of the existing license and subscription fee), even if the game was pirated. This generally did not go down well with smaller Indie studios, of which a number switched to Godot or Unreal Engine. Unity quickly tried to engage damage control soon after (by turning the developer bill into one that counts only "unique" installations and self-reported, and the term only apply to newer versions of the engine).

The engine has a Moe Anthropomorphic Personification in Japan, named Kohaku Otori a.k.a. Unity-chan. Because of course it does.

Games running on the Unity engine that already have their own wiki page:

Other Unity games: