Unity Game Engine

Unity Game Engine lets you create real-time 3D projects for games, animation, film, architecture, engineering, manufacturing and construction. Unity includes tools to empower artists to create cinematic content and gameplay sequences without the need of an engineer.

Many high-profile games have been created using Unity, supporting multiple platforms including desktop, mobile, console and VR.

Is Unity free?

Unity offers a free Personal plan that includes all core features to create games and interactive experiences. It also includes support for Unity Ads and the in-app purchase plugin. You can download it and use Unity free of charge as long as your revenue (or funds raised in the last year) does not pass $100K.

Can I create AAA games with Unity?

Yes, you can. Unity has been used to create hundreds of popular games. Highlights include the likes of Among Us, Beat Saber, Genshin Impact, Pokémon Go, Super Mario Run, Iron Man VR, PC Building Simulator, Pillars of Eternity, Kerbal Space Program, Hearthstone, Temple Run, among many others.

Which is easier to use, Unity or Unreal Engine?

There is no right answer to that question. Both game engines are extremely robust and offer a fully featured free version to get you started. Both have strong communities in which you can participate and consult with. The general consensus at this stage is that Unity and Unreal Engine both are beginner friendly and won't require advanced programming knowledge for simple projects which will get the ball rolling as you learn.

Can I make money with Unity (free)?

Yes, you can create a game and legally sell it with the free version of Unity. You won't pay royalties or any revenue share unless you exceed sales of $100K in a year.

Can I create a game in Unity without coding?

Unity relies on the C# programming language and does require text-based programming. However, to be more welcoming to users with no coding experience, there is a "First-time Users" option that offers completed mini-games that you can edit and play around with, so you can get a better grasp at how the engine works. In that mode, Unity will guide you with step-by-step instructions to create your own tasks and build your own projects.

Features

Unity Personal

For beginners, students and hobbyists who want to explore and get started with Unity. Completely free --- no royalties, no credit card required. You fully own any content you create

Everything you need to get started

Unity Personal is a great place for beginners and hobbyists to get started. It includes access to all core game engine features, continuous updates, beta releases, and all publishing platforms.

Start creating

Move efficiently from prototyping to full production with a truly flexible editor and intuitive workflows supported by tons of tutorials and ready-made assets to guide your learning and development.

Work with the latest

Continuous updates allow you to develop with all the latest and most advanced features for high-end visuals, audio, animation, physics --- everything you need to make any kind of game.

Build for all audiences

Target more devices more easily --- with Unity, you can build once and deploy to the largest range of mobile, VR, desktop, Web, Console and TV platforms in the industry with a single click.

Note: You can download the latest version as well as the LTS (Long Term Support) version. The LTS stream is for users who wish to continue to develop and ship their games/content and stay on a stable version for an extended period. Note that Unity does not support downgrading a project to a previous version of the editor. However, you can import projects to a new version of the editor.

What's New

Known Issues in 2023.2.5f1

• Asset - Database: 2 assertion errors are logged in the Console when importing the user's project with a plugin to a newly created one (UUM-55556)
• Asset - Database: Crash on Object::IncrementPersistentDirtyIndex when upgrading project version (UUM-57909)
• Asset Bundles: UV1 data is lost during AssetBundle build when Optimize Mesh Data is on (UUM-57201)
• Audio Authoring: Crash on AudioUtil_CUSTOM_HasAudioCallback when exiting Play Mode while the Inspector is displaying a GameObject with a script attached (UUM-58481)
• Audio Authoring: Wrong tooltip when hovering over the "Load In Background" property of an audio clip (UUM-27581)
• Audio Random Container: ARC window stops working when docking after deleting the asset in focus (UUM-58713)
• Audio Random Container: Windows get messed up due to ARC (UUM-55116)
• Culling: Crash on PrepareDrawShadowsCommandStep1 when selecting a camera while the Occlusion Culling window is open (UUM-506)
• DirectX12: Crash on D3D12Fence::Wait when using Forward+ Rendering Path with Better Shaders asset (UUM-57113)
• DOTS: [Mobile] Player freezes on "UnityClassic::Baselib_SystemFutex_Wait" or silently crashes (UUM-41806)
• HD RP: [AMD] Crash on GfxDeviceD3D12Base::DrawBuffersCommon when Baking Light with Virtual Offset on Probe Volumes (UUM-59522)
• IAP: [Android] The Player crashes with a "JNI ERROR (app bug)" error when the global reference table gets overflowed by BillingClientStateListener (UUM-55105)
• IL2CPP: [Android] Crash on Android when AndroidJavaProxy is calling from multiple threads (UUM-49357)
• Input: Crash on InputDeviceIOCTL when closing Unity editor (UUM-10774)
• Kernel: Crash on TransformAccessClearCallback when undoing ModularAvatar > Setup Outfit (UUM-59652)
• MacOS: Mouse and keyboard button inputs are delayed when in the Player on macOS (UUM-59176)
• Mono: Crash in CollectManagedImportDependencyGetters inside OpenScene in batch mode (UUM-57742)
• Packman: Users cannot export bundled plugins into a .unitypackage anymore (UUM-37376)
• PhysX Integration: ConfigurableJoint's drives behave differently after the PhysX 4.1.2 update (UUM-55081)
• Platform Audio: Audio is delayed by ~0,5 sec after starting to play it in the Android/iOS Player (UUM-41494)
• Platform Audio: [WebGL] A looping audio sounds different on WebGL than in the editor/native desktop player (UUM-12530)
• Progressive Lightmapper: The Editor becomes unresponsive and memory allocation errors are spammed in the Console when Generating Lightning (UUM-58017)
• Scene Management: Crash on GameObject::QueryComponentByType when opening a project (UUM-58461)
• Scripting Buildtime: Unclearable nunit error when installing/uninstalling the Entities package on a new project (UUM-58284)
• Shortcut Management: Scene view Camera cannot be moved with WASD/QE keys when the Right Mouse Button is held down and the Mouse is not moved (UUM-57993)
• Text: Blurry Text (UUM-49006)
• XR SRP: [Quest] Stutter/Frame Pacing with OculusRuntime.WaitToBeginFrame when the Player is built (UUM-27247)

2023.2.5f1 Release Notes

Improvements

• Build System: make bee_backend's directory deletion explicitly handle readonly files on windows
• Universal RP: Improved runtime performance by adding checks for _ALPHATEST_ON when rendering depth, shadows and depth normals. (UUM-57793)

Changes

• Package: Updated code coverage package to version 1.2.5

Fixes

• 2D: Fixed case where Importing sprite sheet by using ISpriteEditorDataProvider generates broken Sprites. (UUM-56410)
• Android: Add missing super.onRequestPermissionsResult for onRequestPermissionsResult call for both Activity and GameActivity (UUM-58225)
• Android: Added Auto Rotation behavior to the Orientation section. (UUM-44021)
• Android: Fixed Graphics.Blit with Vulkan PreTransform creating corrupted RenderTexture data in landscape orientation. (UUM-52910)
• Android: Fixed missing IPostGenerateGradleAndroidProject deprecation warning, it will be visible now. (UUM-57693)
• Android: Removed unity.allow-resizable-window meta-data for multi-window support on large screens.
• Android: Users can override UnityPlayerActivity.java, by placing the file directly in Unity project, this was accidentally broken with incremental build pipeline. (UUM-57761)
• Animation: Fixed blend tree preview not displaying when inspecting blend tree (UUM-54402)
• Animation: Fixed issue where animation clips with discrete curves (animating enums) in asset bundles built before unity 2022 would not load properly. (UUM-40841)
• Asset Import: Fixed issue where "Multiple plugins with the same name" error occurs when importing bundle files in .androidpack folders on Mac. (UUM-35317)
• Build System: Don't crash on windows if there are duplicate environment variable keys.
• Core: Clarified APV helpboxes. (UUM-49254)
• Core: Fixed a tooltip issue. (UUM-54574)
• Documentation: Add missing UnityWebRequest method signatures to documentation for helpers taking uri as System.Uri. (UUM-57122)
• Documentation: Fixed water burst script compilation issues.
• DX12: Fixed a crash caused by allocating too many descriptor heaps in DirectX 12 and ray tracing. (UUM-40496)
• Editor: EditorApplication.focusChanged now gets triggered using operating system dependent application focus events. (UUM-41894)
• Editor: Fixed "Assertion failed on expression: '!m_InsideContext'" error in editor console. (UUM-46849)
• Editor: Fixed a crash in shortcut generation on Mac OS. (UUM-56950)
• Editor: Fixed an issue where Menus items are not visible after loading large projects. (UUM-56482)
• Editor: Fixed Child object not correctly destructed during scene unloading when detached from its parent in OnDestroy. (UUM-35019)
• Editor: Fixed copy properties on material variants. (UUM-53121)
• Editor: Fixed crash when opening project with corrupted library (DBVersion corrupted). (UUM-41316)
• Editor: Fixed default and secondary action invocation in Search window (keyboard + double-click). (UUM-55883)
• Editor: Fixed failure on AMD GPU when baking APV with virtual offsets or sky occlusion. (UUM-54158)
• Editor: Fixed for invalid texture binding in worldspace. (UUM-58524)
• Editor: Fixed how we index folder and folder combinations for the dir: filter. (UUM-56923)
• Editor: Fixed issue where the wrong value would be displayed for stepped curves. (UUM-30927)
• Editor: Fixed Mac Editor crash that could occur during Play mode if shaders needed to compile while creating a new Material with the Inspector panel open. (UUM-56959)
• Editor: Fixed Mouse bindings appearing twice when rebinding a shortcut entry in the Shortcut Manager window. (UUM-56740)
• Editor: Fixed Opaque Layer Mask filters out meshes that use the 31st Layer. (UUM-17764)
• Editor: Fixed renderdoc capture button in linux editor not capturing drawings in gameview. (UUM-57914)
• Editor: Fixed script not compiled with a certain folder/asmdef configuration in the Assets folder.
• Editor: Fixed Secondary click "control-click" does not work on mac. (UUM-56102)
• Editor: Fixed Static Lighting Volumetric Clouds checkbox. (UUM-54025)
• Editor: Fixed tessellation of UI Toolkit masking shapes that was causing "Invalid vertex" error in debug. (UUM-58404)
• Editor: Fixed the container window signal handler data type. (UUM-58495)
• Editor: Lens Flares ignore Camera Culling Masks. (UUM-44191)
• Editor: Plugins of .androidlib type will by default be marked as only compatible with Android. (UUM-57229)
• Editor: Prevent crash in PreviewTextureManager when changing materials while play-mode is active. (UUM-44179)
• Editor: When a context contains a single provider, it is correctly listed in the AddNewBlock propositions. (UUM-56451)
• Editor: [Android] Broadcast Receiver in UnityPlayer was removed as it is unneeded and causing crash on Android 14 development due to missing EXPORTED/NOT_EXPORTED flag when registering receiver. (UUM-48068)
• Editor: [Windows] Fixed moving window with .position across monitors with multiple dpi has the wrong size. (UUM-34515)
• GI: UpdateLightProbeProxyVolumes is shown as running despite not being active. (UUM-53150)
• Graphics: Enforce SDR for Splash Screen. (UUM-46354)
• Graphics: Fixed a Metal validation error that occurred when GPU batched skinning generated an empty dispatch call due to empty blendshapes. (UUM-47088)
• Graphics: Fixed an issue when using CaptureScreenshotAsTexture during the rendering process with Metal API, if the results are undefined then Unity now outputs an error instead of crashing. (UUM-47096)
• Graphics: Fixed async PSO creation jobs from getting canceled due to localized Vulkan PipelineKey conflicts. (UUM-54127)
• Graphics: Fixed depthnormals bug for multi-pass shader. (UUM-56610)
• Graphics: Fixed race condition when registering Vulkan PSO caches for maintenance. (UUM-54127)
• Graphics: Fixed race condition. when shutting down the Vulkan async PSO creation system. (UUM-54127)
• Graphics: Fixed to make sure maxParallelPSOCreationJobs limit is obeyed when using Vulkan. (UUM-54127)
• Graphics: Texture names may occasionally not been set on development build GPU captures, this has been fixed so they match the asset they were loaded from. (UUM-57690)
• HDRP: Fixed a culling result sharing issue between custom passes and the camera rendering them. (UUM-53945)
• HDRP: Fixed a null ref exception when baking APV without GPU streaming enabled. (UUM-58735)
• HDRP: Fixed an issue by removing now unnecessary required setting for the Water System sample. (UUM-58619)
• HDRP: Fixed Blackman-Harris filter for temporal AA. (UUM-57155)
• HDRP: Fixed Console errors with ReflectionProxyVolume component Gizmo. (UUM-56069)
• HDRP: Fixed creating mirror Gameobject not being placed in prefab hierarchy. (UUM-56424)
• HDRP: Fixed Disk Light's property not being updated when changing it's radius using the gizmo in the scene. (UUM-51530)
• HDRP: Fixed exception thrown when running projects for an extended amount of time. (UUM-49102)
• HDRP: Fixed inverted shadows from transparent objects in HDRP path tracer. (UUM-56536)
• HDRP: Fixed post-processing when the LUT size is not a power of 2. (UUM-42714)
• HDRP: Fixed sentence in "Ray Tracing: Getting started" documentation. (UUM-57200)
• HDRP: Fixed ShaderGraph with motion vectors enabled overwriting interpolators with previous frames data. (UUM-56632)
• HDRP: Flares now respect the cameras culling mask and the game objects layer (Occlusion and Rendering). (HDRP-3062)
• HDRP: Increase HDRP's maximum cube reflection probes on screen. (UUM-53178)
• iOS: Fixed "Fill percentage" launch screen option only using the iPad value for both iPhone and iPad. (UUM-46824)
• iOS: Fixed ActivityIndicator not showing on newish iOS. (UUM-48717)
• iOS: Fixed Product Name with non-latin characters to be able to install .ipa to the device. (UUM-30326)
• iOS: Fixed WebCamDevice.kind reporting wrong values on devices with non-English system language. (UUM-56785)
• Physics: Fixed an issue where Physics.gravity would end up attempting to wake up kinematic Rigidbody components, causing errors to be logged. (UUM-57939)
• Physics: Fixed moving child triggers causing parent bodies to recalculate their center of mass. (UUM-30798)
• Scene Manager: Fixed crash when replacing a missing prefab asset. (UUM-42461)
• Scene/Game View: Fixed an issue where clicking on the SceneView with the middle mouse button would not focus it on MacOS. (UUM-57116)
• Scene/Game View: Fixed an issue where exiting a tool variant triggers another tool variant from the same group. (UUM-54110)
• Scene/Game View: Fixed an issue where navigating the SceneView using Flythrough mode would cause a system alert sound to be played on macOS. (UUM-56936)
• Scene/Game View: Fixed issue where holding the Shift key down and scrolling with the mouse wheel would not change SceneView's camera speed while in Flythrough mode. (UUM-56423)
• Scripting: Fixed a console error related to rider pkg (v3.0.25 or later), which appears in Editor SafeMode. (UUM-57097)
• Scripting: Reduced the noise in Editor logs when ApiUpdater fails to read/write cached configuration files. (UUM-49205)
• Serialization: SerializedProperty.boxedValue now works with types containing SerializeReference. (UUM-15022)
• Shaders: Ensures internal shader compiler errors such as losing connection to a compiler process aren't cached like compilation errors are (UUM-28802)
• Shaders: Ensures internal shader compiler errors such as losing connection to a compiler process aren't cached like compilation errors are. (UUM-28802)
• TextCore: Ensure no errors are thrown for wrongly formatted tags. (UUM-11753)
• TextMeshPro: Fixed TMP_InputField line limit behavior to mean unlimited when the value is set to zero or negative. (UUM-57192)
• UI Toolkit: Fixed an issue where the UI Builder would not recognize attributes starting with an uppercase letter as bindable. (UUM-55555)
• UI Toolkit: Fixed GUIDepth error when changing Color property in Gradient Editor. (UUM-47254)
• UI Toolkit: Fixed GUIDepth error when changing Search filter dropdown in Test Runner. (UUM-40283)
• UI Toolkit: Fixed issue with ListView items being rebound to the parent SerializedObject when hierarchy traversal kicks in, instead of keeping the binding from bindItem. (UUM-54716)
• UI Toolkit: Fixed issues with editor bindings throwing exceptions when the object was changed but then disposed. ('SerializedObject of SerializedProperty has been Disposed'). (UUM-57406)
• UI Toolkit: Fixed missing dirty-repaint when setting the DynamicColor hint. (UUM-59393)
• UI Toolkit: Fixed ObjectDisposedException on undoing creation of element in the builder. (UUM-53334)
• UI Toolkit: Fixed UIToolkit memory leak in webgl for safari. (UUM-57628)
• VFX Graph: Improved error feedback message when a shader graph is missing and no path is found. (UUM-28009)
• Video: Choppy video playback when Application.targetFrameRate is set lower than the video frame rate. (UUM-48911)
• WebGL: Fixed an issue that causes a parsing error due to misplaced regex. (UUM-21896)

Package changes in 2023.2.5f1

Packages updated

• com.unity.2d.animation: 10.0.3 → 10.1.0
• com.unity.2d.common: 9.0.2 → 9.0.3
• com.unity.ide.rider: 3.0.26 → 3.0.27
• com.unity.mobile.notifications: 2.3.0 → 2.3.1
• com.unity.postprocessing: 3.3.0 → 3.4.0
• com.unity.render-pipelines.core: 16.0.4 → 16.0.5
• com.unity.render-pipelines.high-definition: 16.0.4 → 16.0.5
• com.unity.render-pipelines.high-definition-config: 16.0.4 → 16.0.5
• com.unity.render-pipelines.universal: 16.0.4 → 16.0.5
• com.unity.shadergraph: 16.0.4 → 16.0.5
• com.unity.testtools.codecoverage: 1.2.4 → 1.2.5
• com.unity.visualeffectgraph: 16.0.4 → 16.0.5
• com.unity.netcode.gameobjects: 1.7.0 → 1.7.1
• com.unity.services.deployment: 1.2.0 → 1.3.0
• com.unity.addressables.android: 1.0.1 → 1.0.2