Unity (game engine)

The Unity game engine logotype.

Unity is a widely used Game Engine capable of creating 3D and 2D games. It was first released in 2005. Along with the Unreal Engine, it was one of the most popular widely available game engines of The New Tens, and was well known for supporting a wide variety of platforms and being relatively easy to get started with compared to the power it offered. In particular its asset store offered an easy way to build games for small studios lacking key talent or wishing to rapidly create expansive worlds while focusing talent and labor on bespoke aspects of their game.

Unity has a reputation within the gaming community because it’s possible to rapidly develop and make games with minimal friction, and thus lower skill developers, leading to Sturgeon's Law being far more visible in the gaming space. While a number of critically acclaimed games are made with Unity, a number of other games made with it are cash grabs based on flipped projects and assets from the asset store, overly eager indie projects made with poor coding practices leading to buggy games, or Widget games that make the broader public go "huh?". To make matters worse, in the past Unity required many users to display a Product Placement logo that appears as the start of their games, resulting in it becoming a bit of a dubious mark for some. Still it’s a powerful tool in the right hands. For a list of works that use or used Unity as a game engine see the category for Unity games.

Unity projects are typically written in the C# language. Unity is developed by Unity Technologies. Originally Danish, as of 2025 the company has offices in a number of countries including The United States, China, Japan, and others.

The official Unity website is here.

Different from the Unity webcomic.

Tropes used in Unity (game engine) include:
  • Allegedly Free Game: Unity starts out free of cost, but can become expensive under the right circumstances.
  • Backed by the Pentagon: Used by The United States government since 2011 according to a Unity press release. A major partnership was announced in 2022 according to an article by Bloomberg.
  • Early Installment Weirdness: As reported by TechCrunch, Unity was initially aimed at Mac OS developers.
  • Executive Meddling: The infamous runtime fee scandal of 2023. Essentially creators were told that after a certain point they would be charged $0.20 anytime a game was installed. Not sold - Installed, meaning someone redownloading a game to a new device, reinstalling after deletion to free up space, or simply malevolently uninstalling and redownloading could potentially cost the developer more money then they made with the initial sale. This was rolled back after outcry, but it still led to many developers abandoning Unity for Unreal Engine or Godot.
  • Executive Veto: The Unity end user licence agreement has some restrictions on how exactly Unity is used.
  • Freemium: The free personal version of Unity supports most of the features and functions and indie developer needs, but more expensive versions are available with additional features.
  • Game Maker: Through the asset store, especially with paid assets, it’s possible to build an impressive game with minimal staff. Low code development tools and a number of art assets are available in the store. Getting them to fit and work together is a different matter entirely, and making something good out of it still requires skill on the part of the user as with any game maker.
  • Genius Programming: Unity can make games that generally run OK across a wide variety of devices and platforms. The sheer number of devices it supports while generally avoiding Porting Disasters for technical reasons is impressive.
  • Loot Boxes: Available as a sample project in the documentation.
  • Mascot: Unity Chan is one for the Japanese branch of Unity Technologies.
  • The Merch: Unity used to have an apparel site called Unity Gear.
  • Microtransactions: Unity IAP (In-App Purchases) is the framework used to create them in a Unity game. Some of the cheaper assets on the asset store might count for a game developer.
  • Middle Ware: Compatible with some middleware such as Havok for Unity.
  • Real Money Trade: A tutorial in the documentation exists on how to implement this.
  • Seinfeld Is Unfunny: The Unity Asset Store as something meant to work well with a specific engine was fairly novel when it launched in 2010. By 2014 Unreal Engine launched a similar store, and by The New Twenties the concept of an engine specific asset store or library was fairly common.
  • Wreaking Havok: Unity supports a few ways of handling game physics according to the documentation.
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