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Comment by mslong | Hacker News Reader

Unity is in a continual state of building out "shiny new toys"; libraries and modules and sibling software that work as intended for 1 or 2 release cycles before breaking and being discarded. I've seen this time and again with Unity and I think it will hurt their stock going forward as they try to convince more industries to use their tools.

Just in the past two years I've seen them develop, hype, and then quietly drop: their VR editor, AR preview tool, Octane Renderer, Substance integration, UNet, ML integration.

It's obvious they have an incredibly difficult time managing their tools when their platform is fundamentally shattered between multiple releases, versions, render pipelines, and now DOTS vs normal workflow. And it's basically impossible for other companies to manage Unity SDKs with a ground that moves that much.

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And it's basically impossible for other companies to manage Unity SDKs with a ground that moves that much.

Many successful video game companies use Unity to make their games. It's basically impossible to use except compared to the alternatives, which are just as impossible or more so.

It's pretty impossible to make an sdk or plugin that's runs on every version of Unity. I haven't seen it, anyway.

Studios have the same issue. They pick a version to ship with and work around whatever known bugs there are. Upgrading is a huge event and it's never painless.

Only because they keep it on the version of the engine they started on. Just ask any game developer using Unity about whether they tried to update the engine mid-project and how that went if they did ;p

Well, there's also the option of making your own engine. Which many game companies do, especially in the AAA space.

In my perspective that is a good sign -- they are constantly trying new ways to grow, and dynamically reallocating their resources to markets where the product features gain traction.

IMHO it's unrealistic to expect long-term commitment for maintenance / compatibility from ${ANY} new software, unless there's a 5-year enterprise contract with a SLA. Maintenance is difficult work, and only rewarding if the software provides real-world usefulness.

Bought Unity on sale with plans to use it later. Returned to a prototype two years later and both the product and licensed changed. No way to use the original license or version since their old registration flow broke. So it's upgrade... or crack it?

I thought Unity was free, basically, for projects that bring in less than 100K a year.

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