Unity goes free!

In an interesting development at the Unite conference, Unity Technologies, provider of Unity, announced that version 2.6 of the Unity platform is will now be available at no cost. You can find the download here. This is outstanding news for the hobbyist like me. For years I’ve pit Unity against Torque when it comes to the best development platform for me. To date, it has been Torque because you get the source code which Unity does not allow access to and that’s extremely important when decisions have to be made about which middleware to choose. Game Developer magazine recently published results from a survey they conducted that shows backs up that fact. For most, not having the source code is an instant turn-off to a product and I honestly feel the same.

However, a price tag of $0 will make many people overlook that fact. This will bring in a lot more potential buyers and I’m sure that Unity Tech is hoping that this free version will act as a springboard for purchase of Unity Pro.

To echo what someone posted on the GarageGames forum regarding this very topic, “I kinda believe GG and torque3d left the hobbyist market.” Even though I love Torque, I feel the same. As a hobbyist, I’ve started feeling left out when T3D went live. There is no way I’m going to pay $1000+ for software that will see less than 8 hours per day use. I think it’s time to check out Unity.

Regardless, Good luck to Unity, I say.