Unity Keynote: Moving to a subscription model has revolutionised the way the development team work

At a keynote to kick off Unite Europe, Unity Technologies’ Lucas Meijer has said that moving Unity to a subscription model has revolutionised the way the team works on Unity development.

Primarily, Meijer has said that it’s removed the need to create big releases with showy features to continue to monetise. "We can focus on doing more releases, and put more focus on the quality and stability of the releases, allowing features to land when they’re more ready."

According to Meijer, who was speaking at the Unity Keynote in Amsterdam earlier today, it’s this change in focus that has allowed the Unity team to ship 5.5, 5.5 and 5.6. On screen, he shows a substantial list of milestones that the engine has achieved, although Meijer says that many bugfixes haven’t made it onto the list of extra details.

Unity launched their subscription model at last year’s event, with prices ranging from free-$125 a month depending on which features are needed. Meijer was overwhelmingly positive about the change, saying that it’s made many new changes possible as a result of the more reliable revenue stream.

The newest engine, Unity 2017 is currently in beta with version 1.0 planned to hit all of its targets by July 2017. Unity 5.6 is to be the last version of the Unity 5 lifecycle. The Unite Europe conference will continue until June 29th.