The indy/free version is free to do as you please, but it has a short watermark for a few seconds when the engine starts up. There is a pro version that has some advanced features and no watermark. Then you van buy add-ons to let you publish for iOS and Android.

They are relatively cheap for anyone who is serious and is producing quality work.

If Unity was scamming or doing something undesirable with the registration details they got, wouldn't we know by now from the thousands and thousands of other people who gave them those details?

I didn't even remember that I had registered with Unity until you mentioned it. The only indicator of it for me was a couple nice emails I got from them, talking about Unity 4 and stuff. I don't see why it's such a big deal.

It's my life and it's my information. I haven't accused them of anything or told anyone else what they ought to do. I just said my bit. It may not be a big deal to you but it's a big deal to me, so I'm not messing with it.

It's my life and it's my information. I haven't accused them of anything or told anyone else what they ought to do. I just said my bit. It may not be a big deal to you but it's a big deal to me, so I'm not messing with it.

You are over reacting.

You have an account at Unity. It ties into the forum, their Unity Answers system, their shop, and what official add-ons you have. It also lets them keep track of who their customers are, and how to best serve them with upcoming versions.

It's my life and it's my information. I haven't accused them of anything or told anyone else what they ought to do. I just said my bit. It may not be a big deal to you but it's a big deal to me, so I'm not messing with it.

You are over reacting.

You have an account at Unity. It ties into the forum, their Unity Answers system, their shop, and what official add-ons you have. It also lets them keep track of who their customers are, and how to best serve them with upcoming versions.

I'm not meaning to sound agitated. If they were to separate registration from the product I'd be far more likely to use it. I just don't like it when companies assume that I ought to tell them about myself as if it were just a given that they should know all about me. I've seen too many cases where either some random employee misused people's information or else someone just didn't dispose of records properly or there was a security problem and then all of a sudden thousands of people are at risk for identity theft, etc, etc, etc.

If they have some distribution support that's great (no sarcasm) but I'd rather it be seperate from the IDE, or a module within the IDE that you have to register in order to use, rather than having the whole thing as one monolithic package that extends requirements into places where they're unreasonable.

Again, though, this is just me, and I'm probably paranoid about this kind of thing.

That makes no sense whatsoever. You are just being unreasonable.

Should G-Mail also separate signing up to use their service from the ability to send mail?

There are no separate modules in Unity. It's one big toolkit, and when you sign in, the extra features you ordered are enabled. There is no extra PRO version, or compiling module to download. It's all there. It's very convenient, and you can use what you paid for anywhere you sign in.

This is no different than when I sign into my google account on any android device to enable all the content I paid for. I sign out of the old device, toss is, and resume on the new one.

Other than a user name and password, Unity doesn't ask any intrusive questions. Just simple things like what kind of user you are, and what kind of employment you have.

These are reasonable questions to ask.

They are in the business of providing a complex technology product to a wide user base. Knowing who is using their product, and what they are trying to get out of it helps them make the right decision when budgeting their limited time, and money to extend and support their product.

If it turns out that the product is being used by small teams of hobbyists, they will prioritize their resources to best cater to that crowd. If the user base is using it for something else, they will prioritize that instead.

They aren't sending digital boogeyman to hide in little children's closets.

@Daaark: Let it go. Not everyone is comfortable with giving out personal information -- even a minimal amount of it -- and I think (at least after his initial posts) Khatharr has been pretty reasonable in explaining his objection and making it clear that it's just his personal preference rather than an objective problem that would affect the majority of users. This is an issue for some people, so it's not unreasonable to mention it in a discussion of Unity so that people who do care can make a more informed decision.

There's no accusation that data is being sold, misused, etc. and Khatharr isn't telling people they should never use it -- he's simply explained why he personally prefers not to use it. There are people who are uncomfortable giving their information to G-Mail as well, and if they're happy to miss out on using the service in exchange for keeping their information private then that's their own choice, and there's nothing wrong with that.

I think Unity is a great product, I don't mind having to register to use it, and I don't think that the questions asked are overly intrusive, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with someone choosing not to use the product if they feel differently.

//EDIT: To be clear, I've voted up your post because you provided useful information about what Unity use the information collected during registration for, but I've also voted up (some of) Khatharr's posts because I think he's stating a valid (if possibly minority) personal choice he's made and it's a little unfair that he should be down-voted and told this is "unreasonable". Different people are more or less comfortable than others with this sort of thing, and as long as he's not spreading mis-information or shouting from roof-tops that everyone should agree with him I don't think there's anything wrong with him briefly explaining his position -- which some other people looking for an engine to use might also share.

No one can accurately answer that for you, and your project will simply take as long as it takes. Exactly how long that is depends on many factors including how complex your game will be, how skilled you are, how much time you can put in, if you experience any setbacks and more.

An experienced Unity developer could make a small and simple but functional third person shooter within a couple of hours, whilst the very same game could take a beginner a week or longer. From there the times involved just get longer as the game gets more complicated; large teams of professional developers still often take a year or longer to produce complex AAA titles.


You'll just need to stick at it till your game is done.