Unity kicked off Unite 2026 today with the traditional unveiling of upcoming Unity 6 features – features that the Unity developer community has been closely following and are still stabilizing after 2023 completion fee. scandals.
This year, the company has opted for a more conservative roadmap with fewer flashy announcements. But the highlights do live up to the promises of technical and operational stability outlined by CEO Matthew Bromberg in our conversation at GDC 2025. Two of the most impactful updates include the “Platform Toolkit,” which simplifies multi-platform releases, and improvements to the built-in in-app purchase dashboard. This is intended to cater to the ever-increasing number of shopping platforms that developers are using following the easing of restrictions on platforms such as Google Play and iOS app stores.
The company has already entered into agreements with payment systems Stripe and Coda to allow developers to connect their external online stores.
In an interview with Game Developer, Unity SVP of Engine Adam Smith explained that the Platform Toolkit should allow developers to write just one line of Unity C# code for platform-specific features such as platform achievements. The Unity engine will then process the SDK Toolkit and convert this logic into the required format for each individual platform, so developers don't have to perform the same task three or more times.
This is one way the company can speed up the “speed” of development, Smith said. This philosophy underpins other key updates, such as new security guidelines, Unity Core Standards, and AI-powered features like Unity AI Gateway and Unity Vector AI (though the jury is still out on whether generative AI can truly speed up what's happened slowdown game developers).
Smith pointed to Unity-based games such as Peak, SharxPeteAnd Hollow Knight: Silk Song as an example of the success the company wants to achieve with upcoming Unity updates. And while he called these games “out of nowhere” hits of the year, he stressed that the company will represent “studios of all sizes” in this year's keynote.
The new “Unity Core Standards” are aimed at ensuring the long-term stability of third-party tools.
Smith explained that the new Unity Core Standards came about as a result of numerous conversations with studios that are still supporting decades-old games created using third-party tools in Unity. “When you talk to a lot of studios that have been releasing games and working live for so long, they're kind of stuck in a decision they made 10 years ago or more,” he said. Old SDKs may not be properly supported or become vulnerable to new security breaches, and core standards are designed to ensure the long-term viability of a studio's technology stack.
He added that these standards are also being developed to support the growing number of third-party applications built into the Unity engine, such as Stripe, Coda or artificial intelligence tools. “As we focus more on engine extensibility and allowing the community to participate in engine research and development, we need to ensure that… we can ensure that these SDKs are transparent and verify that they meet the same quality standards as our own technologies.”
Smith said that in the past year, the most common request he's heard from Unity developers has been to support launch on as many versions as possible and ensure their games perform as best as possible on many iterations of devices like the iPhone. “It's less about feature evolution and more about editor iteration time,” he said, also addressing feedback he wants more tools to help them deploy faster in programs like Early Access so they can “find the fun” faster and collect more accurate metrics to improve gameplay.
“A lot of these smaller studios find it easier to create a game front-end than all the back-end systems,” he said. “Technology is much more difficult for many people who are creative and have never thought about network connectivity, player database management, player persistence, etc.”
Simplifying these tasks for developers will continue the company's founding mission of democratizing game development, Smith said.
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