Why Unity Dominates the Gaming World
February 25, 2025
The history of the incredibly popular Unity real-time engine dates back to 2005. Games created in it now make up about 50% of the market for PC and mobile devices, as well as 60% for augmented reality games. Thousands of games have been created with it on more than 20 platforms, so there is a very high probability that you have played a game made with Unity.
So we can say that Unity is a popular tool among developers and worth a closer look. What's especially attractive is that you can start publishing your games for free until they start generating a lot of revenue. If the annual income from the game does not exceed $100,000, the use of Unity will be free.
Looking at the year of Unity's launch (2005), we can understand that games were not always developed with it. So what did game development look like before Unity? At that time, most game development companies created their own engine, sometimes even a separate one for each game. Developing such an engine is a very technically complex matter that requires a lot of developer experience, as well as a lot of time and money. Another disadvantage was that game concept rework sometimes also required engine rework, which made the process of releasing and developing games very expensive.
It is therefore not surprising that at that time it was very rare to see games from independent developers, let alone indie games that became hits, as is the case now. At that time, independent development required either very extensive programming experience or the purchase of an exorbitantly expensive engine from already established companies.
Unity Technologies' first product was actually a game, not software. This game was created on an engine they wrote from the beginning, with the goal of licensing it to other developers. The Unity engine itself soon hit the market with three main factors that helped it start a revolution in the world of indie development. Its target audience was independent developers, it supported the first smartphones, and it was introducing reliable digital game distribution models. It was very well timed to coincide with the introduction of high-speed Internet, which made the distribution of digital copies of games more realistic, as now any user could buy games directly from the developer's website or through online game stores that also began to appear at that time.
Unity was distinguished from other engines by its pricing policy and the fact that it prioritized developer usability. This gave rise to the trend that half of the games in the App store were created with Unity, and this remains true to this day.
We've talked so much about the Unity real-time engine, so what exactly is the engine? What is its function in game development? First, let's see what a game consists of. These are 3D models, audio files, scripts, animations. And the engine is the place where all these elements are combined, like ingredients in a bowl. The game engine provides the display of the game on the screen, the ability for objects (2D and 3D assets) to interact with other assets, and makes sounds audible.
In other words, you need content, and the engine will provide opportunities for its realization, where you combine everything that the user will see when he or she launches the game. You can also choose the application format in which your device can open the game. In Unity, you can design game mechanics (such as jumping over obstacles), record animations that will be played at the right time.
The engine allows you to create game objects and describe the logic of their operation, and customize the camera (how the player will see the scene). Not all content can be created directly in Unity, you may need third-party programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Blender, and code writing programs. These programs are called DCCs, and many of them allow you to pass content directly from the program to the engine.
From the above, it becomes clear that Unity is extremely useful and has many possibilities for use. And, in fact, the gaming industry is not the only one where it is currently used. Nowadays, Unity is not just an engine, but a real-time engine that has a bunch of useful tools that can be used by animators, designers, engineers, and teachers in many industries.
Why real-time? Because it immediately calculates the scene and gives you the opportunity to play to understand what the end result is without having to load it, as it was in offline engines. Any industry that requires content or interactive content will benefit from using Unity. A great feature of Unity is that it allows you to work on a finished product with your colleagues at the same time and make changes quickly.
You don't have to be a programmer to use Unity. There are a lot of support resources now, such as the Unity Asset Store, where you can buy or even get free content. Or, for example, a resource like Bolt allows you to implement game logic using only clear graphical elements without knowing the code.
But, of course, to get a better and more complex product, you need to study a lot or turn to a team of professionals who can implement your ideas at the highest level without compromising your ideas and game features due to ignorance of the development process.