Unity announces updates to it's web runtime support

I spent years of my life writing multiplayer games in Unity for the web. It's a terrible platform, and if you have any alternative at all, just don't do it.

One update broke the loading bars in Chrome (which will cause 80% of users to think the title is broken and leave), and I ended up having an argument on their forum with one of their developers about whether it should be considered a regression: https://forum.unity.com/threads/changes-to-the-webgl-loader-...

The web platform is not a priority for Unity. They'll add big ticket features that make for blog posts, but it's full of bugs, builds slowly, requires a ton of tweaking and is all around just a bad time.

If I could do it again, I'd most definitely run with a js engine instead.

TillE• 3 years ago

Exporting to web from any major engine is an unavoidably complex mess, but developing for web first doesn't make a ton of sense. Who's playing games in their browser these days, just kids with Chromebooks?

Web games are really convenient when browsing game jam entries or otherwise poking around on itch.io, but mobile/console/PC is where the money is.

reitzensteinm2• 3 years ago

Kids with Chromebooks have minted many millionaires. As with any space in the industry, unless you're a big player, TAM matters less than how crowded it is.

I have sympathy for the weight of exporting a big engine to the web. But if they're breaking loading bars and don't really care, the problems extend beyond the first principles technical challenge.

meheleventyone• 3 years ago

As with the sibling post a surprising number of niches. The games industry is definitely guilty of having a blind spot about anything outside the core. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Wider game devs discovery of Roblox only after it had become an enormous juggernaut is also largely “kids with Chromebooks”.

Games like Krunker and frankly many others also have no issue publishing web tech games on Steam.

Unity announces updates to it's web runtime support

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