So Unity has decided their forum community is no longer important or valuable, and have basically destroyed the forum functionality. That's left several of us looking for a new place to call home. Is there room here for us?

A little about me: I'm a hobbyist game developer. My primary skill set is programming within Unity. I've been doing it for about two years. I do a small amount free lance programming. I also run a YouTube channel with various tutorials for Unity. Outside of games my day job is a chemical engineer.

Anyway, hoping to find a new online space to talk game dev in.

We'll see how things go. The general hope is that Unity comes to there senses and reinstates a usable forum.

Well, there is the tools and APIs forum where there are many Unity specific threads (and UE4 specific, and so on)...

Apart from that, I think there are plenty of Unity developers already posting here, so don't be afraid to not find anyone interested in discussing Unity topics. Good thing is, you also find people working in other engines, and DIY fans here... so you get the full picture, and plenty of chances to talk to people not working withing the Unity bubble.

And I find there are less "Unity badmouthers" here... I like to critisize Unity any day of the week, they do plenty of things wrong. But the amount of "badmouthing" of Unity in the Unity forums sometimes is unreal (no pun intended, I would bet its not the developers using Unreal engine that do it :) ). While many here have strong opinions on what is the better engine and whatnot, there isn't a new thread "why engine X is better than Unity" every day in the general forums (funny how that most often is CryEngine, which is one of the harder to develop for engines out there... guess that says a lot about who opens these threads)....

Anyway, on the topic of the Unity forums being broken, I would bet Unity will take swift action given the amount of complaints in the forum. Granted, that didn't happen often in their engine (Enlighten vs. Beast, PhysX 3.3 vs 2.8), but here there is no technical reason why they needed to upgrade and have to stay on the newer forum software.

I give them a month, then they are back on the old forum.... ;)

So Unity has decided their forum community is no longer important or valuable, and have basically destroyed the forum functionality. That's left several of us looking for a new place to call home. Is there room here for us?

A little about me: I'm a hobbyist game developer. My primary skill set is programming within Unity. I've been doing it for about two years. I do a small amount free lance programming. I also run a YouTube channel with various tutorials for Unity. Outside of games my day job is a chemical engineer.

Anyway, hoping to find a new online space to talk game dev in.

Wow. I had completely forgotten I signed up for this place. Must have done it years ago though because the display name wasn't anything I particularly remembered using. Regardless, like BoredMormon I'm a hobbyist game developer and a programmer too. From ~1995 to ~2012 I primarily used a language plus any appropriate framework APIs (mostly libsdl plus opengl), but I'm now almost entirely on Unity and Unreal.

We'll see how things go. The general hope is that Unity comes to there senses and reinstates a usable forum.

I wouldn't bet on it - they seem to be fairly stubborn about keeping the new forum.

Either way, we'll see how it goes. Meanwhile I'll see if there's a forum section to haunt.

Is their forum software really that bad? :o

Yes. Forum feedback thread (for the forum upgrade) has 40 pages of complaints, and "rollback the forum" feature request has 1550 votes (one person can put 1..10 votes on the poll, so it isn't 1550 people) on it at the moment, which makes it 10th most requested feature.

Of course. Would Unity developers like to have a Unity specific development forum on GameDev.net? If so, we can make that happen. Just need enough people to voice their opinion.

And Unreal.

Hello everyone!
I'm a refugee from the Unity forums too. I'm interested in gamedev in general, have played around a bit with Unity, and before that with Cocos2D. My dayjob is being a freelance artist and I try to see working on games as a hobby that allows me to combine as many different skillsets as possible. I haven't released any game yet and won't any time soon, because I tend to only take interest in projects that are rather complex for a beginner.
Thanks for the warm welcome everyone!

Is their forum software really that bad? :o

The old forum software was the best I've ever used (xenforo), the new one is without exaggeration the worst I've seen in the last 10 years (lithium). Combine that with poor design choices and you get people making bugreports like this:

Throbbing migraine and overwhelming sense of despair still present when looking at forum

You wouldn't believe how broken it is!

So Unity has decided their forum community is no longer important or valuable

I think they had good intentions originally, but they sure make it seem that way by ignoring all the well meant feedback that has been given to them (including mods clearly advising them against rolling out the forum after having seen it in "closed beta").

Of course. Would Unity developers like to have a Unity specific development forum on GameDev.net? If so, we can make that happen. Just need enough people to voice their opinion.

Thanks a lot for the offer! I don't have an opinion on that yet. Personally I found the whole forum desaster "faith shattering" and I fear for the worst regarding the future of Unity as a game engine. Others have voiced concerns and thoughts of switching too. At the moment I just find it too depressing to do anything in Unity.
For now I'll look into UE4, and engine agnostic gamedev topics are always interesting too.


P.S.: It's such a relief to post on a forum that supports easy multiquoting again!