Unity at 10: For better—or worse—game development has never been easier

These days, one tool has essentially unlocked the world of game development for the masses.

Since it was introduced in 2005, Unity has tried to make creating video games possible for everyone regardless of technical know-how or budget. Upon hitting a stable release, Unity took home an award at Apple’s 2006 Worldwide Developer’s Conference after being showcased as the first fully powered game engine—a platform with basic graphics capabilities, physics calculations, and some game behaviors already coded in but extensible—for the iPhone. Unity stood largely uncontested on that platform for a couple of years and quickly became a well-known tool among developers.

But while Unity grew with the iPhone, today, games made with it are popular on all platforms. According to Unity, more than 6 million registered developers use the platform, and 770 million gamers enjoy Unity-made titles. The software has become to small-team game development what the Adobe suite is to creative professionals in many other lines of work.