Senior Vice President Product & Technology of Grow, Unity Software
Search every verified Felix The interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Felix Herbst, Senior Vice President Product & Technology of Grow at Unity Software, has spoken publicly about Unity's package management system. In a September 2023 talk, he discussed the evolution of Unity packages, describing how his team at Needle moved from confusion about the system to building entire projects around it. He noted that his company operates its own package registries, with about 23 packages on the Needle registry and 40 on the Prefrontal Cortex registry, compared to over 250 public packages on Unity's registry. Herbst also described a project called Mirror that monitors Unity's package registry metadata to mirror new versions to GitHub for easier comparison and tracking of changes. In a 2018 interview, Herbst discussed his experience developing the game "Awesome Zombie Sniper" for the Windows 8 Store. He stated that his total investment in building the game was below $400, with a return of about $2,000 per month from advertising banners. He expressed the opinion that games should be made available for free and monetized through non-intrusive advertising. Herbst also noted that Microsoft was paying for Unity's license for Windows Phone and Windows Store platforms at that time, making it free for developers targeting those platforms.
“By now both needle and prefrontal cortex have their own package registries similar to what you're using when you're consuming packages from Unity; there's about 40 on the PFC registry, about 23 on the needle registry, and for comparison, there's like 250 plus packages on Unity's registry at least the ones that are publ...”
“One interesting concept of packages is the idea that by default they're immutable, which means that when you download a package from Unity's registry you can't change it; the system will notice that and reset that package. But one great thing about packages is that you can make them mutable, that is, editable and adjus...”
“We started a project called mirror where we look at Unity's package registry metadata regularly to check for new versions of packages and mirror them to GitHub, allowing developers to dive deeper into changes and compare versions, which is super helpful for keeping track of modifications and updates.”
“Our package tools display which packages in your project are editable and which are not, and improve the package manager UI by showing the source of packages and adding management features like quick access to package.json, changelogs, publishing, and verification.”
“Unity editor installations grow exponentially over time because Unity starts adding more and more packages shipped with the editor to keep download times low for users opening things for the first time.”
“Hybrid packages are a middle ground between the old world of Unity packages from the asset store and the new world of UPM packages; they allow unpacking into the packages folder and make it easier to ship packages on the asset store before full registry integration is available.”
“In production projects, the assets folder is becoming less important as everything happens in packages; for example, art assets and code assets are often separated into different packages, allowing for thinner Unity projects and faster iteration times.”
“We visualized package dependency structures and found that in 2019, the entities system had very messy and complex dependencies, which was a reason for postponing its official release; by 2021 and later, the dependency hierarchy became more orderly, reflecting a more stable and maintainable system.”
“Authentication for private package registries in Unity is handled using npm's existing authentication schemes, including JWT and bearer tokens, with helper packages providing a user-friendly interface for managing credentials, allowing fine-grained access control such as GitHub organization-based permissions.”
“We use Unity's unit testing infrastructure extensively, running tests across multiple Unity versions automatically as part of our automation pipelines, enabling developers to replicate test results locally and maintain stable development workflows.”
“Unity is by far cheaper than many of the other engines out there. For instance, the Unreal Engine demands a cut between 20 and 30 percent if you make more than 50k in revenue, while Unity offers a free version and professional licenses at a fixed monthly rate.”
“Microsoft is paying for the Unity license for Windows Phone and Windows Store, so it's completely free to the community for those platforms, which is pretty amazing.”
“The whole internet seems to be set up to support people that want to build something and don't have a lot of money. Unity itself has an asset store that looks like an app store for anything you could potentially use to create a game, with prices that are very affordable.”
“My total investment in building my game was below $400, including buying characters, zombies, guns, and landscape objects. My return is about $2,000 a month from advertising banners displayed during loading scenes.”
“I strongly believe that if you have a game, you should make it available for free, and monetize it through advertising banners that do not get in the way of gameplay.”
This talk was part of the JetBrains GameDev Day Online 2022 conference. Details: ...
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