Can we have a serious discussion about the future of Unity Cloud Build

Unity Services
1

Let’s start with one main question :
Does Unity has any plans for the UCB future ?

I really hope the answer is yes**,** but unfortunately, I really doubt it…
Some examples of griefs for which I am/was personally concerned (I am sure there would be more)

  • Your team is unable to support xcode 12 in a reasonable delay. And not even provide an ETA .

  • There was exactly the same problem last year with xcode 11. So visibly no lesson learnt

  • Your team is not even able to support the last Unity version right away (At this time 2019.4.13f1 is not supported whereas released on the 21th . I mean your are working in the same company, is it too much to expect the new release to be supported right away ? Especially LTS ones ?

  • Since I am using the service (more than 2 years), I have seen very little improvements, or nice features. Just minor changes or adaptions to basically just make it work back when its broken, and trying to follow new versions of unity / android / ios … (Well the biggest changes are maybe the UI that has been reworked at least twice, but it did not really improve anything about the service)

  • The feature request thread is useless. There is almost no feedback on the requests. We don’t know if you are working on it, or not.

  • Build times are long , and it is like you don’t care (isn’t it the core of the service ?)

  • Bugs / downtime are sometimes not even acknowledged ( exemple )

  • Etc…

All theses “little” problems lead me to only one conclusion : your are completely overwhelmed by the task of maintaining the service, always behind and so unable to improve it.

I recognize that this is a lot of work, but Unity is a big company, so it clearly has the possibility to tackle the problem if it wants to. But does it ?

To be clear, I think Unity Cloud Build is a valuable tool to increase productivity in a Unity workflow, and I really would like it to be improved. But I am more and more afraid that you are going to stop maintaining it one day…
So here are some additional questions

  • Do you have any way to guarantee us that you will continue to support UCB in a distant future ?

  • Can we expect some important improvements in a near future, or just a minimal support of new editor versions ?

  • Are you actively trying to tackles the problems ? If yes, how ?

  • Could you communicate more about everything ? Roadmap, bug fix ETA. Providing workaround …

Last thing I would like to say : I know every thing has a price, and we would be ready to pay more. But ONLY for a better service. By better I mean : Better builds times, better support , better reactivity when there are problems, better feedback listening, on demand features development…

Pinging @ollieblanks , @bradunity

4 Likes
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Hey @thibouf , thanks for highlighting these issues. We definitely don’t want to give the impression that Unity has forsaken the Cloud Build service and apologize for dropping the ball in some circumstances. Recognizing that we have been understaffed to fully support the service, we are allocating more resources and have begun reimagining what the service is and will be based on user feedback. We’ve been interviewing teams both within our community as well as those that do not use Cloud Build. If you or anyone else is interested in participating in our efforts to understand how you utilize a CI/CD platform for your projects, we’d be happy to set up some time to discuss it with you! Once we have a firm plan in place, we will strive to communicate it better.

If you happen to know of qualified folks that would be interested in extending our team, we have these spots open (as of this writing):

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Thank you for the answer, I am glad you acknowledged the problems, and are in the process of improving.
I would be happy to discuss if you want , do not hesitate to PM me, however I think I have already listed my main concerns before :wink:

I am really looking forward to knowing where it is going :wink:

And sorry I don’t know anybody that could help you.