China's localized Unity Hub for a better local experiences

Just read a thread about China’s localized Unity Hub here: Unity Users in China, You May Be The Victim Of A Secret "Chinese Version" of Unity Hub

In order to address people’s concerns about being “a victim of a secret Chinese version of Unity Hub”, I want to share the details of this localized Unity Hub for China users although it is not a secret at all for almost all the China developers in China since China Unity has already officially announced it back in May 2019 through China Unity’s official Wechat channel as well as other local medias, right after Unite Shanghai 2019. You can check out the announcement here: 账号已迁移 (in Chinese language).

As @AdamLiu pointed out correctly, when you download Unity Hub, China users will download the localized version of Unity Hub and anyone outside of China will download the “Global” version of Unity Hub. Of course, developers are free to install the “Global” version of Unity Hub which they can download from unity.com website if they are not on a China IP address.

However, the localized Chinese version of Unity Hub will not make you “a victim of a secret Chinese version of Unity Hub” since the differences between this localized version and the “Global” version can be summarized as follows:

1. Chinese version of Unity Hub has a “Community” tab where you can get all the latest technical articles, live sessions announcement and links to watch the recorded live sessions (live sessions are being delivered every two weeks by China Unity evangelism team) as well as Asset Store promotions. You can also check out when your Plus or Pro licenses are going to expire and links are available for extending the expired/soon to be expired subscriptions or upgrading to Plus or Pro from PE license directly through our online store.

(Screenshot captured at 16th of October 2019: China Unity team update the contents very frequently for our local developer communities)


2. On the “Install” tab where you can install Unity editors, China Unity team now provides a section called “Latest official releases (China)”. These builds are made by China Unity’s enterprise support team who directly supports our customers. These builds are based on the global LTS versions starting from 2017.4.32f1 and 2018.4.8f1 and on top of the global versions, we added and will continue to add features for local Chinese developers.

Notes:
(1) 2018.4.8c3 is based on 2018.4.8f1, same with 2017.4. Therefore, you can think of these builds like this:
2018.4.8c3 = 2018.4.8f1 + China features
2017.4.32c2 = 2017.4.32f1 + China features

(2) All the other released builds under “Latest official releases” and beta alpha sections are the same as the Global version of Unity Hub.

You may ask why these features not go directly to the global versions of Unity editor. The reason is these features were originally made for the local China market and they may not be suitable for global market. Of course, these features may eventually land on the global versions. But since the China market is evolving very rapidly and China developers want very short iteration time, creating a China Unity Editor (China Unity Editor = Global version + China features) will help to address this tight iteration time problem since it is maintained and go through the same global QA standards by the local China Unity team. You can check out the China Unity Editor announcement here: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/Fpxga3s0nybomJGEYn9UrQ (in Chinese)

  1. If you are using Chinese version of Unity Hub, when downloading Unity editor installation files, you will get the files from local China CDN and you will get much faster download speed if you are living in China. Of course, if you live outside of China, global version of Unity Hub is recommended.

So as you can see, the Chinese version of Unity Hub is a localized version with rich community contents and local features made specifically for China developers in order to help them to learn Unity better to use Unity better.

Thanks for reading!

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Using the word “Victim” might seem a bit over-exaggerated, but it’s not far from the truth.

Yes, the Chinese version of Unity Hub might already be announced, but whether there is a Chinese version is not the point. I’m perfectly fine with a Chinese version even though I don’t use it. The point is: by detecting the IP address when downloading the Hub, you are literally forcing every user in China to use the Chinese version of the Hub unless they have a non-China IP address. There is no option for user in China to choose which version they would like to use. Also, the two versions look almost identical, even the Chinese version displays an English UI, which is very misleading.

I’m kinda glad that Unity clarifies in this post that there IS actually a Chinese version, but I hope Unity can at least give the user in China an option to use the global version, instead of arbitrarily assuming that all Chinese developers like to use the “China version”.

Now about the download speed, it is simply not true that the Chinese version have better download speed. I use the global version of Unity Hub and the download speed is still extremely fast (in my case, 40MB/s, installs Unity in less than 5 minutes) even I’m in China. Also, it takes way longer for the latest Unity version to appear in the China version of the Hub after it’s announced in Unity’s website. And if you happen to have a VPN, which a lot of my fellow developers use, you simply cannot use the Hub when the VPN is on, because it only connects to the servers in China. So my recommendation is to Not use the Chinese version of Unity Hub unless the company or studio you are working in requires you to do so. The global version is much better.

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Thanks for clarifying. @RichardYang-at-Unity3D does the China-only Hub also apply to Hong Kong based developers? And does this version also require access to user keystrokes from other applications? I think further reassurances wouldn’t hurt. :wink:

Also, I’m curious though as to why other countries don’t also have their own version of the hub, for faster downloads? And who was it at Unity that thought the rest of the world would not want a community tab in the Hub? I’ve seen more than one request for just that in these forums. :-/

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After opening Unity Hub when visiting China, it has force updated itself to the Chinese version of Unity Hub and I’m not sure how I can change back while I am here and avoid it happening again? I don’t want this. It seems like it doesn’t have access to the newest editor versions either. @AdamLiu Are you getting international Unity Hub changing itself to the Chinese version automatically too? @RichardYang-at-Unity3D Is there a solution here? Help appreciated since this seems ridiculous honestly.

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No, my Unity Hub isn’t changing itself to the Chinese version. Your best bet would be using a VPN and redownload the Hub from Unity’s global website, and only update the Hub while your VPN is on.

No worries, I’ll check it out. Thanks for your help and raising some awareness on this issue.

Im living in China and i dont read chinese.
IP based autmation sucks and not giving a backup solution for the devs who have even a subscription like me for unity is very unprofessional.
Seems unity just has the “extra features” backdoors and other gov malware in it as China versions have alot of those extra features due to no privacy rights.
Paying customers have the right to get the version they deserve and not the one the IP gives you.
Very disappointing move UNITY.

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Not all developer lives in China is Chinese and needs Chinese version.
Why not give developer the right of choosing?!
I think “victim” is a accurate word.

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I started my project using the global version, then moved to china.

While working in china I made an upgrade, without knowing about chinese versions. Sneaky Unity somehow made sure i got the chinese version (despite always being connected to a VPN) which ruined my project. I could not build my game, but was not sure of the reason why. I have spent the last 2 days removing and re installing unity versions trying to fix this problem.

After wiping my whole laptop and reinstalling windows ( since the chinese verison had done something so that I could no longer install any more versions), I downloaded unity again and Sneaky Unity this time made sure I had the crappy chinese hub too. I still had no idea at this point as there is nothing that tells you you are downloading a chinese version.

The crappy chinese hub;

  1. does not load the sign in if you are connected to a VPN. This took me many hours to figure out and it just shown a blank screen.

  2. FORCES me to add a chinese phone number to my account! I cannot log in or get past this screen.

  3. Someone says it records our keystrokes?? Why? How can we be sure this data isnt being sent to the CCP?

No matter what I try, unity makes sure I can only download the crappy chinese version so I cant get round this.

There MUST be a way to download the normal functioning version of unity.

As a Chinese, I don’t think this has anything to do with CCP. Unity requires the permission to record the keyboard and screen only on Macs with OS X Catalina or later, because starting from Catalina third party apps that require certain keyboard-related accessbility features must ask for users permission explicitly.

Anyway, I can feel the pain, mate ---- you have experienced what I experienced back then. To get rid of the Chinese version, you can try the following steps:

  1. Uninstall Unity and Unity hub, just regular uninstall should be enough.
  2. Make sure you connect your VPN and make sure the selected VPN server is not inside China (by checking your IP address if necessary).
  3. Download and install the Unity Hub from the global site of Unity. (It should be https://unity3d.com/get-unity/download)
  4. Launch the Hub, and confirm that you have installed the global version of the Hub. (The Chinese version has a Community tab that has content displayed in Chinese, but I might be wrong. It also has several “Special for Chinese” versions in the add Unity version list. The global version at the moment has a Community tab as well but shoud be displayed in English and a “Beta” note. Now this one is Unity’s fault that you cannot distinguish the Global or Chinese version easily).
  5. Now download Unity from the Hub. It should give you the global versions of Unity.
    If the above steps doesnot work, try downloading the full installation disk image from Unity’s global site.
    Hope it helps.
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Thanks for your reply, I tried most of those steps but the unity site sees through the VPN somehow?They are really making sure than the global version is not available to people in china!

I’ll move this over to the Hub forum as they’ll be interested to know the feedback regarding this.

The experience of Chinese is very awful. It doesn’t download the latest version of Unity editor, and push you Chinese ad.

Please give user choice.

Add now it requires my phone number sometime when I running game. I have many bad guesses about this.

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before unityhub2.3.0, the Chinese ‘special’ versions were listed on the top, global versions were listed normally, that’s good enough, I don’t understand why you made such a change
这就是传说中的“正版受害者”

I try to reinstall UnityHub from the global website

  • Uninstall UnityHub
  • Delete ~/AppData/Roaming/UnityHub
  • Downloaded UnityHubSetup from the global website using a non-China IP, the file size is 52886128 bytes and md5 is e92a0981744198c1b5789ff215215bbd
  • Reinstall UnityHub and launch UnityHub
  • Check ~/AppData/Roaming/UnityHub/cloudConfig.json, the file still point to China server

Am I doing anything wrong?

At present, when downloading the new Unity, there are no options or tips directly, it is the version that is treated differently.


5643976--586558--Snipaste_2020-03-29_18-03-57.png

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To be honest, this is already intentionally disgusting

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Unity won’t solve the problem, and they release the Chinese version of unity and the global version. You can only go to the global website https://unity3d.com/get-unity/download/archive-to select unity hub download to solve this problem.

Here’s an answer to that question, and of course they’re saying they’re going to keep it up to date, and we can treat it as a joke.
https://discussions.unity.com/t/761991/11

Unity but the location

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