…and it’s driving me mental that people still keep calling the product Unity3D. I thought a dedicated thread might help to finally clear it all up. I figure if you’re using a product, you should at least know what it’s called.
From the official Unity Technologies style/identity guide:
What:
Unity, our base product
Unity Pro, an enhanced version of Unity
Unity Asset Server, an add-on product enabling easy collaboration
Asset Store, a feature available in all versions of Unity
Unity iOS, an add-on license allowing deployment to iOS devices
Unity iOS Pro, an enhanced version of our iOS add-on license
Unity Web Player, our browser plug-in unity3d.com, our web site
Unite, a conference held for Unity users
Union, a business unit of Unity Technologies
Avoid:
“Unity Free” — our base product is “Unity”
“Unity3D” — use “Unity”
“Unity Browser Plug-in” — use “Unity Web Player”
“Unity iPhone” — the relevant add-on is “iOS”
“Unity Union” — “Union” should be used alone
Also, there’s an actual “Unity 3D” engine, which is not related to Unity. It’s only used for WWII Online as far as I know, but it predates Unity and is still around. Unity Technologies licensed the trademark from Playnet so it’s all above-board.
I generally don’t mind when somebody says Unity Free when distinguishing between Unity and Unity Pro. I also don’t mind Unity 3D, as the URL is bound to cause some confision for newcomers. Any other time, both of those are a bit unneeded. What I’m surprised didn’t make it to your list is something that even I’m guilty of saying occasionally: Unity Indie.
(I’m also guilty of Unity iPhone, but it used to be called that, and old habits die hard)
I’m quite sure if I say that our plugins work with “Unity” I will get tons of questions if they work with the free version as well. Everyone considers “Unity” to be the brand/product name while “Unity Free/Indie” and “Unity Pro” are the versions. Imho, sometimes it’s easier for marketing to adapt to people’s habits instead of the opposite. To make it worse - if I remember right - “Unity Indie” was an official product name in the past.
So from now on I’ll always use “Unity” instead of “Unity3d” when googling for stuff, because the mental well-being of someone’s inner mad librarian is far more important than the small, practical matter of actually finding relevant information.
Sarcasm noted. You’ll pretty much get the same results if you do though.
Perhaps I should have been more specific, but it’s primarily seeing things like posts in the jobs section where people are saying “I’m a Unity3D expert. I have 5+ years experience in Unity3D”… and all I can think to myself is “5+ years, and you don’t know the name of the product you’re an expert in?”.
Anyway, not looking to change the world. Just wanted to rant to get it off my chest
I have to say, I manage to confuse people I work with when I start talking about “Unity” because in my non-gaming day job we still use the Microsoft Unity Application block (its a dependency injection container framework for .Net). So I have found myself referring to Unity as Unity3D. The Microsoft Unity is not so popular now, there are better more modern alternatives, but a few years back, its what many c# developers would think off when they referred to “Unity”.
