License bug is locking me out of Unity

Unity Engine
1

About a day ago, Unity crashed on me. When I went to re-launch it from Unity Hub, that’s when the nightmare started.

Any time I try to launch a project from the Unity Hub, the Unity Hub disappears, the Unity splash screen opens, and then about 3 seconds later the Unity Hub reappears, followed shortly by the Unity splash screen disappearing. I can’t get the editor to actually load!

I looked in the Unity Editor log and found this:

[LicensingClient] ERROR Failed to connect to local IPC
[Licensing::Module] Failed to connect to channel: LicenseClient-Mason
[Licensing::Module] Successfully launched the LicensingClient
[Licensing::Module] Successfully connected to LicensingClient on channel: LicenseClient-Mason
[Licensing::Module] Successfully launched and connected to LicensingClient
Entitlement-based licensing initiated
[LicensingClient] Licenses Updated successfully in LicensingClient

LICENSE SYSTEM [202059 16:58:48] Next license update check is after 2020-05-10T19:18:29

Built from ‘2019.3/staging’ branch; Version is ‘2019.3.10f1 (5968d7f82152) revision 5859543’; Using compiler version ‘191627012’
OS: ‘Windows 10 (10.0.0) 64bit’ Language: ‘en’ Physical Memory: 16332 MB
[Licensing::Module] License is not active (com.unity.editor.ui). HasEntitlements will fail.
BatchMode: 0, IsHumanControllingUs: 1, StartBugReporterOnCrash: 1, Is64bit: 1, IsPro: 0
No valid Unity Editor license found. Please activate your license.

I do, in fact, have a valid Unity Editor license. It was working just fine yesterday morning, and it doesn’t expire for several months yet. Looking at the “Manage license” function in Unity Hub confirms this. A bit of Googling suggests doing some of the following things, all of which I have tried, to no avail:

  • Reboot the computer.
  • Delete the Unity license file in C:\ProgramData\Unity and recreate it in Unity Hub.
  • Uninstall and reinstall Unity.
  • Update to the latest Unity version.
  • Return the license and re-activate it.

There was no Windows Update, driver update, or hardware change that could have provoked this. It happens no matter which version of Unity I attempt to open, and no matter which project I attempt to open, and nothing I do to attempt to fix it actually works!

The one thing that does work, for whatever reason, is creating a new Unity project. This creates a new project as expected, but the Unity theme is reverted to a light gray background, rather than the dark mode I’m accustomed to with my license, and once that project is closed, attempting to reopen it is just the same as attempting to open any other Unity project.

I tried opening Unity on my old, broken computer that has the same license, and it opens just fine… but that computer is old and broken, and will take several times longer to do anything on. Apparently there’s some serious issue, specific to my dev machine, that came out of nowhere yesterday and is causing license verification to fail.

I’ve lost a whole day of work to this so far. I have a valid license, and this glitch is failing to acknowledge that. Anyone have any idea how I can fix this?

Also, does anyone know how to actually reach Unity Customer Service? Try as I may I can’t find any option anywhere on their web site to reach a human being, at a time when I urgently need a live human being, rather than a “open a ticket and we’ll try to respond to it within 3 days if you’re lucky”. I’m just finishing up something that I was hoping to have ready yesterday, and this has disrupted everything. I need this problem fixed immediately!

2 Likes
2

Hi,

I had exact same problem. Installing a previous Unity Hub version worked for me, see Old Version Of Unity Hub

good luck

1 Like
3

That worked! Thank you!

1 Like
4

i today had the same issue on 2020-07-11. my project ran instead of 500+fps at 17fps. i thought something is stuck, let me quick close everything, reboot my machine, restart unity. the hub asked for restart to get the latest version, i accepted.

since then it just crashes.
i did find this, and it didnt help Unity - Manual: Troubleshoot the Editor

then googling a lot i found -logfile as advanced option as listed in Unity - Manual: Command-line arguments … but it doesnt output anything.

further gooling found Editor.log in C:\Users\CURRENTUSER\AppData\Local\Unity\Editor which said this:
[LicensingClient] ERROR Failed to connect to local IPC
[Licensing::Module] Failed to connect to channel: LicenseClient-daniel
[Licensing::Module] Successfully launched the LicensingClient
[Licensing::Module] Successfully connected to LicensingClient on channel: LicenseClient-daniel
[Licensing::Module] Successfully launched and connected to LicensingClient
Entitlement-based licensing initiated
[LicensingClient] Licenses Updated successfully in LicensingClient

LICENSE SYSTEM [2020711 21:28:51] Next license update check is after 2020-07-12T18:50:01

Built from ‘2019.3/release’ branch; Version is ‘2019.3.4f1 (4f139db2fdbd) revision 5182365’; Using compiler version ‘191627012’
OS: ‘Windows 10 (10.0.0) 64bit’ Language: ‘de’ Physical Memory: 32702 MB
[Licensing::Module] License is not active (com.unity.editor.ui). HasEntitlements will fail.
BatchMode: 0, IsHumanControllingUs: 1, StartBugReporterOnCrash: 1, Is64bit: 1, IsPro: 0
No valid Unity Editor license found. Please activate your license.

now i went to unity hub → my logged in user (top right) → manage license → doing CHECK FOR UPDATES on my personal license (free) it runs for a quick second and then “Your License is up to date”

this sucks very much. why did it just fail randomly at once? why is there no clear output window messagebox saying what the issues is?

5

forgot to mention, so it fits this current thread: my version of the unity hub is now 2.3.3 (2020 july), trying to find an older version now…

i will try to follow this thread here, too:

6

also interesting was this thread

but then i finally hope it seems it is because i am regularly switching from wifi1 to wifi2 to ethernet adapters at my computer (now in corona times to have a better connection), and deactivatig some of these - or not - seems to trigger MAC adress detection problems?

see also

and the official solution

7

so finally, by making wifi1 active (windows → settings → network and internet settings → networkconnections. that is the old ui that hasnt changed much since windows 2000), unityhub can detect my mac adress same as at the time i installed my license.

what i find VERY shitty about this:
-there is no easy communication to user (e.g. messagebox telling it bluntly to you), because the code assumes you want to spoof licensing (e.g. reuse 1 paid license for multiple people/computer/etc)
-that it makes no fucking sense to do it with mac adresses (on other OS software in usermode cant even acess it, e.g. android os) as even build in ones can change. if my mainboard brakes, but everything else works, i replace it and thus my network adapter then my license doesnt work anymore? WTF who thought that this is agood 21st century solution to licensing problems?
-that i am ONLY using a fucking free license, how must this be tied to my machine and WTF tied to my mac adress?

keeps me sad to see this with unity. seems very unprofessional to me.

3 Likes
8

Old thread but Holy shit! everything was so catastrophically broken after a recent update (2.2), this link to the old version of UnityHub saved me!! I was having issues where I simply couldn’t access MyAssets in package manager, only happened after updating UnityHub (WTF!!?) and couldn’t even fix my licenses. After installing v2.0.4 I was able to re-activate (manually) my license, then in package manager the “sign in…” button that support kept claiming was there (but wasn’t) finally appeared and let me sign-in properly and see my assets… omg what a stressful few days I’ve been having over this! thank you so much! you are more helpful than Unity support.

The worst thing is, in their release notes they say this "

  • Solving license issue that was causing errors in update dates"

They did the opposite!!!

2 Likes
9

I stopped using UnityHub on my Build Machine because as usually its a garbage software …very typical of Unity though. They like leaving these one time use cases riddled with bugs for years…
Its still buggy after 4+ years of Unity hub and not just any random bug, but this exact License bug.