We are reporting a critical issue encountered after upgrading our project to Unity 6.3.2. Our latest builds are failing to run on a specific range of older, but previously supported, iOS devices.
Issue Description
Upon updating from Unity 6.0 LTS to Unity 6.3.2 LTS, our game immediately crashes or fails to initialize on several iPad models. These same devices function correctly on builds from earlier Unity versions.
Affected Devices
We have confirmed the issue on the following hardware:
A8/A8X: iPad Mini 4, iPad Air 2
A9/A9X: iPad 5th Gen, iPad Pro 1st Gen (9.7" & 12.9")
A10/A10X: iPad 6th Gen, iPad 7th Gen, iPad Pro 2nd Gen
Technical Details
Unity Version: 6.3.2
Scripting Backend: IL2CPP
Graphics API: Metal (Graphics API selection is unavailable)
Observed Behavior: Black screen, then exit.
Our Questions for Support
Support Status: Has Unity 6.3 officially dropped support for Apple A8 through A10 chipsets, or is the minimum iOS version requirement now higher than these devices can support?
Known Regression: Is this a known issue with the 6.3.x branch regarding Metal compatibility on older hardware?
Workaround: If support has not been dropped, are there specific Project Settings (e.g., Graphics Tier settings or Stripping levels) that we should adjust to restore compatibility?
We would appreciate clarification on whether we should treat this as a bug to be patched or as a permanent change in Unity’s hardware support roadmap.
Hi Alexey,
We have crash reports coming from users with those devices, they are nearly all PowerVR powered devices, and we just wanted to know whether Unity dropped the support for those devices. I would provide you with further information, but as the player fails to launch, we cannot receive healty crash reports.
creating renderpipeline descriptor fails (i assume you got it since validation layer should be enabled only when running from xcode). Check xcode output for more info usually the reason is written to the log above. Anyway, that sounds like you are using smth that is not supported by the device - hard to say without repro project. Try running on simulator? (it emulates very old gpu) and/or bug report with repro project right away
2026-01-15 14:25:04.828334+0300 WordBlocks[6449:221804] validateWithDevice, line 3718: error Render Pipeline Descriptor Validation
No valid pixelFormats set.
validateWithDevice:3718: failed assertion `Render Pipeline Descriptor Validation
No valid pixelFormats set.
dyld4 config: DYLD_INSERT_LIBRARIES=/Developer/usr/lib/libMainThreadChecker.dylib:/Developer/Library/PrivateFrameworks/DTDDISupport.framework/libViewDebuggerSupport.dylib
validateWithDevice:3718: failed assertion `Render Pipeline Descriptor Validation
No valid pixelFormats set.
yeah everything breaks - most likely some unsupported RT format (or maybe some logic error on our side). Bug report with repro project (you can drop case number here or dm me)
I’ve reverted the Unity Engine version back to 6.2 and I confirm that everything works fine, no crashes on older devices.
In the last 11 years I’ve encountered major engine bugs about 6 times, 3 of which happened in the last half a year.
To Unity folks - What is going on with your product? Are you using AI to generate the code? The few hundred thousand dollars that you trying to save actually backfires.
Me and I am pretty sure a lot of other developers have shipped bugged builds, which resulted with significantly higher losses.
And considering the fact that Unity actually makes money from other services too like Unity Ads, Cloud, Multiplayer, Vivox. Your company also had significantly higher losses than savings.
If you are a Unity Employee, please show this reply to your boss.
I managed to replicate the issue on an quasi empty project. Shader Variant Collection built on 6.0 LTS doesn’t work on 6.3.2 LTS on older devices and produce the afromentioned problem. I will create the bug report with the example project, is there anything you would like me to add to the report?