"If OpenAI is not Open, Unity Engine is not Unity." Today, Unity, a world-renowned game engine, officially issued a notice stating that due to updates to regional licensing, distribution and compliance policies, it will terminate the provision of overseas Unity resource store access to organizations in China (including Hong Kong, China, and Macau Special Administrative Region, China). This adjustment will officially take effect on March 31, 2026.
A large number of developers have also received relevant email notifications from Unity. According to the email prompt, users in relevant regions will no longer be able to access or obtain resources through overseas stores; if they wish to continue to use previously obtained resources, they must complete the download before the deadline and back up their own resources.
At the same time, if users have objections to the "operating location" information recorded by Unity, they need to contact the support team before 8:00 on March 15, Beijing time, to appeal or make corrections.
For domestic development teams that rely on the Unity engine, this adjustment affects not only "the inability to purchase new assets in the future", but also the continued availability of existing assets.
The Unity resource store is part of the project supply chain, covering various types of assets such as plug-ins, development tools, art and audio materials. The team often needs to re-pull existing dependencies when iterating versions, changing equipment, rebuilding branches, or adding new members.
Once access to overseas stores is restricted, projects will face a large number of practical problems, especially projects with multi-person collaboration, long-term operations, and cross-platform adaptation. Therefore, Unity’s official email also recommends developers to migrate assets through the “Download All” function.
In addition, some developers noticed that there were differences in the expressions of the notices sent by Unity to users in different regions: the email for Chinese organizations emphasized that they would not be able to access overseas asset stores; while the reminder for some overseas users involved future access restrictions to assets from Chinese regional stores. This may also mean that Unity’s overseas and domestic businesses will usher in a complete “cut”.
In fact, judging from Unity's product and ecological actions in the Chinese market over the past year, this "cutting" has already been foreshadowed.
In April 2025, Unity China issued an announcement confirming that the Unity 6 engine will be removed from the shelves in mainland China, Hong Kong and Macao, and that relevant needs will be taken over by the Unity Engine; Unity 2022 LTS and earlier versions will continue to be supported and maintained by Unity China, and emphasized that projects that have been released or in progress will not be affected, and projects created based on the Unity Engine can continue to be released globally.
In other words, whether it is the version of the Unity engine or services and ecology, the Chinese market has already entered a dual-track system that is different from overseas.
After today's news was released, community discussions quickly linked it to market rumors that "Unity's Chinese business may be sold" some time ago.
Recent news from Bloomberg reported that Unity is considering multiple options for its Chinese business, including working with consultants to evaluate the market's acquisition intention for Unity China, and may seek a valuation of more than US$1 billion; however, relevant discussions are still in the early stages, and transaction decisions have not yet been officially implemented, leaving uncertainty.
Even though the rumors have not been officially confirmed, considering that "access to overseas asset stores will be terminated" has become an established fact today, I am afraid it is only a matter of time before Unity completely divests its Chinese business.
From the perspective of business structure, Unity China is not a single branch in the traditional sense. In 2022, Unity announced the establishment of a joint venture company for Greater China to manage related businesses and introduced a number of local partners. This structure inherently means that it is different from overseas systems in terms of organizational form and governance mechanism, and also provides more possibilities for subsequent business adjustments.
Of course, for many domestic development teams using the Unity engine, the more realistic issue now is to control possible development risks and reserve buffer space for subsequent product iterations.