With UNET, Unity aims to make online multiplayer easier for devs

The folks at Unity published a blog post today outlining their plans to revamp Unity's multiplayer support as part of an internal project codenamed UNET -- Unity Networking. The UNET development team -- which includes members who previously worked on MMORPGs like Ultima Online, World of Warcraft and Need for Speed Online -- plans to roll out new multiplayer tools, technology and services to Unity developers in three phases, the first of which will make its debut during the update cycle of the upcoming Unity 5 toolset. More technical details are available on the Unity blog, but in brief: adding online multiplayer to your game typically requires extra time, money and specialized networking knowledge, so the first phase of the UNET project involves adding multiple networking APIs, a matchmaking service and a relay server system to Unity to make the process of creating multiplayer games easier. That's an important move on Unity's part, given that many prominent indie developers expressed frustration with the challenges of implementing online multiplayer in a recent Gamasutra feature.