Unity 6.2 🤖, PayPal vs Steam 🏦, Indie funding 💸, Android alt store 📱
Dev Tools & Engines 🚀
Unity 6.2 Ships: Built-in AI, XR Upgrades, Auto LOD, Diagnostics
Unity 6.2 lands with the Unity AI Beta built into the editor—plus free, unlimited Unity Points during the beta. Android XR is now a verified package, adding hand meshes, dynamic refresh rate, and visibility mesh occlusion for URP. You also get automatic Mesh LOD generation at import, a Graph Toolkit for custom editor graphs, world-space UI, improved diagnostics, and a Developer Data Framework for data transparency and control.
Open-Source Mixamo Alternative Mesh2Motion Teases Major UX Upgrades
Mesh2Motion, a free open-source web app for Mixamo-style auto-animation, is teasing a UX refresh: theme toggle, video previews, an animation player, a mini 3D helper, and improved navigation. This follows a July update adding Undo/Redo, hand variations, and animation filters, plus earlier boosts to weight painting and skeleton blending. The workflow is simple—import a model, auto-assign animations, export. Worth a spin and a follow as development accelerates.
Distribution & Discovery 📣
Green Man Gaming Launches Transparent Charity Bundles to Boost Discovery and Revenue
Green Man Gaming is launching a new Charity Bundles platform built for transparency and partner value—think regional pricing, real-time stock indicators, and instant key delivery. Led by ex-Humble Bundle veteran Paul Herron and anchored by an APAC expansion, the initiative aims to extend game lifecycles, open new revenue streams, and complement subscriptions. Curated bundles target genres and communities to cut through storefront noise and revive overlooked titles. The rollout begins with SpecialEffect’s One Special Day appeal.
Skich Brings Discovery-Focused Alternative Game Store to Android
Alternative app store Skich is now on Android after launching on iOS in the EU, targeting “broken” mobile game discovery. The platform offers a 15% revenue share for developers and is onboarding with interest from 100+ studios. CEO Sergey Budkovski says Skich wants great games to rise on merit, not marketing spend. The move lands as the Ninth Circuit left the Epic vs. Google verdict against Google Play’s monopoly intact.
Funding & Industry Alerts 💼
Silver Bullet Programme: Up to $100K for Bold, Weird Indies
Silver Lining Interactive has launched the Silver Bullet Programme to back distinctive indie games with up to $100,000 in funding, plus tailored publishing, marketing, QA, and porting support—while promising total creative freedom. The team behind Spirit of the North is seeking “focus-grabbing” titles with the “Riptide Effect.” Developers can pitch at Gamescom’s “Pitches and Pints” meetup on Aug 21 in Cologne or learn more online. If your game is bold and a little dangerous, they want to hear from you.
Banks, Content, and Steam: PayPal Disruptions Spark IGDA Warning
A PayPal acquiring bank has halted Steam transactions over content concerns, cutting PayPal support for many currencies outside USD, EUR, GBP, JPY, CAD, and AUD. Valve ties the move to broader pressure on NSFW content, which Mastercard has previously denied. The company is evaluating alternate payment options and suggests other methods or Steam Wallet codes for now. IGDA condemned “creative suppression,” urging transparent policies that protect developer rights and diverse, lawful content.
Tech & Dev Diaries 🧪
Building Bopl Battle: Deterministic Netcode, Big Ambition, and Shorts
Indie dev Johan Grönvall breaks down how Bopl Battle broke through: Shorts on TikTok and YouTube drove most wishlists, especially when republishing proven TikToks as Shorts at launch. He built a deterministic lockstep netcode and custom physics inside Unity for reliable online play and instant replays. A generous, sticky demo fueled word-of-mouth. His contrarian advice: be more ambitious—synergistic systems, strong first-frame feedback, and authentic storytelling can beat “make it small” dogma.
C vs C++ Compile Times: What You Really Pay, Measured
How much slower is C++ to compile than C when the code is otherwise identical? This exploratory benchmark compares MSVC and Clang at /Od and /O2 across scenarios like massive overload sets and return-by-value vs pointer. C consistently compiles faster—especially on MSVC—with overload resolution and value returns being key culprits. Real-world notes from raddbg and meshoptimizer support the trend, plus a gotcha: some C headers pull very different code in C++ mode.