Unity Reveals Plan to Deprecate UnityScript

December 10, 2017 / by Hudson Doty

Yesterday, many publishers woke up to a somewhat disconcerting email. It told publishers that they will need to remove all UnityScript files from their package, or face deprecation from the Asset Store. In the email was a link to their blog outlining why the change was made. So, why is UnityScript being deprecated?

UnityScript, which has close similarity to javascript, had been an integral part of the game engine since version 1.0, released in June of 2005. However, since the integration of c#, UnityScript slowly started to fade into the background. This is due to many things.

First of all, c# is more efficient. Plain and simple. When running the same script in c# and UnityScript, c# will always be faster (except for some very rare circumstances). Also, with the release of c# 7, there are things c# can do that UnityScript simply cannot. More information on what's new in c# version 7 can be found at this Microsoft documentation.

So what can you do to fix this headache of backwards compatibility and deprecation? They mention a UnityScript to c# converter in the email, but the link appears to be broken. You can find a UnityScript to C# converter on the asset store for $20 USD or about £15. According to their blog post, they are working on a converter (hopefully free), but so far none have surfaced.

What does this mean for game developers? Going forward, UnityScript simply will not be an option. In the next few iterations of the Unity editor, UnityScript will be slowly phased out. If you wish to stay at the current version of Unity and not update, that is also an option. But inevitably, you will eventually have to change to c#.