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Is the Unity Asset Store Dying? Why AI and Unity 6 are Forcing Top Publishers to Pivot or Perish

By Darko Tomic Published March 14, 2026 Last updated May 8, 2026 718

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Part of Unity AI, my index of AI in Unity coverage.

TL;DR: The Unity Asset Store isn't dead, but it's shifting. Makaka's Andrey Sirota told me random hobbyist sales are fading as AI covers cheap code, textures, and audio. The survival lane is premium: editor tools, complete projects, detailed 3D, paid support. Unity is also rebuilding the store frontend and backend in 2026.

Andrey Sirota is the developer behind Makaka Games, a long-time Unity Asset Store publisher known for complete project templates and technical tools for game development. In this interview he shares his perspective on the current state of the Unity Asset Store, pricing strategies for solo developers, maintaining large asset catalogs, migrating to Unity 6, and how AI is changing the ecosystem for publishers and users alike.

Turning the Unity Asset Store into a Business

Many developers dream of turning their passion into a full-time business. Do you feel the Unity Asset Store currently offers a sustainable path for a solo creator to live entirely off their sales, or is it better viewed as a way to build a reputation for high-end consulting work?

I started in 2015 with a $5 asset. Everything has changed. Moreover, we see changes every year in the Unity Asset Store search, UX, the increasing number of assets in the Store, and external factors like AI pressure.

Personal results may vary significantly.

To evaluate the situation in the Store, we have two types of stats that can be found in the private sections for publishers on Unity Discussions: the official Tastes & Trends 2025 Survey Results, and a topic called "Here's about getting rich from assets", where publishers share their results.

According to the survey among users, those who use AI stated that they ended up spending more on the Asset Store as a result of using AI.

Probably, things will change. If someone gives you an accurate forecast, it is speculation.

The mentioned topic also shows that there is still life and success on the Asset Store.

On the other hand, I can observe examples in local communities where publishers face significantly reduced income.

Anyway, I add any notable changes to my Publisher Tutorial.

Here is one example I can provide. The publisher of the popular Doozy UI Manager (a set of systems that makes it easy for anyone to design, manage, and animate modern user interfaces) left the Asset Store because the logic of showcasing products in the Asset Store changed. Views were reduced for popular publishers and redistributed among a larger number of publishers. And this happened even before the AI era.

Of course, it would be better to have something besides the Asset Store. This experience is not unique to the Asset Store: 2025 Steam data shows that 40% of games failed to make even $100, which is the amount developers pay Valve to list a game on the platform.

Pricing Unity Assets

How do you decide on the price for your templates? Do you look at what others are doing, or do you price it based on how many hours of work you're saving the buyer?

The Asset Store Team provides publishers with "Pricing Comparison Data", which shows the average package price by year and category among the top 10% of publishers.

Some conclusions can be drawn from this. The top 10% of publishers tend to set the average prices in their categories.

Cheap packages, as a rule, do not occupy higher positions in the Unity Asset Store search results.

At the same time, we have a package that costs $1500 and has been sold 4000 times (industry-specific), as stated: realvirtual Digital Twin Professional 6.3.

"Personal results may vary" is a favorite message from the Asset Store Team.

Building Templates Instead of Games

You build "complete project" templates that are practically ready-to-publish games. Do you still work on your own original standalone game IPs, or do you find that creating and supporting these high-level templates has become your main way of expressing game design ideas?

During the gold rush, those who sold shovels made the money.

We are probably approaching a period when assets are no longer the shovels.

My latest project, Face Tracking AR App, was an asset in 2019 to 2021, then became an independent app, and now it's an asset again.

I like Unity, C#, and technical things. It doesn't matter in what form they are transformed into the result of my work.

Migrating Assets to Unity 6

You've already moved projects to Unity 6 (6000.3). What has been the biggest headache when moving your older assets to this new version of the engine?

Every upgrade between LTS versions of Unity is hard: broken physics, deprecated APIs, and so on.

My most valuable, and most underestimated, tutorial is about upgrading between Unity versions: How to upgrade between Unity versions.

It's almost 3 years old, but it doesn't matter, because it shows how issues can be solved during upgrades: how to think and where to look.

The biggest challenge is the number of assets. I have 18 assets, and each of them must be tested on every platform it supports.

Writing Code for Thousands of Developers

Coding for yourself is one thing, but writing code for a thousand strangers is different. What are your top rules for making sure your scripts don't break the moment a customer opens them?

The biggest issue is that customers don't like to read documentation.

When we are talking about templates, the docs (and correct installation) play a crucial role, because Unity has no direct way to install a template. See this video for more on that.

Here's what I did to address this:

Clear installation notification. Providing a warning on the Asset Page such as: "The asset is downloaded into your project as a Template (Complete Project), which has external dependencies. Please read the 'Getting Started' tutorial to import it correctly."

Compiler directives and Assembly Definitions. Using conditional compilation to check whether required third-party dependencies are installed. This prevents compilation errors for users who skipped the documentation.

Automatic Readme Window. Providing a Readme in the Inspector that opens automatically when the project is imported.

Unity Package Manager vs .unitypackage

You've mentioned that Git packages in the UPM can be tricky. Do you think the Unity Package Manager is ready to replace the old .unitypackage format for solo publishers?

Git packages are excluded from the Package Manifest when uploading an asset to the Unity Asset Store. This serves as a kind of safety measure.

UPM publishing on the Asset Store is currently Early Access and cannot be applied to all asset categories. See Unity's documentation on UPM package types.

AI and the Future of the Asset Store

With the rise of generative AI, the Asset Store is seeing a flood of new content. How is AI currently affecting your work as a publisher, and do you think it poses a long-term threat to the quality and value of premium hand-crafted assets?

Andrey shared the following in a community post titled "Unity Asset Store faces the Era of AI that is changing the game industry":

In general, intellectual work is no longer exclusive in 2026.

As I see it, random sales to hobbyists will fade away.

Most of their needs can already be covered by AI, even with free tools and GPTs generating code, images, 3D models, 2D sprites, music, SFX, and more.

Sales on the Unity Asset Store (UAS) will likely focus on Premium Content only, with paid support options integrated (I believe) similar to Envato Market: once the support period ends, responses are no longer guaranteed.

The new UAS is arriving this year, introducing a redesigned backend and frontend for both Users and Publishers.

With these updates, adding new features will be easier. It's time for a change.

What is Premium Stuff?

Editor Extensions (Tools, Generators, AI Helpers)

Detailed + Optimized 3D Models with Animations (sorry, Low-Poly)

Complete Projects

Premium Support

Updates by Subscription

He invited readers to name their own category in the comments and asked how AI has affected their behavior as a User or Publisher on UAS.

Despite the strict moderation process, it is still difficult to find the right and high-quality resource.

Since 2018, he has been updating his Tutorial for Asset Publishers that want to stand out and deliver HQ assets.

Original post (comments and discussion)

Starting From Zero in 2025

If you had to start over today with no money and Unity 6, what kind of tool or game template would you build first to make money in 2025?

Andrey's answer is in the same community post as above: Starting From Zero in 2025 / AI and the Asset Store.