Discontinuation of Unity support for BlackBerry 10

So what now 5.1.4 was released and the last 5.1x release.

No more BlackBerry support, sad that issue's where left not fixed, they should have duty to solve them all.
For the first time I can say Unity management s***. Lets go silent tactic, best so it seems.

For the Blackberry developers thank you and great work on trying to fix as much as possible before the end date. Much appreciated Alex and team. I guess you will be moving onto other development work now like Tizen that no one really develops for ;-)

 

It would be interesting, if it is an option to get things fixed via paid support. Could anybody from Unity comment on this?

Partly, I understand Unity dropping BB, as BB themselves don't seem very dedicated to BB10 or even their own devices anymore (just like with Flash).
On the other hand, hearing Unity will grow up to 500 employees, it's hard to imagine they can't afford one guy to maintain the BB platform.


We keep getting bug reports from users that unity games freeze on passports.

 

Well to me, I already paid, Unity announced BlackBerry support, and PS Vita via PSM support I buy a Pro license, both are dropped...granted PSM was out of there hands, but on both occasions Unity said they was not dropping either while knowing full well they were. I just don't understand why BlackBerry can't be open sourced, they have no interest in it, allow us that do to fix the issues ourselves.

 

Agreed, what annoys me is Unity taking usual approach of just being silent about the issue.
They made posting they dropping it and not allowing for further discussion.
Least some agreement with customers and developers.

 

Yes, but I BB and PSM gave me the incentive to go Pro, I didn't want to be just a free user, I'm also Pro Android and iOS, BlackBerry is my most profitable platform, initially I was annoyed with Unity for the removal of BlackBerry, but your post actually clears things up and things make more sense. As to how I sideline my existing plans from BlackBerry to other platforms at this point I'm not sure, BlackBerry was an eager audience to please, the others are very saturated, but I'll find a way.

Thank you for the explanation it really helps to understand, it could really have come much earlier, and to be honest it would have helped if we wasn't told BlackBerry would not be dropped when it was already in the plans.

 

Thanks for the response.

What I meant with paid support is, how much $$$ do you want to fix bug X or implement feature Y.
You probably still got the BB guy employed, what's his wage + your cut = why don't you offer that?
E.g. what would be possible for 5.000$, what for 10.000$?
It's not about the sunken costs you spent ... it's about maintenance to a certain point.
Namely a point, where a developer is still able to release a stable app.

If we know the price, we can try to setup the budget.

We are still on 4.6, because as we wanted to convert to 5.x, it was crashing on all ends (BB, WinStore, lightmaps in general). I don't even want to think about what's still not working, especially on BB10. And unfortunately, we don't have the time to create repros for your QA team for bugs that should occur if you test the stuff you develop.

 

I do appreciate the honesty, I wish this thread was created with more substance than it was.

Remember making a product or feature set free later does not automatically negate previous purchases. It isn't like many of us ran out and bought the pro add-on in the last few weeks just for BlackBerry.

I'm curious about what you are implying here or if you are unaware of your product history, which I doubt as a QA Director. In 4.x, if we wanted things plenty of features such as profiler, level loading, camera on a texture etc were limited to pro. In fact, you originally marketed BlackBerry Pro as a 1,500 add-on and if I remember right, changed pricing 3 times even mid-beta for BlackBerry (which I was fortunate to be part of). Note as well missing features became free for personal long after many of us paid. In my case it was camera to texture I needed to purchase for use in a game - I was tired of hitting roadblocks in your free version, I wanted to support Unity for supporting BlackBerry and to get rid of that god awful (sorry) year 2000-esque Unity launch logo. Finally, note at the time pro only came with BlackBerry & Desktop use (which I still have never used) underlining that the only reason I've ever used Pro is for BlackBerry.

Does the reason really matter though? The responsible thing would be to stand by your companies marketing decisions and assume there was a value to your pro license at the time and that some developers may not have qualified for personal licenses. Could someone save cash and use only the free version today for BlackBerry? I'd say yes in some cases, its almost stable (I stopped reporting bugs myself), and I certainly no longer see value in the current pro licensing model.

Regardless, it isn't like we all individually decided "hey lets buy something unrelated to the platform I want for 1,500 dollars". I suspect we are all reasonably intelligent human beings and obviously purchased the upgrade for a reason. If you are honestly asking what features made us purchase pro, I recommend discussing with your own marketing team what was advertised and consider a separate thread to gather more broad responses.

I find it fascinating how this reason used to be enough for your company to market us and email us to "go pro". Yet barely a year later employees from the same company are suggesting "That's a bad choice you made, we eventually made it free for everyone, why did you buy that?". If you think deeper about, there really is no value in us justifying our purchase to you except to breed hostility. I'm personally just considering this an unfortunate loss, the pro license was devalued by the free-personal change, and opportunities for refunds were poorly communicated and restricted by purchase date. I use it as a reminder of how my relationship with Unity is not always going to be positive.

Does this sufficiently address the question, or do you see value in me gathering more responses from other BlackBerry developers I know?

 

Not supporting a platform anymore is no problem when you really let the users of your product know.
This "Christian Church" tactic isn't the best way to drop support.

Just upgraded to 5.2.2 and wondered why my app isn't working anymore.
Ok I found out that it is set to Web Player in the Build settings and tried to switch the platform back to BlackBerry. Oh wait! It isn't working anymore

This is how I discovered that Unity doesn't support BB anymore and that's what s****.

 

Just noticed BB support was dropped. I recently updated everything in my project to 5.3.0. I still see Blackberry listed as a potential build platform however the module is not installed nor is it visible when I run the Unity installer. Is it still possible to built to BB with 5.3? If so where can I get the module? Thx.

 

I do not think it is, dunno why you still can see it there, they should have removed it by now.

 

Can confirm it exists on 5.3.1patch2 - using MacOSX

 

For the slow ones: does this mean you can still export to BB with 5.3.1?
Does it work?

 

Soooo, just to clarify... what is the latest version of unity that can build for Blackberry 10? Thx. 5.1.4? Will 5.2.x work still?

 

@christougher
Yes, 5.1.4 is the last version that supports Blackberry. Sadly, but true.