Question No Unity Packages will import

Greetings all, it's been more than several years since I used Unity, but I'm on the latest version, and I cannot load any of my previously purchased unity package (.unitypackage) files. Unity appears to try to load, and just shuts back down as if it crashed, (maybe it did). Granted these unity packages are old, but I still purchased more than $100 worth from the unity store and would really like to load these assets again, but cannot. I had initially installed the Unity Hub, but every time I tried to open my packages, it just loaded the hub, which wasn't doing anything. It used to be, you purchased unity packages, downloaded the files, and ran the .unitypackage files like an executable, a small dialog box would pop up with checkboxes and you'd be ready to go, but apparently a lot has changed. Please help.

 

Nevermind. I managed to get them to import, but my unity packages are throwing errors left and right, and I was hoping this would be resolved in newer versions of unity. It's like you have to purchase Unity every time there's an update, because if your licensing was for the previous version, you have to pay for it again. Again and again every month, and then as a couple of years go by, your previous projects won't work anymore. It's just so disappointing. A person has to update and make certain changes on-going forever in order to somehow keep releasing old games. As a game developer, I would like for people to play my old games, but you're only allowed to create a game once for Unity, but you have to purchase it many many times on a monthly basis if you want to keep using it.

 

Extra unwanted packages in new projects (collab, testing, rider and other junk):

https://forum.unity.com/threads/temp-unityengine-testrunner-dll-error.1133938/#post-7287748

About the fastest way I have found to make a project and avoid all this noise is to create the project, then as soon as you see the files appear, FORCE-STOP (hard-kill) Unity (with the Activity Manager or Task Manager), then go hand-edit the Packages/manifest.json file as outlined in the above post, then reopen Unity.

Unity changes. In fact, the world changes.. You may need to upgrade your project. It's usually quite painless. I've been keeping all my games going forward from 2013 to now. Yes, it takes work, but in return my games are built for targets that didn't even exist when I first wrote them. I use source control diligently on EVERY project and I can instantly revert any upgrade that doesn't go well and defer it until I get more information, or until a feature stabilizes.