The dark theme

28 / 04 / 2020

I decided to write this article when I’m about to release a first preliminary version of my new work, Editor Enhancer, because as you know this package includes an option to activate the Unity dark theme with a legal hack, something that could potentially generate some controversy.

As you know, Unity still considers the dark theme as a benefit only available on their subscription plans, something that many users do not agree with at all because we believe that a large company like Unity should not charge its users for a feature that has no other purpose than to prevent eyestrain.

Since I don’t agree with Unity’s policy, you could think that my motivations have to do with wanting to save the money Unity asks for one of these payment plans or with wanting to force the company to give the dark theme for free now that any user will be able to use it at no cost, but no, those are not my motivations and I want to make it clear.

I don’t have a problem with eyestrain with the clear theme (I’m more than used to it after so many years of use) nor do I intend to demand anything for free, nor do I intend to force Unity to change its commercial policy. In the end it is their product and they have the right to sell it as they want.

That being said, I would like to confess that my real motivations for doing this have only been the following:

  1. To know how far I would be able to develop -with my supposed experience- the ideas that some users had planted in this Unity forum thread.
  2. To be able to claim some attention on me and my skills developing Unity tools, something that I only thought about when I realized that I had created something interesting.

Why? Because unfortunately due to COVID19 the contract works I had for this year have been cancelled and at present I find myself without a job and without an income in Spain, one of the countries in the world most punished by the virus.

I know that even if I have such a strong reason as the one I have explained, there will still be people criticizing me and calling me a “pirate”, because that is what exposing oneself publicly implies, but I honestly don’t care because I am pretty sure this hack doesn’t violate section 2.6 of Unity’s terms of service.

In any case, the last thing I want to do right now is get into discussions with anyone, least of all with Unity. So I will also make it clear that if at any time Unity were to ask me for it, I would have no problem removing the code related to the dark theme from the package.

And please, keep an eye on the other utilities included:

Editor Enhancer - Github