[DigitalToday reporter Ho-jung Lee] Global game engine company Unity on March 11 announced the '2026 Unity Game Development Report' highlighting key development trends in the game industry.

The report was prepared based on a survey of 300 game developers working across different team sizes and regions, as well as data from about 5 million developers who participated in the Unity engine and ecosystem last year.

According to the report, 52% of developers are focusing on smaller projects that are easier to manage, and 20% said development cycles are getting shorter.

The median Unity project development time fell 77% to 21 hours from 91 hours between January 2022 and December 2025. The median development time for large Unity projects with more than 1,000,000 monthly active users also fell sharply to 86 hours from 462 hours between March 2023 and October 2025.

Game studios were found to prefer games that can be attractive options for players. Role-playing (55%), strategy (53%), and action and adventure (52%) ranked highest by genre, but 73% said they develop casual games in terms of theme.

Many studios mainly use artificial intelligence tools for backend development and planning tasks. Some 95% of respondents have already adopted AI in their work, with key uses identified as coding support (62%) and writing and narrative design (44%). The most-cited benefits were improved efficiency (73%), better decision-making (62%) and reduced resources (51%).

Some 50% of studios that participated in the survey are using Model Context Protocol server. Of those, 90% use MCP to connect to game engines and editors, and they experienced effects including time savings and faster iteration (40%), fewer errors and improved output quality (39%).

Crossplay and active competitive systems were cited as strategies to drive user engagement. Some 83% preferred building online multiplayer games and 72% said they prioritize crossplay features. The share that implemented daily rewards, missions and leaderboards each reached 78%. For promotion channels, online events (62%) and social media (60%) were mainly used, and India (73%) and Malaysia (51%) were cited as attractive regions as emerging markets.

The range of business models is also widening. Some 24% of studios are diversifying revenue sources through related merchandise, advertising revenue and outsourced services in addition to base game sales. Some 82% have collaborations and partnerships related to games, and 57% are using in-app purchases such as booster items, cosmetic items and in-game currency. Desktop (30%), mobile (28%) and handheld game consoles (16%) were cited as the main expansion platforms.