Unity Technologies have just announced the acquisition of Codice Software, the makers of PlasticSCM a version control software ideal for working with large datasets such as games. Details of the acquistion from the Unity blog:
To ensure you get the solution you need, Unity has acquired Codice Software – the company behind Plastic SCM, a flagship Version Control Solution (VCS). Plastic SCM can handle the largest repositories, massive binary files, and thousands of concurrent users all while supporting distributed and centralized repositories with powerful merging options. It also has the most advanced automated branching capabilities out there, rounding off an impressive feature set designed from the ground up for working in all real-time content creation workflows, whether in the cloud or on-premise.
You may be wondering what this means for Unity Collaborate, their in-house developed version control and team management solution? They cover that in the blog post as well:
And don’t worry – we will continue to support Unity’s Collaborate. Plastic SCM users not using Unity will continue to see the product evolving. Plastic SCM and Collaborate are both team-focused tools used to streamline workflows, so we want to be clear about our intentions for each.
We built Collaborate to give users the ability to share projects amongst small teams who want an easy way to sync their projects without navigating the complexity of version control. We brought Plastic SCM into the fold for larger teams looking to cooperate on more complex projects and need VCS features like branching, locking, merging and a standalone GUI. With Plastic, you now have access to the market-leading solution.
We also believe that it’s important for creators to have the flexibility to pick the tools that fit their development needs and team when using Unity. That is why we are committed to making sure that Plastic, Collaborate and other third party version control services continue to receive support so you can use the best tool to fit your needs.
As Perforce is used outside of Unity, what about people using competing game engines?
Plastic SCM will still be available to all, no matter what technology you’re using to build your project and we will continue to innovate on the product and evolve it over time. We’re also introducing a new free tier allowing users to get started with Plastic SCM, whether you’re a Unity user or not. For full pricing details, see here.
You can learn more about the acquisition (and my opinion on the future of Collaborate) in the video below.