Different engine, but this is why the unity ‘we’re going to have a rolling engine that devs will just stay up to date on’ confuses me. Everyone who consistently ships knows you don’t play in the kitchen while they’re cooking up features. Or rather, you do, but at your own risk.

Ok, I'm a bit confused here. Do devs not have an choice on updating when a new engine version comes out? You can always not update, right?

My overriding theory is that for the past 5 years (and probably more), Unity has focused on investors rather than developers. I don't think this new policy is for us, I think it's for investors so they look like they're addressing an issue without doing the deep work to actually address it.

And the flipside - Apple update iOS and XCode every year, and because you *can't* release updates without updating XCode and everything that brings with it, most apps become dormant and unsupported after just a couple of years

Yeah - once we are clear on shipping, we lock in and there are no upgrades. I live by that but... here I am... sigh. Still worth it for what came out, it was a bug you can work around just scratched my head for a few hours on it.

That's why I believe that the best way to do so is that the different components that make the engine be updated separately, and the "full engine" version to be just what defines a full shell of the reference of the components available.