Updated September 2026. The original 2017 article predates the retirement of Unity Collaborate and several changes to how Unity teams work; this version reflects the current tooling.
Working on a Unity project as a team raises two separate problems: how to share the project files, and how to work in the same scenes without destroying each other’s changes. Source control solves the first. The second has no complete built-in solution in Unity, and teams handle it with a mix of project structure, locking conventions, and real-time editing tools. This guide covers both.
What happened to Unity Collaborate?
Unity Collaborate was retired. Unity acquired Codice Software, the developer of Plastic SCM, in 2020, and began migrating Collaborate projects to Plastic SCM in late 2021. The product is now called Unity Version Control and is part of Unity DevOps, which absorbed the old Unity Teams plans. DevOps includes three free seats, and Unity has announced the removal of seat charges for cloud-hosted Unity Version Control starting in 2026.
If you are searching for Collaborate today, the practical answer is: pick a source control system from the next section. Unity Version Control is the direct successor, and Git is the most common choice.
How multiple people work on the same Unity project
Source control is the foundation. A shared repository holds the project; each person pulls the latest revision, makes changes, and merges them back. Revision history lets you inspect and revert changes, and text files (code, and Unity’s YAML-serialized assets) merge between contributors.
The common choices for Unity projects:
- Git, with GitHub or GitLab. The most common option. Needs setup for Unity (below).
- Unity Version Control (the former Plastic SCM). Handles large binary files without extensions, supports file locking, and integrates with the editor.
- Perforce Helix Core. The standard at larger studios; strong with large binaries and exclusive checkouts.
- Subversion (SVN). Still in use; simpler model, weaker branching.
A Unity project needs three pieces of setup regardless of which you pick, and Git needs all of them:
- Text serialization. Keep Asset Serialization set to Force Text (the default) in Editor settings, so scenes and prefabs are diffable and mergeable YAML rather than opaque binaries.
- A Unity-specific ignore file.
Library/,Temp/,Logs/, and build output are machine-generated and must stay out of the repository. - Large-file handling. Textures, models, and audio do not diff or merge. On Git, that means Git LFS; Unity Version Control and Perforce handle large binaries natively.
Unity also ships UnityYAMLMerge (Smart Merge), a merge tool that understands scene and prefab structure. Wiring it into your source control tool resolves many scene merges that a text merger would fail.
Art assets and asset management
Art files are stored in source control but cannot be merged, and generic diff views say little about what changed in a texture or a model. Digital asset management tools track revisions of art assets with visual comparisons and annotations. The current names: Autodesk Flow Production Tracking (called Shotgun until 2021 and ShotGrid until 2024) and ftrack. Both read files from the common art applications (Maya, 3ds Max, Blender, Photoshop). For game teams without a film-style pipeline, Perforce or Unity Version Control with file locking covers the practical need: one person edits a binary asset at a time.
How teams work in the same scene
Scenes are where Unity collaboration breaks down. A scene file is one large YAML document describing every object in a level, and Unity offers no built-in way for two people to edit it at the same time. Teams use four approaches, in rough order of sophistication:
Scene merging
Two people edit copies of the scene and merge afterward, with UnityYAMLMerge resolving the structure. This works when the changes do not touch the same objects. When they conflict, the resolution is manual and tedious, and neither person saw the other’s work until the merge. Merging is a fallback, not a workflow.
Scene locking (the “conch” method)
One person owns the scene at a time, enforced socially or by exclusive checkout in Perforce or Unity Version Control. This prevents conflicts by preventing parallelism: one person works while the others wait.
Splitting the scene: prefabs and additive scenes
Since Unity 2018.3, nested prefabs let teams break a level into pieces that are edited as separate files, which shrinks the surface where conflicts can happen. Additive scene loading does the same at a larger grain: a level built from several scenes lets each person lock a smaller piece. Both reduce contention; neither lets two people build the same area together.
Real-time multi-user scene editing
The remaining option is to make the scene itself multi-user. We build Scene Fusion, a Unity editor plugin that connects multiple editors to one scene session: everyone places, moves, and edits objects in the same scene, and sees each other’s changes as they happen. There is nothing to merge afterward, because there is only one live version of the scene.
This changes the shape of level work. Greyboxing, review, and set dressing happen in one session instead of a lock-edit-merge cycle, and problems are visible while the other person is still working rather than at merge time. Synty Studios uses Scene Fusion to build levels in parallel and, in their words, saves about a day per week of production time. The workflow guide covers how sessions run day to day, including how Scene Fusion coexists with source control: the scene still lives in your repository; the session replaces the merge.
Scene Fusion is free for two collaborators, and supports Unity 2022.3 LTS and Unity 6.0 through 6.5.
Summary
Use source control for the project: Git with LFS and UnityYAMLMerge, Unity Version Control, or Perforce. Keep scenes and prefabs in text serialization. Track binary art with file locking or a DAM tool. For scenes, split levels into prefabs and additive scenes to reduce contention, and use real-time multi-user editing when the team needs to build the same space together.