Economy
Learn how to create, manage, and publish an economy system for your game using Unity's Economy service.
Read time 2 minutesLast updated 12 days ago
Unity’s Economy service provides you with an easy way to create, manage and publish an economy system to be used in your game.
Economy includes the following for your game:
- Currency: Currencies allow a user to have a balance of one or more currencies/denominations in game.
- Inventory item: Inventory items represent a definition of a resource that is created as part of the configuration. Players can own instances of inventory items (for example, multiple copies of the same swords, shields, hats) and, unlike currencies, each instance can have its own properties.
- Purchases: A player can buy in-game currency and inventory items with different in-game currency and inventory items (virtual purchases), or by using real money via a digital storefront.
- Configuration: You oversee the Economy service from its Configuration panel. This centralized repository governs the management and publication of your game’s resources, and also allows you to add Custom data.
- Publication: After creating your economy, while respecting the Parameters of operation, you need to publish it. Publishing an economy transfers the current configuration to your game, allowing your players to interact with it.
Economy service status
As of September 8, 2026, Economy no longer accepts new project sign-ups. The APIs, dashboard, SDK, and integrations are operational and maintained. Existing projects with an active Economy configuration are unaffected and can continue to use the service.
For new projects that need game economy features, the recommended approach is to build a server-authoritative setup using the following services:
For real-money purchases and webshops, use Unity IAP.
Sample projects
Download the Unity Gaming Services Samples project to see how to implement Economy to solve common game development challenges: