The IndieBeat: How one dev made the Shader Forge Unity tool

The Unity plug-in Shader Forge launched over five years ago, and it often pops up in conversations and top lists about essential development tools. It enables people to quickly change the appearance of their game without going under the hood and coding these alterations. Swedish indie developer Freya Holmér charged $90 for it and used the money to fund her game studio, Neat Corporation. But in April, she released the tool’s source code and made it free for all on the Unity Asset Store.

Neat Corporation is working on the virtual reality game Budget Cuts, a spy thriller that combines espionage with space-bending teleportation coming out on May 31 for Oculus Rift and HTC Vive. Holmér says that as development ramped up, it became impossible to juggle developing a game while also supporting a tool. She was just doing the bare minimum, what she calls “admin stuff” and fixing only the most crucial bugs.