Best Practices for Unity Games

Protecting Unity games requires a specialized approach that balances security with performance.

Key Protection Areas

Intellectual Property Protection

The primary goal is to protect your game's intellectual property:

Game mechanics and logic
Business rules and algorithms
Proprietary systems and features
Asset management and loading

Anti-Cheat Protection

Prevent cheating and unauthorized modifications:

Runtime memory tampering
Value manipulation
Game state modification
Unauthorized feature unlocking

Payment Gateway Protection

Secure your monetization systems:

In-app purchase verification
Premium content protection
Subscription validation
Virtual currency security

Recommended Shield Edition

For Unity games, we strongly recommend using the Enterprise Edition of Shield, which provides:

Advanced memory protection
Runtime integrity checks
Anti-tampering measures
Comprehensive anti-cheat capabilities

Performance Considerations

Control Flow Protection

Control Flow protection should be applied selectively:

Only protect critical game logic methods
Avoid protecting performance-sensitive code
Test thoroughly after applying protection
Monitor frame rate impact

IL2CPP Considerations

When using IL2CPP compilation:

Test all protections thoroughly
Verify virtualization compatibility
Monitor memory usage
Check startup time impact

Best Practices

Start with core protections:
- Constants Encryption
- Constants Mutation
- Renamer (Shield automatically handles Unity compatibility)
Add advanced protections carefully:
- Virtualization (test with IL2CPP)
- Control Flow (selective application)
- Memory protection
Avoid incompatible protections:
- Invalid Code (not compatible with IL2CPP)
- Certain reflection-based protections
Test thoroughly:
- On all target platforms
- With different Unity versions
- Under various load conditions
- With different compilation settings

Shield automatically adapts its protections to work with Unity, whether using IL2CPP or Mono compilation. No special configuration is needed - Shield detects the Unity environment and applies appropriate protections.

For specific protection recommendations, see Recommended Protections.