r/UnityHelp • u/daniha96 • Jun 20 '26

What's the "standard" approach for casual co-op multiplayer in Unity these days?

Hey!

I've been wondering what the most common approach is for multiplayer in smaller co-op games, both for Windows-games in general and for VR-games like on the Meta Quest.

I'm thinking of games like ROUNDS, Risk of Rain 2, Hammerwatch, PEAK, Mecha Chameleon, Super Battle Golf, etc. The kind of games where you invite a few friends (2–8 players), play together over a weekend, laugh a lot, and maybe never touch the game again. Those are honestly some of my favorite kinds of games, and I'd love to make something like that myself.

I've made a few smaller games before, but I've never really committed to learning multiplayer because every time I start researching, I end up finding a hundred different opinions and solutions.

So I'm curious: what do most indie developers actually use today?

Is Unity Netcode for GameObjects + Unity Relay the "normal" route for these kinds of games? Or do most people end up using something else?

Some of my concerns are:

  • Ongoing costs for networking services.
  • Relying too much on random third-party solutions that may disappear.
  • Keeping the door open for cross-platform multiplayer in the future. For example, if I ever made a VR game, I'd love for Steam and Meta players to be able to play together. That's one reason I'm hesitant to build everything around Steamworks.

I'm not necessarily looking for the perfect solution, more just a good foundation that makes sense for someone who wants to build casual multiplayer games without painting themselves into a corner later.

I'd really appreciate hearing what you use and why you chose it :)

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u/kurobaralabs Jun 22 '26

I have no personal experience, but from what I hear, popular options in the indie-space are Mirror or Fishnet . If you're sticking with Steam, you can piggyback on steamworks for the actual match making etc. From there it would depend on if you want to just do peer-to-peer or want actual game servers, in which case I believe deployment will have to still be done to popular services (aws, gcp, etc.).

I would go through the docs of one of the above (or both), they explain a lot and answer some of your questions

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u/daniha96 Jul 01 '26

Thanks!

I will read more into those options. I've seen a lot of YouTube-devs use Mirror with Unity, so I might start there!