Unity acquired Bolt from Ludiq back in May of 2020 although no further announcements were made. Today however that all changed when Unity announced that the Bolt visual scripting solution for the Unity game engine will now be free for all tiers of Unity, including the free or personal tiers. Bolt is available immediately as a free download on the Unity Asset Store.
Details from the Unity blog:
Bolt visual scripting is now included in all Unity plans, at no additional cost.
We believe the world is a better place with more creators in it, and we know that visual scripting is a critical part of bringing ideas to life quickly in Unity.
Bolt is now available for download by all Unity users through the Unity Asset Store. Users who purchased Bolt after Unity made the acquisition announcement on May 4, 2020 will receive a refund in the amount of their purchase. We’ll be sending an email to those users within the next two weeks.
The next version of Bolt, Bolt 2, which will bring improvements in capability, scalability, performance, and ease of use is in development. When it arrives, Bolt 2 will also be included in all Unity plans at no additional cost. More information to come later this year.
We are committed to providing a great visual scripting experience for users for all types of projects, regardless of the architecture. Bolt is an acceleration of this mission towards providing that experience. We’re also working to refine our various node-based tools to improve the general user experience progressively, over time, across the Editor.
Again you can learn more about Bolt and download it here. Learn more about the Bolt release in the video below.