GameDriver 2026.08 for Unity, Unreal Engine and the Test Assistant

GameDriver 2026.08 is out for Unity, Unreal Engine and the standalone Test Assistant. It adds a way to connect AI assistants straight to your running game, makes HierarchyPath queries on Unreal 60-85% faster, gives the Test Assistant full Unreal support and native macOS builds, and adds VR hand-tracking simulation for Unity.

The highlights are below. The full changelogs are in the Knowledge Base:

• 2026.08 Unity Changelog
• 2026.08 Unreal Engine Changelog
• 2026.08 Test Assistant Changelog

AI assistants, connected to your running game

The new GameDriver MCP Server lets AI assistants like Claude work with a live Unity or Unreal game. The assistant can browse the GameDriver API, HierarchyPath syntax, key codes and console commands, explore the object hierarchy of the running game, and call any GameDriver API through a single tool. In practice, that means you can ask it to find an object, inspect its properties, or write and run a test against the build in front of you.

Claude Desktop can start the MCP server in the background, without opening the Test Assistant UI. We cover what it can do in more detail in Meet the GameDriver MCP Server, and setup is in the MCP configuration guide.

Unreal Engine: faster queries, and the Test Assistant

On Unreal, the HPath query engine has been reworked. Queries are 60-85% faster and use about 99.6% less memory per query, and your existing queries keep working as written. The standalone Test Assistant now fully supports Unreal too: a live object explorer, recording and replay for mouse, keyboard and touch, autoplay, connected-game logging and a new debugger with breakpoints. This release also adds Unreal Engine 5.8 compatibility and fixes the precompiled plugin for Android and iOS.

More on all of this in Faster HPath queries and the Test Assistant for Unreal Engine.

Unity: VR hand tracking, input and deeper inspection

• OpenXR and MetaXR hand-tracking simulation. Joint-level position and rotation control, wrist-relative hand positioning and simulated pinch gestures, so hand-tracked VR interactions can be covered by automated tests. A headset-height offset makes simulated hands behave as if a user of that height were wearing the headset.
• Mixed input setups. Route individual XR input calls through the legacy Input Manager while the rest of the project uses the New Input System. Clicks, drags, taps and touch can now target a specific camera or secondary display, and SetInputFieldText works with UI Toolkit TextField elements.
• GetPropertyTree. Returns an object's whole property tree, including nested fields and object references, in one request instead of many field-by-field lookups. Field values now arrive with their correct types rather than as strings.
• Connection health and diagnostics. A health-check API with round-trip latency, automatic cleanup of stale connections, and runtime control of the agent's log level.
• Expanded math API. Dot and cross products, angles, lerp and slerp, reflection, projection and transform helpers, using Unity's conventions.
• Unity 6.3 support (Unity 6.4 works with no extra changes).

Test Assistant on macOS

The standalone Test Assistant now ships as native, signed and notarized macOS builds for Intel and Apple Silicon. It also remembers its window size, position and font size between sessions, and a batch of connection and recording fixes land with it.

Before you upgrade

Most API changes are backward compatible. Where a method's parameter order changed (Click, ClickEx, ClickObjectEx, ButtonPress, Tap, TouchInput), the old overload is still there and marked deprecated, so existing code compiles with a warning.

There is one breaking change on Unity. CreateObjectRef(string type, object[] arguments, int timeout = 30) no longer defaults arguments to null, so a call such as CreateObjectRef("SomeType") needs an explicit second argument:

// Before
api.CreateObjectRef("SomeType");

// 2026.08
api.CreateObjectRef("SomeType", null);

GameDriver for Unity now requires .NET Framework 4.8 (up from 4.7.1). On Unreal, check any queries that use the descendant:: axis or component()/components(), since their matching behavior was corrected in this release. The Unreal changelog lists the known limitations, including Android on Unreal Engine 5.4.

Get 2026.08

The release is available now from the Client Portal downloads page. Questions or feedback are welcome through the Support Portal, or talk to a QA lead about putting the new release to work on your test plan.