A new company from the creators of the Godot game engine plans to grab a slice of the $200 billion global video game market — and to do so, commercial open-source software giant Red Hat is taking a cue.
Godot, for the uninitiated, is a cross-platform game engine that was released under an open source license in 2014, although its initial development dates back several years. Today, Godot claims about 1,500 contributors, and is considered one of the world’s top open source projects by various metrics. Godot has been used in high-profile games such as Sonic Colors: Ultimate remaster, the first major Godot-powered game published by Sega last year. But Tesla He used Godot To enable some graphically intensive animations in the mobile application.
Among Godot’s founding creators is Juan Linitsky, who served as the head of development for the Godot project for the past 13 years and now serves as CEO of W4 Games, a new role that is moving Godot to the next level.
W4 quietly came out of a hack last week, but today the Ireland-headquartered company released more details about its goals to grow Godot and make it available for a wider range of commercial use cases. In addition, the company has raised $8.5 million in seed funding to make its mission a reality, TechCrunch told TechCrunch. CEO of Red Hat, an enterprise-focused open source company that IBM acquired in 2019 for $34 billion.
But first… what is a game engine, exactly?
Game plan
Godot editor demo. Image Credits: Godot
Simply put, a game engine provides developers with the basic building blocks needed to create games and can include anything from publishers for 2D or 3D graphics to scripting and memory management. It’s essentially a software framework that developers can use and use without reinventing the wheel with each new game.
“This allows developers to use pre-built functions common to most games when creating their own, and only create the parts that make the game unique,” Linitsky explained to TechCrunch.
Many companies, especially large game studios, develop their own engines in-house, and as games and associated development processes become more complex, third-party general-purpose game engines have gained popularity. This includes long-standing incumbents such as Unity, developed by tech powerhouse Unity Software, which is currently in the process of merging with IronSource.
One reason a studio might use a third-party game engine is to reduce in-house development costs, but the trade-off here is having to work with a gargantuan code-base, which has limited control. . And that’s why Godot has won some fans over the years – as an open source project, it gives developers a baked-in game engine that they can tailor to their own needs and bring improvements back to the development community. For all to benefit.
“The result is reduced development costs and more freedom to create,” Linitsky said. “Godot brings the same benefits to the gaming industry that enterprise software has been enjoying from it [open source software] For many decades.
Because of open source
Red Hat Inc. A sign is displayed outside the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Image Credits: Bloomberg/Getty Images
Anyone who has paid attention to the technology sphere over the last decade or so will notice that open source is now big business. The likes of Elastic and Cockroach Labs have built billion-dollar businesses on the backs of open source projects, while Aven recently hit double-unicorn status for its business helping enterprises get the most out of open source technologies in cloud environments.
But Red Hat is, arguably, one of the open source world’s biggest success stories, selling enterprises premium support and services for some of the world’s largest community-based projects, from Linux to Kubernetes.
“Companies like Red Hat have proven that the demand for using open source in enterprise environments is huge with real business offerings,” Linitsky said. “W4 intends to do the same for the gaming industry.”
It’s an interesting parallel, to be sure, and it seems pretty obvious when presented with such a contrast. Linux’s open source credentials have made it the leading operating system for web servers, while Android’s dominant mobile market share can be attributed to its Linux kernel base. Elsewhere, other open source projects like Kubernetes are driving enterprise adoption of microservices and container technologies.
Admittedly, Godot Linux isn’t even close to having the kind of impact on gaming that Linux has had on the enterprise, but it’s still early days – and that’s where W4 makes a difference.
“We expect Godot to take the same path in the gaming industry as other open source software has taken in the enterprise, which is to gradually become normalized,” Linitsky continued. “It’s hard for companies that create proprietary software to compete with the huge talent pool of popular open source projects that don’t require software users to give up the freedom to use the software as they see fit.”
On top of that, getting one of Red Hat’s co-founders as an investor could be considered a coup for the eight-month-old startup.
“Bob is an incredible person who helped create a whole new kind of business that no one thought would be possible,” Linitzky continued. “He has been kind enough to share his wisdom with us and become an investor in our company, having identified Godot and W4’s opportunity two decades ago as similar to Linux and Red Hat.”
Support and services
A conceptual example of technical support. Image Credits: Macrostore / Getty Images
W4’s main target market will be wide – it’s catering to independent developers and small studios, as well as medium and large game companies. The problem it’s trying to solve is, ultimately, that while Godot is popular with hobbyists and indie developers, companies are hesitant to use the engine in commercial projects due to its inherent limitations – currently there’s no easy way to get technical support, discuss the product’s development roadmap, or any other added value. Access to available services.
But perhaps most importantly, while Godot is touted as a game engine that spans the web, mobile, and desktop, it doesn’t yet have direct support for game consoles. This is because, as an open source project under the MIT license, Godot cannot provide support for consoles because it is not allowed to publish the code needed to interface with proprietary hardware – game studios built for consoles must sign strict non-disclosure agreements. Also, console makers only work with registered entities, which Godot is not.
Simply put, Godot cannot be a community-driven open source project and support consoles at the same time. But there are ways around this, which is why W4 hopes to make money by offering a porting service to help developers convert their existing games to a console-compatible format.
“W4 offers console ports to developers at very accessible terms,” said Linietsky. “Independent developers don’t need to pay upfront to publish, while for larger companies there will be commercial packages that include support.”
Elsewhere, W4 is currently developing a range of products and services that Linitzky will be announcing at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in San Francisco next March.
“W4’s goal is to help developers overcome any obstacles they face when trying to use Godot commercially,” added Linitsky.
It’s worth noting that there are a handful of commercial companies like Lone Wolf Technologies and Pineapple Works helping developers get the most out of Godot – including making a console port. But Linitsky wanted to highlight one major difference between W4 and these incumbents: the know-how.
“The defining characteristic of W4 is that it was created by the leadership of the Godot Project, who are individuals who have the most insight and understanding of Godot and the community,” he said.
It has been distributed.
Of Godot’s 1,500 or so contributors, about 10 are more or less permanent employees, paid for by community contributions. Similarly, W4’s current team consists of 12 mostly long-time Godot contributors, spread across eight different countries in the US and Europe. This is kind of how other companies built on an open source foundation got started, including Red Hat and WordPress.com parent Automate, one of the best-known “distributed” companies out there, long before the telecommuting revolution. In 2020.
Indeed, distributed work is one of the main characteristics of open source software development. For example, Linietsky is based in Spain, co-founder and COO Remi Verschelde It works from Denmark. The other two founders, CTO Fabio Alessandrelli and CMO Nicola Farronato, working from different locations in Italy.
But each entity must choose. Somewhere As a corporate house. And in common with many tech companies, W4 has chosen Dublin, Ireland as its official headquarters – although this presence is only really on paper.
“It was founded in Ireland because the two co-founders had already established there, were related and knew the Irish ecosystem very well,” Linitsky said.
