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W4 Games formed to strengthen Godot ecosystem

173 points by larsiusprime 4y ago

jacooper 4y ago
Great!, I hope this won't turn Godot into an open core model in the long run.
- hlship 4y ago
  Read the FAQ; they are pretty clear that Godot stays MIT license as today. My read of all this is that they are intending to provide similar porting services as some of the others (who they mention and link to) BUT because they are core contributors to Godot as well, this yields the proper impression that they are here to stay whereas we don't know the plans of the other groups that incidentally provide Godot porting services. In addition, being able to check the "enterprise support available" box on any kind of evaluation matrix could be a very big deal to larger developers.
  - hesdeadjim 4y ago
    Enterprise support is huge. When something is going wrong on platform X and you have a month before launch, you need access to engine experts with an SLA.
Sakos 4y ago
> This will be achieved by W4 providing commercial products and services offering such as enterprise support plans and the possibility to access markets that were previously unreached by Godot, such as console platforms. This is the most detail I could find on their site about what they're actually planning.
- TulliusCicero 4y ago
  A common complaint about Godot has been the lack of an official path to console ports, and the Godot team have asserted that it's not possible for Godot itself to directly support this, due to being open source and non-profit. Looks like this is the workaround.
d13 4y ago
What does this mean?
- xyproto 4y ago
  By reading the article I see that it means that a company has been started.
- 202206241203 4y ago
  Monetisation phase starts.
- georgeecollins 4y ago
  It means that some of the key creators of Godot are starting a company to support it. Godot itself would be open source. But as more adopt it they can do more support services for profit. This could include: - An asset store. - A proprietary solution for consoles (which require some non-Open Source code) - Paid technical support or enhanced versions And there are probably other things I haven't thought of.
hesdeadjim 4y ago
By forming a company they can finally provide “official” (though guarded by NDA) console support for Godot. This is by far my biggest issue with the engine and why it’s a complete non-starter for any serious game development. It also means they could provide paid support when Bad Stuff happens with the engine. For a similar reason I have enterprise support with Unity, and it’s been worth it’s weight in gold.
- bovermyer 4y ago
  Wait... so PC-only game development isn't serious?
  - no_wizard 4y ago
    For a Game Studio no, I don't think it is. For a Game Engine yes, it relegates you to an (albeit still quite large but inevitably an order of magnitude smaller) niche and hinders adoption significantly
  - hesdeadjim 4y ago
    Picking a game engine that subtracts hundreds of millions of potential players from your game without huge engineering effort to support a single console? Yea, that's a problem. Thankfully, Godot is solving it!
    - codingcodingboy 4y ago
    - TillE 4y ago
      There are many successful game genres which are functionally PC-only, because you cannot reasonably play them with a gamepad. See Paradox grand strategy games, for example. Those "potential buyers" never existed.
      - sorry_outta_gas 4y ago
        I play some paradox games on xbox with no problem, they are included with gamepass now
jcronenberg 4y ago
A TL;DR from one of the founders on godot's subreddit: New company independent from Godot, funded by venture capital (so has enough money to build products until it can actually make money). This company will build products and propose services which are yet to be announced - there's a hint that one product will be console ports. This company will provide funding to the Godot project so more contributors can be hired, and will also donate its own employees' work time for significant contributions to Godot (we'll soon announce some). But as importantly, it will provide the level of commercial support that bigger studios need to be able to switch to Godot. https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/wk5ji6/hello_world_w4_games_formed_to_strengthen_godot/ijlgm04 https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/wk5ji6/hello_world_w...
- throwgaway29 4y ago
  > funded by venture capital (so has enough money to build products until it can actually make money) What a dumb move. > more contributors can be hired Game development is in the dictionary definition of the mythical man month. > But as importantly, it will provide the level of commercial support that bigger studios need to be able to switch to Godot. Nobody is going to do that. You know how Hacker News is really negative about stuff that turns out to be a huge success? There should be a name for the opposite, where a bunch of nerds get really excited about something that will definitely remain insignificant.
  - slezyr 4y ago
    > > But as importantly, it will provide the level of commercial support that bigger studios need to be able to switch to Godot. > Nobody is going to do that. > You know how Hacker News is really negative about stuff that turns out to be a huge success? There should be a name for the opposite, where a bunch of nerds get really excited about something that will definitely remain insignificant. Let's call it trolling. I work with B2B software(software library) and... professional support sells well, and companies are ready to pay a lot for it. Many customers won't even buy the software without support.
  - carlosdp 4y ago
moomin 4y ago
If I were then I’d be working on an asset store. But I’m sure they’ve already done the math on this.
- georgeecollins 4y ago
  If they don't, someone on HN really ought to focus on this! I've loved this engine for a while (and I have used Unity and Unreal in commercial products) but there needs to be infrastructure to support it.
- f47il 4y ago
  It's happening: https://twitter.com/reduzio/status/1557299634514673670 https://twitter.com/reduzio/status/1557299634514673670
gamblor956 4y ago
For all the talk about Godot on HN, it doesn't appear to have any actual uptake in the gamedev community... Does anyone know of any AA or successful indie games that were made with Godot?
- lazlee 4y ago
  Baba is You
  - j_4 4y ago
    Not Godot.
    - lazlee 4y ago
      Oh. I was sure I saw a talk by it's creator saying he used Godot. Pardon me, if that was wrong
      - lazlee 4y ago
        Yup, just googled. My bad. Ill show myself out - no need to call security. :-)
- j_4 4y ago
  Cruelty Squad. Probably not the best poster child for engine capabilities on the tech and graphics side, haha. Unarguably successful though. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1388770/Cruelty_Squad/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1388770/Cruelty_Squad/
- sempron64 4y ago
  Wrought Flesh https://store.steampowered.com/app/1762010/Wrought_Flesh/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1762010/Wrought_Flesh/
  - abledon 4y ago
    great dev logs too
yrgulation 4y ago
As soon as godot offers better support for 3d and matches at least unity’s hdrp i am switching to it. Had enough of unity’s crappy asset store and “engine”.
- k__ 4y ago
  Does Godot have a better asset store?
  - yrgulation 4y ago
    Rather than the scam / low quality filled unity asset store, having none is better. Edit: It may be an interesting idea to build one for godot tho.
    - DizzyDoo 4y ago
      "Having none is better"... but there are some incredibly useful assets on the Unity Asset store? Here are three off the top of my head that I've used for a while now and they're worth every penny: Shapes - https://acegikmo.com/shapes/docs/ https://acegikmo.com/shapes/docs/ Easy Save 3 - https://moodkie.com/easysave/ https://moodkie.com/easysave/ InControl - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/input-management/incontrol-14695 https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/input-management... (but I've also heard Rewired is excellent.) Unity would be far poorer for missing them.
      - noidexe 4y ago
        In the case of Godot a lot of functionality is available out of the box. Biggest example is input management. You have an InputMap section where you define actions and can assign keys/buttons to it. Gamepad layout is automatically handled for thousands of controllers so that "right face button" is the same input event whether the user is using an xbox gamepad, a pro controller or generic. There is an official Asset Library but only for free, MIT licensed assets. There's nothing stopping someone from creating a paid one, though.
ouraf 4y ago
Anyone found info on how much seed capital they got? The company itself has been dormant for 10 months, so I'm curious to see how much they needed to make this a reality https://www.solocheck.ie/Irish-Company/W4-Games-Limited-705021 https://www.solocheck.ie/Irish-Company/W4-Games-Limited-7050...
j_4 4y ago
Well, to be perfectly frank I'm wholly negative about this. The corporate gobbledygook in the FAQ doesn't include anything to assuage my fears about the obvious conflict of interests for the core Godot developers. I'm a full time indie dev. I just started donating to Godot's Patreon after the recent Unity / IronSource kerfuffle and wanted to pick up the engine for my next title. I guess I'll be cancelling that subscription much sooner than I expected, and I don't know what I'll be doing now, tool wise.
- Kyrio 4y ago
  The interests of Godot as a free software project are protected by the Software Freedom Conservancy. Some of the original authors or maintainers forming a company doesn't affect that.
  - j_4 4y ago
    I understand that there are failsafes in place to protect against the conflict of interests, but it doesn't mean the conflict of interests isn't there, otoh it's extremely blatant. I am almost certain that it will affect things. I trust the devs mean well, but the incentives here are directly aligned for things to get ugly at some point.
    - cyber_kinetist 4y ago
      Absolutely, since venture capital can potentially steer the current engine developers (with money) towards a direction that isn’t aligned to FOSS or indie game development. I hope that they can withstand any pressure from investors if it has potential to damage the integrity of the project. (They have already gotten donations/sponsors from some online casinos and shady blockchain/metaverse companies before, although I think it was with minimal strings attached.) Since Godot is MIT other devs can always fork the engine and start developing from there if this ever happens, but the expertise from the original devs would still be lost.
      - ehnto 4y ago
codingcodingboy 4y ago
mathnode 4y ago
That’s great to hear. Most commenters are focusing on the issue with console development. Godot themselves wrote about it in July: https://godotengine.org/article/godot-consoles-all-you-need-know https://godotengine.org/article/godot-consoles-all-you-need-... It’s a fickle beast indeed. But what many people gloss over is the fact the option is there! Make your full game now or just a PoC, happy with the knowledge there is already help available.
madrox 4y ago
I'm really excited to learn Godot. With the way Unity has changed, it increasingly feels like the right engine for hobby projects. I hope they avoid the missteps Unity made, but the approach they're taking here feels great to me.
thrillgore 4y ago
This is great news for Godot. I know this has been bandied about for a while but to have a proper SLA offering partner for Godot legitimatizes it as 4 approaches.
rychco 4y ago
Great news, I’m very excited for the future of Godot. Once Godot 4.0 reaches beta, I’ll hopefully have some time to play around with it for hobby projects.
nightski 4y ago
I think it's great because Godot is open source, but I really wish it was an ECS engine getting all of this attention.
- johnnyanmac 4y ago
  Bevy seems to be gaining momentum and it will probably keep growing as Rust gets more popular and used in game development. So it will be very, very slow. But I can see an indie darling being made in that engine within the next 5 years.
  - nightski 4y ago
    Yeah I'm following Bevy closely, looks promising! I might have to try contributing.
- lewispollard 4y ago
  I've been using a library called RelEcs for Godot C#: Standalone version: https://github.com/Byteron/RelEcs https://github.com/Byteron/RelEcs Godot integrated version: https://github.com/Byteron/RelEcsGodot https://github.com/Byteron/RelEcsGodot It works fantastically well for me.
DeathArrow 4y ago
Just checked out Godot's website and it still doesn't support Vulkan,although support for Vulkan was in the working since 3 years ago. DirectX and Metal won't be supported at all. C# support, even if added a long time ago, is still subpar. I would like some focus into polishing and evolving the game engine. Unless you work on very simple games, something like Unity is far more usable.
- TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
  It's not like the engine will magically be better if it uses Vulkan. That's why the support is coming along slowly: the Vulkan renderer is completely separate from the others and uses different techniques.
- lewispollard 4y ago
  Godot 3.x will likely always be OpenGL for compatibility. Godot 4 has 2 Vulkan renderers implemented already (a clustered renderer for desktops, and a simpler renderer for mobile). C# support in godot 4 has been ported to .NET 6 CLR rather than mono and is in the process of being merged now.

173 points by larsiusprime 4y ago

jacooper 4y ago

Great!, I hope this won't turn Godot into an open core model in the long run.

hlship 4y ago
Read the FAQ; they are pretty clear that Godot stays MIT license as today. My read of all this is that they are intending to provide similar porting services as some of the others (who they mention and link to) BUT because they are core contributors to Godot as well, this yields the proper impression that they are here to stay whereas we don't know the plans of the other groups that incidentally provide Godot porting services. In addition, being able to check the "enterprise support available" box on any kind of evaluation matrix could be a very big deal to larger developers.
- hesdeadjim 4y ago
  Enterprise support is huge. When something is going wrong on platform X and you have a month before launch, you need access to engine experts with an SLA.

Sakos 4y ago

> This will be achieved by W4 providing commercial products and services offering such as enterprise support plans and the possibility to access markets that were previously unreached by Godot, such as console platforms. This is the most detail I could find on their site about what they're actually planning.

TulliusCicero 4y ago
A common complaint about Godot has been the lack of an official path to console ports, and the Godot team have asserted that it's not possible for Godot itself to directly support this, due to being open source and non-profit. Looks like this is the workaround.

d13 4y ago

What does this mean?

xyproto 4y ago
By reading the article I see that it means that a company has been started.
202206241203 4y ago
Monetisation phase starts.
georgeecollins 4y ago
It means that some of the key creators of Godot are starting a company to support it. Godot itself would be open source. But as more adopt it they can do more support services for profit. This could include: - An asset store. - A proprietary solution for consoles (which require some non-Open Source code) - Paid technical support or enhanced versions And there are probably other things I haven't thought of.

hesdeadjim 4y ago

By forming a company they can finally provide “official” (though guarded by NDA) console support for Godot. This is by far my biggest issue with the engine and why it’s a complete non-starter for any serious game development. It also means they could provide paid support when Bad Stuff happens with the engine. For a similar reason I have enterprise support with Unity, and it’s been worth it’s weight in gold.

bovermyer 4y ago
Wait... so PC-only game development isn't serious?
- no_wizard 4y ago
  For a Game Studio no, I don't think it is. For a Game Engine yes, it relegates you to an (albeit still quite large but inevitably an order of magnitude smaller) niche and hinders adoption significantly
- hesdeadjim 4y ago
  Picking a game engine that subtracts hundreds of millions of potential players from your game without huge engineering effort to support a single console? Yea, that's a problem. Thankfully, Godot is solving it!
  - codingcodingboy 4y ago
  - TillE 4y ago
    There are many successful game genres which are functionally PC-only, because you cannot reasonably play them with a gamepad. See Paradox grand strategy games, for example. Those "potential buyers" never existed.
    - sorry_outta_gas 4y ago
      I play some paradox games on xbox with no problem, they are included with gamepass now

jcronenberg 4y ago

A TL;DR from one of the founders on godot's subreddit: New company independent from Godot, funded by venture capital (so has enough money to build products until it can actually make money). This company will build products and propose services which are yet to be announced - there's a hint that one product will be console ports. This company will provide funding to the Godot project so more contributors can be hired, and will also donate its own employees' work time for significant contributions to Godot (we'll soon announce some). But as importantly, it will provide the level of commercial support that bigger studios need to be able to switch to Godot. https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/wk5ji6/hello_world_w4_games_formed_to_strengthen_godot/ijlgm04 https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/wk5ji6/hello_world_w...

throwgaway29 4y ago
> funded by venture capital (so has enough money to build products until it can actually make money) What a dumb move. > more contributors can be hired Game development is in the dictionary definition of the mythical man month. > But as importantly, it will provide the level of commercial support that bigger studios need to be able to switch to Godot. Nobody is going to do that. You know how Hacker News is really negative about stuff that turns out to be a huge success? There should be a name for the opposite, where a bunch of nerds get really excited about something that will definitely remain insignificant.
- slezyr 4y ago
  > > But as importantly, it will provide the level of commercial support that bigger studios need to be able to switch to Godot. > Nobody is going to do that. > You know how Hacker News is really negative about stuff that turns out to be a huge success? There should be a name for the opposite, where a bunch of nerds get really excited about something that will definitely remain insignificant. Let's call it trolling. I work with B2B software(software library) and... professional support sells well, and companies are ready to pay a lot for it. Many customers won't even buy the software without support.
- carlosdp 4y ago

moomin 4y ago

If I were then I’d be working on an asset store. But I’m sure they’ve already done the math on this.

georgeecollins 4y ago
If they don't, someone on HN really ought to focus on this! I've loved this engine for a while (and I have used Unity and Unreal in commercial products) but there needs to be infrastructure to support it.
f47il 4y ago
It's happening: https://twitter.com/reduzio/status/1557299634514673670 https://twitter.com/reduzio/status/1557299634514673670

gamblor956 4y ago

For all the talk about Godot on HN, it doesn't appear to have any actual uptake in the gamedev community... Does anyone know of any AA or successful indie games that were made with Godot?

lazlee 4y ago
Baba is You
- j_4 4y ago
  Not Godot.
  - lazlee 4y ago
    Oh. I was sure I saw a talk by it's creator saying he used Godot. Pardon me, if that was wrong
    - lazlee 4y ago
      Yup, just googled. My bad. Ill show myself out - no need to call security. :-)
j_4 4y ago
Cruelty Squad. Probably not the best poster child for engine capabilities on the tech and graphics side, haha. Unarguably successful though. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1388770/Cruelty_Squad/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1388770/Cruelty_Squad/
sempron64 4y ago
Wrought Flesh https://store.steampowered.com/app/1762010/Wrought_Flesh/ https://store.steampowered.com/app/1762010/Wrought_Flesh/
- abledon 4y ago
  great dev logs too

yrgulation 4y ago

As soon as godot offers better support for 3d and matches at least unity’s hdrp i am switching to it. Had enough of unity’s crappy asset store and “engine”.

k__ 4y ago
Does Godot have a better asset store?
- yrgulation 4y ago
  Rather than the scam / low quality filled unity asset store, having none is better. Edit: It may be an interesting idea to build one for godot tho.
  - DizzyDoo 4y ago
    "Having none is better"... but there are some incredibly useful assets on the Unity Asset store? Here are three off the top of my head that I've used for a while now and they're worth every penny: Shapes - https://acegikmo.com/shapes/docs/ https://acegikmo.com/shapes/docs/ Easy Save 3 - https://moodkie.com/easysave/ https://moodkie.com/easysave/ InControl - https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/input-management/incontrol-14695 https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/input-management... (but I've also heard Rewired is excellent.) Unity would be far poorer for missing them.
    - noidexe 4y ago
      In the case of Godot a lot of functionality is available out of the box. Biggest example is input management. You have an InputMap section where you define actions and can assign keys/buttons to it. Gamepad layout is automatically handled for thousands of controllers so that "right face button" is the same input event whether the user is using an xbox gamepad, a pro controller or generic. There is an official Asset Library but only for free, MIT licensed assets. There's nothing stopping someone from creating a paid one, though.

ouraf 4y ago

Anyone found info on how much seed capital they got? The company itself has been dormant for 10 months, so I'm curious to see how much they needed to make this a reality https://www.solocheck.ie/Irish-Company/W4-Games-Limited-705021 https://www.solocheck.ie/Irish-Company/W4-Games-Limited-7050...

j_4 4y ago

Well, to be perfectly frank I'm wholly negative about this. The corporate gobbledygook in the FAQ doesn't include anything to assuage my fears about the obvious conflict of interests for the core Godot developers. I'm a full time indie dev. I just started donating to Godot's Patreon after the recent Unity / IronSource kerfuffle and wanted to pick up the engine for my next title. I guess I'll be cancelling that subscription much sooner than I expected, and I don't know what I'll be doing now, tool wise.

Kyrio 4y ago
The interests of Godot as a free software project are protected by the Software Freedom Conservancy. Some of the original authors or maintainers forming a company doesn't affect that.
- j_4 4y ago
  I understand that there are failsafes in place to protect against the conflict of interests, but it doesn't mean the conflict of interests isn't there, otoh it's extremely blatant. I am almost certain that it will affect things. I trust the devs mean well, but the incentives here are directly aligned for things to get ugly at some point.
  - cyber_kinetist 4y ago
    Absolutely, since venture capital can potentially steer the current engine developers (with money) towards a direction that isn’t aligned to FOSS or indie game development. I hope that they can withstand any pressure from investors if it has potential to damage the integrity of the project. (They have already gotten donations/sponsors from some online casinos and shady blockchain/metaverse companies before, although I think it was with minimal strings attached.) Since Godot is MIT other devs can always fork the engine and start developing from there if this ever happens, but the expertise from the original devs would still be lost.
    - ehnto 4y ago

codingcodingboy 4y ago

mathnode 4y ago

That’s great to hear. Most commenters are focusing on the issue with console development. Godot themselves wrote about it in July: https://godotengine.org/article/godot-consoles-all-you-need-know https://godotengine.org/article/godot-consoles-all-you-need-... It’s a fickle beast indeed. But what many people gloss over is the fact the option is there! Make your full game now or just a PoC, happy with the knowledge there is already help available.

madrox 4y ago

I'm really excited to learn Godot. With the way Unity has changed, it increasingly feels like the right engine for hobby projects. I hope they avoid the missteps Unity made, but the approach they're taking here feels great to me.

thrillgore 4y ago

This is great news for Godot. I know this has been bandied about for a while but to have a proper SLA offering partner for Godot legitimatizes it as 4 approaches.

rychco 4y ago

Great news, I’m very excited for the future of Godot. Once Godot 4.0 reaches beta, I’ll hopefully have some time to play around with it for hobby projects.

nightski 4y ago

I think it's great because Godot is open source, but I really wish it was an ECS engine getting all of this attention.

johnnyanmac 4y ago
Bevy seems to be gaining momentum and it will probably keep growing as Rust gets more popular and used in game development. So it will be very, very slow. But I can see an indie darling being made in that engine within the next 5 years.
- nightski 4y ago
  Yeah I'm following Bevy closely, looks promising! I might have to try contributing.
lewispollard 4y ago
I've been using a library called RelEcs for Godot C#: Standalone version: https://github.com/Byteron/RelEcs https://github.com/Byteron/RelEcs Godot integrated version: https://github.com/Byteron/RelEcsGodot https://github.com/Byteron/RelEcsGodot It works fantastically well for me.

DeathArrow 4y ago

Just checked out Godot's website and it still doesn't support Vulkan,although support for Vulkan was in the working since 3 years ago. DirectX and Metal won't be supported at all. C# support, even if added a long time ago, is still subpar. I would like some focus into polishing and evolving the game engine. Unless you work on very simple games, something like Unity is far more usable.

TazeTSchnitzel 4y ago
It's not like the engine will magically be better if it uses Vulkan. That's why the support is coming along slowly: the Vulkan renderer is completely separate from the others and uses different techniques.
lewispollard 4y ago
Godot 3.x will likely always be OpenGL for compatibility. Godot 4 has 2 Vulkan renderers implemented already (a clustered renderer for desktops, and a simpler renderer for mobile). C# support in godot 4 has been ported to .NET 6 CLR rather than mono and is in the process of being merged now.