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W4 Games raises $15M to drive video game development with Godot Engine
- anonylizard 3y agoIs this some VC's pouncing on Unity's missteps? How serious was the damage to Unity's credibility after the installation fee disaster? How big is the moat for unity?
- truegoric 3y agoIt kinda does sound like EEE. „W4 Games will strengthen our role within the Godot ecosystem by supporting its open-source development and continuing to build products and services to facilitate Godot’s expansion, such as W4 Consoles (an approved middleware console porting solution for Godot games) and W4 Cloud (multi-tenant service to support millions of users).”
- arlcode 3y agoGetting game engines in console and providing support for developers is certainly a business. I've met some people who brought their custom (more simple ) engines/games to consoles and there is money in providing a ready made solution which, by the nature of it, cannot be open source or permissive. The main question is it the "10x in 3 years" kind of business or the "steady stream of a small medim profit" variety.
- SXX 3y agoIt's not EEE because W4 Games actually founded by some of top Godot contributors who continue to work on FOSS version as well. There just some things you can't have open source like console platform support code.
- arjonagelhout 3y agoUnity still has a more mature product compared to Godot, so for many projects it won’t be feasible to switch to Godot. Unity is easier to use, has more fully featured and higher quality rendering pipelines, more integrations with other software, a larger asset store and the ability to quickly add advertisements to a game using Unity Ads. (etcetera) That said, we stopped using Unity because of the term changes and are now focusing on building a custom game engine, but our use case is way different than game studios. In game studios it’s a numbers game. e.g. How much does it cost to retrain our staff to switch to a different engine versus the benefits. From what I can see, Unity has not yet made its product so unattractive that it won’t be used for future productions.
- pjmlp 3y agoIt is business as usual for big studios, maybe a couple of indies decided to port their games to GDScript or do not care about the platforms where C#/Godot isn't available.
- broken_clock 3y agoGodot currently doesn't even have good support for things like in-app purchases for iOS/Android. No one is willing to work on stuff like that for free/open-source fun. I think the big moat is that for studios, games are so risky to make, that there's no reason to take on tech risk by possibly running into issues like this. You know Unity will work for basically any non AAA game you want to make. Hopefully this $15m closes that gap.
- nightowl_games 3y agoGoogle Play IAP: https://github.com/godotengine/godot-google-play-billing https://github.com/godotengine/godot-google-play-billing iOS IAP: https://github.com/godotengine/godot-ios-plugins https://github.com/godotengine/godot-ios-plugins
- username256 3y agoThe iOS one is unmaintained and has been for a while (it still doesn't officially support Godot 4.x). Supposedly it should be maintained again by EOY but we've yet to see any progress on it.
- nightowl_games 3y agoMaintaining this yourself is trivial. We sell IAPS on Android, iOS, Steam & XSolla in the Godot game engine. Android and iOS are the easiest. This is really, really minor stuff we're talking about here.
- broken_clock 3y agoMaybe you can write a blog post or a reddit thread? There were a bunch of people asking about it on Discord for Godot 4, and some confused reddit threads offering to pay people for a tutorial: https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/11vxeo7/can_i_please_pay_someone_to_show_me_how_they_got/ https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/11vxeo7/can_i_please... https://old.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/13ka6qc/will_pay_to_have_someone_walk_through_iap_in_app/ https://old.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/13ka6qc/will_pay_to_...
- npinsker 3y agoTheir moat is massive for mobile apps. For PC + console, I think their clock is ticking. Godot has many disadvantages (fewer features, large performance problems, asset store, poor UI) but they'll eventually fix them and perhaps become the dominant engine. The only question is how much further ahead Unity will be.
- nightowl_games 3y agoThe moat is massive for console games, mobile games on Godot work great. We have 2 high quality Godot based mobile games in production on iOS/google play/steam right now. Unity has very few advantages over Godot on mobile.
- marsven_422 3y ago[dead]
- arlcode 3y ago1. Congratulations to them. Godot is some great piece of open source software and everything that strengthens it is beneficial to the market segment as a whole. 2. Given the list and impact of 3rd party contributors and the absence of a CLA I think there is little ability for them to change the licensee in the future to something proprietary (nor is there any indication that the current key people at W4/Godot would want to do something like this) 3. That said, how do the venture capital companies hope that W4 makes them back their investment and a healthy profit on top. To be crystal clear, there is nothing wrong with that but I would like have it out in the open before. "Console support" seems a little bit thin although I'm ready to admit that I may not know enough about the industry. If anyone could provide some additional information I'd be very thankful. Edit: personally I prefer the open stewardship model like Blender or the Linux foundation where it is clear that Major financial contributors expect to get software for their own businesses out of it and support an open project in order to share costs and have a say in the direction it takes.
- nicoburns 3y agoGodot seems to be MIT licensed. So anyone is free to create a proprietary fork if they want to. I can’t imagine this will be a problem as I suspect that the community is large enough that development of the OSS version would continue anyway, but the lack of CLA doesn’t seem relevant here.
- arlcode 3y agoYeah that's true.
- Buttons840 3y ago> "Console support" seems a little bit thin Look at it this way: There's a good chance that more console games will be published using Godot than any other engine.
- 255kb 3y agoReading the FAQ it seems they are not affiliated with Godot, nor control any of it aspects. https://w4games.com/faq/ https://w4games.com/faq/ It seems they plan (https://w4games.com/products/ https://w4games.com/products/) to make money by creating a BaaS/SaaS platform and selling tools to make the Godot games easier to port to consoles.
- jayceedenton 3y agoI don't know anything about game engines, but always assumed that Godot was limited to simpler games. A lot of people seem to be pushing for Godot to replace Unity after the recent licensing shambles. Is it really possible to build games line Cities Skylines, Subnautica, Rust, Outer Wilds, KSP, Ori... in Godot? Is this more of a long term ambition at this point, or is it possible for this kind of game to be built in Godot today?
- rowanG077 3y agoFrom a cursory search it seems there are large games build in Godot. Sonic Colors: Ultimate seems to be an example.
- username256 3y agoIt's the only example so far (if we consider this poor remake a "large" game). And the team behind (Blind Squirrel) didn't use Godot as-is, they had to rewrite most of the core graphics area. It will be a while until we see AA / AAA games in Godot, it's missing too much right now to be viable in the 3D space (again, for AA/AAA. For indies, sure, why not). One day, certainly, I hope so, but not today nor tomorrow.
- rowanG077 3y agoI think no large games use an engine as-is, they will always extend and change it in some ways to make it fit their game. Besides the question was not about AA/AAA games. Unity also did not fill that segment. The question was whether Godot will be able to fill the space Unity has. And I don't think it can currently. But with more development it definitely could. The last time I used unity I was very appalled by how bad it actually was, I admit this is something like 5 years ago but I doubt it has changed.
- Kelteseth 3y agoTo replace Unity? Yes, and if there is something missing, you just clone Godot and fix it yourself. I can compile the whole engine in 2 minutes. There are currently some limitations for AAA games in the rendering pipeline, see Clay John's nice talk about this, from the last Godot con[1]. For example, at the company I work for we use Godot 4 to recreate Google Earth with OSM data :) [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW3IFMvDTCY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW3IFMvDTCY
- omneity 3y agoI hope for Godot to remain true to itself over time. Unity was the indie upstart at one point, just like Godot is now. Penpot/Figma story all over ... I hope not.
- CodeSgt 3y agoUnity was never FOSS. Nor was Figma, to my knowledge
- 255kb 3y agoI find the title rather confusing, as, after reading their FAQ (https://w4games.com/faq/ https://w4games.com/faq/) it is clear that they don't own Godot. They are building a traditional BaaS for gaming, specifically targeted at Godot developers (and they may contribute to Godot development, which doesn't make a real difference rearding ownership).
- Macha 3y agoThe W4 founders are the project founders and many of the top contributors to Godot Engine. Godot has always done what for me is the right thing for the continued open source nature of the project, including limiting any organisation's members on the leadership committee, assigning trademark rights to a foundation and not naming their company Godot Engine, LLC (unlike, say, Gitea). So structurally it's the safest open source project against a future source available pivot, but there are some concerns such as the separation of the Godot foundation from it's parent organisation or a "de facto control" fork. I think on the other hand, they do have a more clear selling point vs do it yourself on the open source projects. For IP reasons, console manufacturers don't permit the console integration part to be open source, so that's the bit that W4 has that the open source project can never compete with (though other companies building on the open source project could of course build their own).
- 255kb 3y agoThank you for the precision. I guess the important part is how Godot is currently organized and remains independent.
- dazaidesu 3y agoThey donate a lot of code back to the engine, w4 has already contributed an entire directx renderer to the engine that they needed to build out for their console porting efforts anyway.
- famahar 3y agoHoping for Godot to be the Blender of game development engines one day.
- _jplc 3y agoGreat, now Godot has a time bomb as well.
- wg0 3y ago"Investors"
- definitelyhuman 3y agoGreat to see more support for Godot! The lead VC and the company pledges bode well for keeping the bulk of the new tech open I think. Biggest red flag is the lack of anyone with games pedigree. If the goal is to crack the duopoly with a great FOSS engine supported by paid BaaS + enterprise support plans, you’re going to need strong connections, partners, and knowledge of the real product requirements. First sales will be pretty challenging, but if they can get traction and ship great games there’s certainly an opportunity
- wg0 3y agoI'm not affiliated with the channel and they probably don't even know I'm posting here but this[0] is a great entry point into Godot Engine although I think the instruction style leads for it to be more general and applicable to other engines or what a game engine actually facilitates. Great stuff. [0]. https://youtu.be/nAh_Kx5Zh5Q https://youtu.be/nAh_Kx5Zh5Q
- johnwoods 3y agoCongratulations to the Godot team! I have used Godot a lot in the past and can't wait to replace my Unity junk.
- dgellow 3y agoCongratulations, that’s a pretty impressive feat. It’s fantastic to see how fast things are developing. I may be wrong but the current momentum to develop viable alternatives to the big proprietary engines feels real and not just based on hype. We may reach a point in a few years where Blender + Godot are basically the go-to option for small to medium size studio, which is crazy to think about given the state of game dev just 10-15 years ago. At the same time I find it hard to not feel cynical when I see that much money invested by a VC firm into an open source project. I wish the best to the Godot team, so far they have a been pretty good at leading the project.
- TheMagicHorsey 3y agoGodot is awesome, but I wish that when people start ambitious new projects that are meant to last for decades they’d choose a language that has more modern conveniences than C++. The compile times suck. The language is such a complicated mess you have to basically ban whole parts of the language from being used in the project to make development palatable. I would even prefer C to C++. I know Rust is probably a hard sell though.
- dualogy 3y agoI'm guessing once Zig is at 1.x (breaking changes before then), "real contenders" for C++ engines might shape up to on-par within the first few years of that point. (I mean the subset of such projects without prior or subsequent abandonment.) > I would even prefer C to C++ Assuming you want to game-dev not engine-dev, the above is quite the doable rule for your "C++" codebase under your own oversight and maintenance even though including some C++ engine and calling its APIs, right? (Apart from the fact that some-not-all of them expose some capi `.h`s from what I've seen.) Most of them might (assuming here I know) anyway tend toward the lean-and-mean none-too-OOP way of doing things, data-oriented designs etc. My (newbie) C++ is C (structs + funcs) but with struct methods and occasional light inheritance, aka Go-like (methods and embeds). The std::string too seems alright-enough right now (vs. a hand-rolled slice-of-T-being-uint8_t struct-making macro) as long as there's no mass string handlings going on, in which case it'll have to be evaluated more seriously.
- bbkane 3y agoI think Godot started before Rust took off, so they didn't have better alternatives then. The jury is still out on whether other C++ competition has any staying power, and even Rust still has some deficiencies compared to C++
- numlock86 3y agoGodot is great. I am afraid it's still a very long way before they become for game development what Blender is for 3D modelling these days. If it will even happen at all. So any improvement and funding is more than welcome.
- capableweb 3y ago> I am afraid it's still a very long way before they become for game development what Blender is for 3D modelling these days Makes sense. Blender is coming up to being 30 years old soon, and it still isn't heavily embedded into the mainstream pipelines, but it's getting closer every day. By contrast, Godot is about 10 years old, but still has eaten some of Unity's pie. Cannot wait to see how Godot is in about 20 years, surely they will have surpassed Unity at that point :)
- Thaxll 3y agoGodot has not eaten anything significant from Unity, like nothing at all.
- capableweb 3y agoYes, it has. But game engine adoption takes time, it's not immediately clear that it is eating some of Unity's lunch, as games have to be developed, launched and appreciated before it's obvious for the average (developer) person. Look at some of the games that made Unity popular in the first place, and the people/companies that made them. Lots of them are moving to Godot now, but again, it'll take time before those people/companies launch the games.
- Thaxll 3y agohttps://steamdb.info/tech/ https://steamdb.info/tech/ how many years do you think it's going to take? Godot is behind engine I don't even heard of.
- 3y ago
- Andrex 3y agoGodot Blender OpenToonz GIMP I hope all these major open source projects reach their potential. Blender is already basically there, and I'm expecting the rest to catch up eventually. Even GIMP -- it really just needs some TLC and actual funding and it could easily start on the notoriety/attention path Godot's been on for a few years now.
- fbdab103 3y agoGIMP seems actively hostile to giving people what they want: a Photoshop clone. Even projects which would revamp the interface to be more Photoshop like were given the cold shoulder. At this point I have fully switched to Krita. I am not a real artist and am only ever making little doodles for my apps, but the developers seem more in tune with what users need.
- pg5 3y agoMy issue with Godot is that I am bad at art. With Unity, I could affordably get pretty much ready to go assets and build a game, but with Godot, I don't know of any equivalent marketplaces.
- NekkoDroid 3y agoIIRC the standard Unity Assets store license does allow using assets in other engines. And maybe you also wanna check out KenneyNL if you are looking for open assets for various small stuff.