Looks like game developer Kefir may have future titles built using the free and open source Godot Engine, as they've given them a grant of 120 thousand dollars (USD).
Announcing in an official Godot Engine news post, Kefir who created titles including Last Day on Earth, Grim Soul and Frostborn are currently prototyping with Godot:
Many thanks to the Godot team for their incredible contribution to game development. It's a great honor for us to provide a little help in this grand endeavor. And we are always ready to support powerful, cool, and unusual games and teams, regardless of their platform, tools, and stage of development.
Alyosha Stalin, Chief Business Development Officer, Kefir
Really amazing to see the improvements and backing for Godot Engine across the last year.
Since Godot Engine is not run for profit (like Unity, Unreal, Game Maker and others are) any funding given to them is handled by the Software Freedom Conservancy. This ensures all funds are handled properly, and that it all goes towards furthering development on it. All work done, including when paying contributors is under the MIT license.
Find out more about Godot Engine here. See some of what's made with Godot on their showcase. You can also follow our Godot Engine tag for any Linux related games and news.
Hopefully more developers will continue picking up Godot Engine!
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
gradyvuckovic Feb 10, 2021
There's a reason why I think Godot is going to be 'the next Blender': It's target audience.
Godot's target audience is largely speaking, developers, who would be using Godot to create commercial products.
That means two things:
A) Godot's users can contribute to Godot.
Godot's biggest users, game development studios, will be capable of contributing code to Godot to improve it. Adding features, improving tools, etc. As they contribute such things, those contributions are maintained by Godot's core developers, lifting responsibility off the studio. They get long term benefits of using an engine that's almost perfect for their needs, and can just contribute anything extra they need on top of that.
B) Godot's users are making products of value.
Which means they are well placed to support Godot back in return with financial contributions. Imagine if a large AAA game studio made a game with Godot that produced hundreds of millions of dollars worth of profit? Throwing a few hundred thousand back to Godot would be pocket change for them, cheaper than hiring an entire dev team to work on an internal game engine for sure. Godot gets better and the studio can continue making great revenue off games and don't have to worry about licensing fees.
It will still take years to happen but I believe it's already started.
Linux gaming will strongly benefit from this, because unlike other games engines that do support Linux, Godot's Linux support is absolutely first class and always on par with it's Windows support.
Last edited by gradyvuckovic on 10 February 2021 at 3:07 pm UTC
Kimyrielle Feb 10, 2021
Quoting: gradyvuckovicImagine if a large AAA game studio made a game with Godot that produced hundreds of millions of dollars worth of profit? Throwing a few hundred thousand back to Godot would be pocket change for them, cheaper than hiring an entire dev team to work on an internal game engine for sure. Godot gets better and the studio can continue making great revenue off games and don't have to worry about licensing fees.
I can't see AAA studios switching to Godot anytime soon, but what you described might just as well happen with smaller and medium sized studios, looking for a hassle-free engine with a hassle-free licence without having to write it from scratch, which they won't have the capacity to do anyway.
120k is quite a game-changer for Godot. No idea if they already have plans for the money, but it should be enough to implement a few serious new features to make a splash with, and draw some more devs into using the engine. Let's hope there will be more such donations. :)
Quoting: gradyvuckovicIt will still take years to happen but I believe it's already started.I agree 100%. Blender was “never” going to challenge the likes of Maya for ages until, really quite suddenly on the great scale of things, it became almost the default choice. It's certainly respected as an equal peer to the commercial offerings, at least. I can absolutely envisage the same thing happening with Godot.
(Incidentally, with just a few additional features - some of which are already here - I can also imagine the same for GIMP. It's taking longer because development on that project is slower, but Blender shows that it's possible.)
Quoting: DuncYeah, I feel like if just a couple of outfits with deep pockets took an interest and dropped a solid developer in to push forward key issues, GIMP would suddenly be a contendah.Quoting: gradyvuckovicIt will still take years to happen but I believe it's already started.I agree 100%. Blender was “never” going to challenge the likes of Maya for ages until, really quite suddenly on the great scale of things, it became almost the default choice. It's certainly respected as an equal peer to the commercial offerings, at least. I can absolutely envisage the same thing happening with Godot.
(Incidentally, with just a few additional features - some of which are already here - I can also imagine the same for GIMP. It's taking longer because development on that project is slower, but Blender shows that it's possible.)
Godot already feels like it's on the trajectory--it's been moving fast and everyone seems to have really good things to say about it.
Last edited by Purple Library Guy on 11 February 2021 at 12:40 am UTC
Quoting: gradyvuckovicThere's a reason why I think Godot is going to be 'the next Blender': It's target audience.
I fully agree! If I remember correctly, Juan Linietsky also got most of his advice on how to open source and run the project from email(s) sent between him and Ton Roosendaal.
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