According to reports from VentureBeat, Amazon recently announced that it has made its Lumberyard game engine an open-source project, meaning the service will essentially be offered to users around the globe for free. As a result, the program has been rebranded as the Open 3D Engine.
The Linux Foundation will reportedly manage the project. An Open 3D Foundation will also be launched to create more collaborations between developers and the AAA game engine.
“We’ve seen that open source is probably one of the major engines for innovation,” said Chris Aniszczyk, the chief technology officer of the Linux Foundation. “Look at the Linux case. It started with one purpose. And people said, ‘I want to put it in a car. I want to put it in a phone, I want to be without any encumbrance around intellectual property concerns, no gatekeeping.’ When it comes to source code, it is freely available.”
It is being reported that the game engine is being supported by at least 20 companies as of July 12th. Some of the developers participating in the open-source project include Apocalypse Studios, Huawei, Niantic, and Adobe.
The Profit‘s Take:
Up until now, it has been a two-horse race between Unity and Unreal as the two major gaming engines used by developers. Thankfully, this engine already has a solid foundation (CryEngine) so it should be able to compete right away. I get why they are making it open source because, now, people can freely use and contribute to the engine whereas Unity and Unreal are closed-off products. It makes sense that a major developer like Niantic would get involved with this because they can have an impact on the engine itself and not just be pigeonholed into the role of a customer. People that utilize this engine will be both a user and a contributor, and that’s at least different from Unity or Unreal Engine.
(All information was provided by VentureBeat and Engadget)
0 comments on “Amazon Making Lumberyard Game Engine Open Source”