[HN Gopher] W4 Games raises $8.5M to support Godot Engine growth
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W4 Games raises $8.5M to support Godot Engine growth
Author : mroche
Score : 309 points
Date : 2022-09-13 17:46 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (w4games.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (w4games.com)
| danjoredd wrote:
| Nice! I don't think W4 has created any games though. To get some
| REAL traction, Godot needs some full well-known games published.
| Basically, we need a game to do to Godot, what Undertale and
| Nuclear Throne did to GameMaker.
|
| We have Wrought Flesh by Miziziziz, but other than that I can't
| think of a single game actually produced by Godot. I know it is
| capable of it, but we need a "killer app" to make it really blow
| up.
| zibby8 wrote:
| GameMaker filled a very specific niche by targeting indie devs
| with little-to-no coding experience and giving them enough
| support to make a game (similar to Flash). Maddy Thorsen used
| GameMaker for Jumper all the way back in 2004, which was really
| an amazing game that has similar game play elements to her
| phenomenal game Celeste.
|
| I'm not sure exactly what Godot's niche is, making it harder
| for it to have breakout hits.
| jszymborski wrote:
| Cruelty Squad[0] really demonstrated to me what incredible
| things can be done with Godot, but I think the game is to...
| how to say this... out there? It has an _extremely_ stylised
| aesthetic. I have a hard time thinking of any game like it.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruelty_Squad
| nightowl_games wrote:
| Frayhem [1] is an awesome game using Godot with Nim.
|
| Rocket Bot Royale [2] is a game I worked on using Godot. We
| released it on lots of platforms: Google Play, iOS, mac app
| store, pc/mac/linux on steam, and several HTML game sites. It
| has cross platform multiplayer with custom netcode written in
| c++, and pretty advanced SDF based terrain destruction. I
| think it's pretty good.
|
| We are currently making a new game using Godot which I'm
| excited about.
|
| https://rocketbotroyale.winterpixel.io/
|
| https://frayhem.com/en/
| jszymborski wrote:
| Played a few minutes of Rocket Bot Royale and it is pretty
| fun! I'm so happy that since the demise of Flash, games in
| the browser have only gotten better.
| nightowl_games wrote:
| I'm happy to hear that.
|
| As a game developer, the state of game development is
| really exciting from a technological point of view. From
| a business point of view, it is very hard to compete, the
| market is very saturated. We are hoping to carve out a
| niche of high quality multiplayer games on the web.
| tomcam wrote:
| What was your process to getting it on other platforms that
| Godot does not currently support?
| nightowl_games wrote:
| All of those platforms are supported by Godot. Steam is
| supported through a developed and advanced module. We
| have a very small amount of custom platform specific code
| for iOS and Android.
|
| Consoles on Godot are the hard part and thats what W4 is
| going to offer. I think Switch would be easy as it
| supports OpenGLES. Xbox and playstation would be harder,
| but I havent looked into it.
| tomcam wrote:
| Thanks so much for the inside info
| danjoredd wrote:
| Yeah, its pretty out there. I like it though, because besides
| the awful aesthetics, the attitude feels very "punk" and even
| a little countercultural. Its not for everyone and I can't
| blindly recommend it, but I like it for those reasons.
| Operyl wrote:
| Sonic Colors Ultimate was made with Godot, if I recall
| correctly. It's not "huge" in the sense of a major AAA title,
| but it's still a big franchise.
| Toadtoad wrote:
| Unfortunately, at no fault of Godot itself, Sonic Colors
| Ultimate isn't really a great title to advertise Godot, due
| to the increased issues on this version of the game.[0]
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonic_Colors#Reception_2
| Operyl wrote:
| That's unfortunate, I guess it makes sense that Godot was
| used then. Tight budget, and it shows :(.
| an_opabinia wrote:
| It's incredible really that these guys are talking about
| using Godot on consoles when it is in such bad shape.
|
| Even if it's a bait and switch, and they spend 100% of
| the funds on just like, making the engine better, $8m
| isn't going to get you to 1/20th of Unity or Unreal. It
| is an insurmountable niche.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| I'd argue that Godot _already_ has a better experience
| for 2d dev than Unity and Unreal
| TillE wrote:
| Pretty much anything is better for 2D than Unreal Engine.
| But yeah, Godot does a better job with 2D than Unity, and
| it's much simpler to get started with.
|
| I'd argue the only significant thing it's lacking, an
| actual practical concern for indie game development, is a
| good asset store. Saying Godot is useless because it will
| never have feature parity with UE5 is, of course,
| extremely silly and not a practical concern for most
| games.
| danjoredd wrote:
| I disagree. I find that it is delightful to develop for,
| especially for 2d games. Miziziziz made a full-3d game in
| Godot, and did a good job with it. There were a few
| glitches he caught post-release, but those were not
| because of the engine.
| chrisallenlane wrote:
| > $8m isn't going to get you to 1/20th of Unity or Unreal
|
| The size and complexity of these engines can be a
| disadvantage, because not every game needs the features
| they provide. For some use-cases, it can be easier to
| work with a simpler engine with fewer abstractions, a
| smaller API, and a shorter learning-curve.
| prox wrote:
| I think in the future "summer projects" like Blender did in the
| beginning was pretty good. So have a few veteran leads make a
| game with some of the best talents. They could pick a theme
| (say a minecraft clone, or a FPS) and slowly up the difficulty
| and technical feats required (which in turn will drive
| development)
| amitmathew wrote:
| Agreed! I don't think there's anything really standing in the
| way of building high-quality games with Godot. As Godot
| continues to mature and with the right tools and support for
| the indie community, it's just a matter of time before there's
| a breakout hit built with it.
|
| Our company is building some open source game templates that
| will hopefully spark some cool creations with Godot 4. So far
| we have templates for a Streets of Rage-type beat-em-up game, a
| tower defense-style game, and something similar to Binding of
| Isaac. We're also including some high-quality art assets to go
| with the templates. We're still a few weeks away from
| launching, but I hope to post our work on HN when they're
| ready.
| tomcam wrote:
| That is a ton of work, thank you. What is your motivation for
| making the templates open source?
| amitmathew wrote:
| That's a good question and to be honest, we're still
| figuring it out. Making our templates open source have the
| benefits of allowing the broader community to contribute,
| helps make Godot more accessible, and seems to more in the
| spirit of Godot. Of course we're a business and we're
| trying to build something sustainable, but right now we're
| betting on Godot and its community and we think elevating
| Godot will help us in the long run. Of course, maybe this a
| terrible idea, but let's find out! Part of the reason I
| started the company was to try out some off-the-wall ideas.
| tomcam wrote:
| I think it's a win-win because while the templates are a
| wonderful contribution, most of your work will be in the
| game play, set, and mechanics. You get to help other
| people along without a significant impact on your own
| bottom line, I think.
| danjoredd wrote:
| Looking forward to seeing them!
| baud147258 wrote:
| I though the Deponia series of adventure games was made with
| Godot, but it seems it was only used for a port of the first
| game. Instead Deponia used a proprietary engine called
| Visionaire studio.
| brundolf wrote:
| I've started using Godot (4.0-alpha) for some hobby game dev
| recently. In the past I've done a fair amount with Unity and
| touched Unreal once or twice. Thoughts so far:
|
| Godot is far from perfect. It's definitely more sparse than the
| others in terms of features. I've encountered some bugs (nothing
| show-stopping, and it's tough to say how much of that is just
| from using the alpha version, but it has impacted my flow). There
| are unfortunate quirks; for example, saving scripts always saves
| the whole scene, and saving large scenes can pause the editor for
| multiple seconds, which is a particularly annoying combination.
| The programming model is heavily OOP. The custom scripting
| language, GDScript, is a blessing and a curse; its tight
| integration with the engine comes at the cost of subpar tooling
| (and of course, just learning a new language with new quirks).
|
| _But._
|
| Godot has the distinct feeling of being _cohesive_. It feels like
| it was designed by one person, who knows what it takes to make
| games, and set out with a holistic vision. Everything you might
| need to do has an answer, or at least a story. You don 't get
| confusing mixed signals from different parts of the interface or
| from the docs; there's one, intentionally-designed way to do each
| thing. GDScript has its quirks, but it also has very elegant
| built-ins for doing engine-specific stuff that would be super
| clunky in a general-purpose language. Using Godot almost has the
| feeling of using (good) Apple software; somebody anticipated your
| needs, and made sure they'd be met. Maybe not in the exact way
| you would have picked, but in a way that will work, and will fit
| in with everything else.
|
| That, combined with it being fully open-source, makes it feel
| like it has good _bones_. Especially in contrast with Unity -
| which felt like a growing pile of corpses being tossed on top of
| each other with each release - it 's been so refreshing that it's
| singlehandedly gotten me back into hobby game dev. I don't feel
| like I'm wasting my time learning one half-baked API that's going
| to be replaced with another half-baked API six months from now.
| For every annoyance or missing feature in Godot, I have faith
| that things will continue to improve - because they're built on a
| solid foundation - or that I could at least build it myself if I
| really needed to.
|
| I believe in the vision and the future of this piece of software.
| And that makes it feel worthwhile to invest the time learning all
| its quirks.
| glanzwulf wrote:
| What kind of features are you missing from Godot vs other
| engines?
| brundolf wrote:
| A recent one I looked for was a terrain system. There just...
| isn't one yet. It's totally possible they could add one some
| day, but I assume other things have just been higher-priority
| so far for their limited dev time (which isn't unreasonable)
|
| I did find a third-party plugin that looks pretty high-
| quality, but it hasn't been ported to 4.0 yet
| TillE wrote:
| Bear in mind that almost nobody has really started porting
| anything to Godot 4, because it's still in alpha and stuff
| isn't quite nailed down yet. It makes sense to wait until
| the first beta, which is probably a few weeks off.
| brundolf wrote:
| Sure, makes sense. But the question was which features
| are missing from the engine itself, and that one came to
| mind (Unreal and Unity both have built-in terrain
| systems, even though Unity's is crap). Not making
| demands, just observing/relaying
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| So it's like a PostgreSQL of game engines, as I heard similar
| praises of it.
| Thaxll wrote:
| Except no one use it for any serious games. Godot is praised
| there and there on HN but in the real world of making games
| most people don't know about it and certainly won't use it.
| atm it's good a indie engine.
|
| Edit: the downvote party is there, where are the game built
| with godot again?
| erik wrote:
| Sonic Colors: Ultimate is the highest profile title to
| date. (Though Godot is only used as an interface layer, the
| gameplay isn't built in the engine.)
|
| Cruelty Squad and Luck Be a Landlord are both respectable
| indie successes.
|
| There are probably some successful mobile titles. And it's
| also used in slot machines and gambling games.
| silent_cal wrote:
| Wow, that's quite a haul
| jdoliner wrote:
| I'm incredibly excited to see Godot getting an organization like
| this behind it. Godot is an amazing tool. It's cliched to
| complain about names on hn, but every time I see W4 Games I think
| it's a company to help me cheat on my taxes.
| finder83 wrote:
| It didn't click for me before until I read it from someone
| else, but W4 seems to stand for "Waiting For" (Godot). Actually
| a rather creative name in my opinion. Apologies if you already
| knew that.
| jdoliner wrote:
| I did not know that! That's great actually
| thrillgore wrote:
| That only now clicked. And its based in Ireland.
| hgs3 wrote:
| Just a thought I had: Godot is MIT and the project never had a
| contributor license agreement. W4 doesn't "own" the copyright
| anymore than anyone else. An investor with enough capital could
| start their own W4 competitor, or even a closed source
| competitor, based on Godot at any time.
| [deleted]
| dljsjr wrote:
| W4 Games's CEO Juan Linietsky is the creator and lead dev of
| Godot. Their primary mission, from my understanding, is providing
| the non-open-source tooling and support that's needed to make it
| feasible to use Godot as an environment for developing console
| games. The SDK's and their APIs cannot be included in the FOSS
| Godot code directly.
|
| Juan shared a blog post about the state of console support in
| Godot shortly before the launch of W4 that gives some more
| insight: https://godotengine.org/article/godot-consoles-all-you-
| need-...
|
| Often time folks say that what Godot is missing is a "killer app"
| that shows that the platform is viable. I think that this could
| potentially go a long way towards that.
| brundolf wrote:
| I'm not sure it counts as a "killer app" since Unity and Unreal
| both have this feature already, but it's definitely another
| exciting step towards parity
| dljsjr wrote:
| By "killer app" I meant a really amazing game made with the
| engine that makes people stand up and say "oh hey Godot is
| legit".
|
| Being a viable console target will attract more creators and
| increase the chances of that happening. As laid out in the
| blog post from my original comment, while Steam is a hotbed
| for indie games most of them toil in obscurity. Most of the
| money in indie games is on consoles now.
| doomlaser wrote:
| Godot has already produced at least one unconventional
| indie darling hit that I know of, _Cruelty Squad_ for PC:
| https://store.steampowered.com/app/1388770/Cruelty_Squad/
| bbkane wrote:
| I think the largely open source nature of the Godot ecosystem
| is already the "killer app" and I hope parity in matters such
| as this expose that
| klodolph wrote:
| Unity has also gotten a bit intimidating to newcomers these
| days.
| ygjb wrote:
| It's also intimidating to people who have been using it
| for a long time as well.
|
| The proliferation of new features some of which compete
| with each other, and the lack of focus and polish on some
| of those features make it frustrating to stay current.
|
| That coupled with some questionable business partners and
| tone deaf comments by their leadership team has certainly
| piqued my interest in other platforms.
| ThePadawan wrote:
| I'm (positively) amazed at the number of open PRs on Godot's
| Github [0].
|
| I'm used to those sorts of numbers for open issues without
| ongoing fixes - but the number of issues is actually only 5x the
| number of PRs.
|
| That seems _insanely_ productive for an open source effort.
|
| [0] https://github.com/godotengine/godot/pulls
| capableweb wrote:
| I'm super happy Godot is receiving so much attention, both in
| contributions and issue creation.
|
| But, how is having PRs open since 2019 a positive indication,
| and a productive one at that? Seems hugely unproductive to
| never close a PR unless the author do so (apparently? I don't
| know the dev process too closely).
|
| Most be very hard to navigate so many PRs, and surely most of
| them must be unmergable after some months due to conflicts.
| sl3dge78 wrote:
| I think this is mostly because the core team has been working
| on 4.0 for a couple of years now so I would imagine that PRs
| get overlooked. It's a popular project and there's not a lot
| of people on the team so yeah it builds up.
|
| I have PR open since 2020 (small change for a bit of qol)
| still hasn't been merged and I believe that there will be
| major conflicts now.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I'm afraid this will be an unpopular opinion with how beloved
| Godot is... but this is how Unity ended up where they are.
|
| Unity launched with a very similar mission to Godot, very similar
| energy of busting up big game engine: then the funding came in.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Unity started development for years as an open source project?
| hgs3 wrote:
| It's not about how you start, it's about how you end up. Only
| time will tell.
| _manifold wrote:
| The key difference is that Unity was a commercial venture from
| the start and Godot is a FOSS project.
|
| That's not to say FOSS development doesn't have its own
| challenges and potential issues, but I don't think it's fair to
| say they are resigned to follow in Unity's footsteps simply
| because they are now receiving funding.
|
| By example, Blender is receiving a not-insignificant amount of
| funding from a variety of sources and they are doing better
| than ever.
| homarp wrote:
| godot started as a in-house engine, so commercial venture.
| (see https://godotengine.org/article/first-public-release ).
|
| Just like Blender started as in-house tools (
| https://www.blender.org/about/history/ )
| larsiusprime wrote:
| The relevant point is that Godot and Blender are both open
| source now, and Unity remains closed source.
| homarp wrote:
| Original post said "To date, Godot follows the Blender
| story, not the Unity story" to which _manifold replied
| "The key difference is that Unity was a commercial
| venture from the start and Godot is a FOSS project."
|
| My point was to point out that both Blender and Godot
| were commercial venture first and went FOSS. They did not
| start as FOSS ventures.
|
| That Unity is not OpenSource yet is not really relevant
| to what I was trying to explain.
| tmpz22 wrote:
| Well there's more hindsight for them to draw on and learn from
| the mistakes of the past. Im sure there were for Unity too, but
| its more immediate in this situation I think.
|
| You're probably right though.
| Macha wrote:
| The concern with something like this is that chucking the
| early adopters under the bus once they were established is
| unlikely to be viewed as a mistake given it likely didn't
| affect the investors or owners
| syntheweave wrote:
| To date, Godot follows the Blender story, not the Unity story:
| built originally as a proprietary tool, later open-sourced, but
| in a state where few could seriously use it. Then after years
| and years of gradually built momentum, you start to see
| industry backers appear.
|
| Unity's story was always "plucky startup goes big". They never
| dogfooded an actual game in-house, they kept the source closed,
| broke everything as they went along, never fixed longstanding
| bugs. All the early goodwill was simply based on the fact that
| the IDE made the first 80% of a game easy to reach - the part
| where you have some collision logic wired up to input, things
| interact, assets appear, it runs on device. Actually finishing
| complex, featureful games in Unity has always been a dark art.
| BoorishBears wrote:
| I feel like this is being insanely harsh by leveraging
| hindsight, so harsh you're actually ignoring reality at
| points.
|
| Like Unity was originally born from the idea the two co-
| founders would build a game studio that would license their
| tech. And they did in fact release a game:
| https://www.macworld.com/article/174909/gooball.html
|
| They were 100% that plucky startup (I mean the team started
| when two people met in an apartment off a forum and merged
| their codebases...) and before they started leveraging all of
| their funding to buy up middleware after middleware, they
| were actually pretty good about stability and quality.
|
| They literally built their initial success on the quality of
| their editor) -
|
| Godot also suffers from the exact same 80/20 problem Unity
| does (W4 Games is literally betting the farm on
| commercializing part that 20% in closed source tooling).
|
| As far as I'm concerned that problem is inherent to any game
| engine that targets widespread accessibility, because making
| a game without an extremely deep level of discipline when it
| comes to organization will always be a recipe for a slog.
|
| Yes Unity being more responsive to bugs would help, yes Godot
| is currently a million time better off in _that_ respect
| being open source... but again, to me funding is exactly
| where the train starts to jump the rails.
|
| If you actually go back and research Unity's roots, they had
| the _exact_ inspiration and drive Godot did, but it was
| having to recoup investments that slowly pushed things off
| track, and eventually that snowballed into what we have
| today. From guy who wanted to make Mac games and tools for
| people who make Mac games... to a company that's merging with
| an ad corporation for their survival.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| > If you actually go back and research Unity's roots, they
| had the _exact_ inspiration and drive Godot did
|
| Are you sure? Was Unity's team inspired to release an open-
| source game engine like Godot's team? This might seem like
| a nit-pick, but you do emphasize that their motives were
| _exactly_ the same.
|
| It's hard to argue Godot will follow the same path as unity
| when Godot is open-source and Unity is not.
| TranquilMarmot wrote:
| Funnily enough, I actually originally learned about Godot
| from using Blender. I had been using Unity for many years but
| was getting deeper into the Blender hole and thought,
| "managing all of these asset pipelines from Blender into
| Unity is such a pain, doesn't Blender have a game engine?"
|
| But Blender removed their game engine, and in the release
| notes where they removed it they suggested Godot (https://wik
| i.blender.org/wiki/Reference/Release_Notes/2.80/R...)
|
| I messed around with Godot for a bit, but never did anything
| serious. Now that they're releasing Godot 4, I might give it
| another shot.
| amilios wrote:
| How exactly do game engines monetize, can anyone shed any light?
| Is it via additional support in using the engine for large
| companies? A freemium model like Unity's? But didn't even Unity
| succumb eventually to supplementing monetization via ads?
| anutrix wrote:
| Afaik, it depends on the engine. Each one does differently.
|
| There are hardly any major game engines left who don't offer
| free versions. But commercial ones make money either through:
| 1. Having some features(aka Pro or Enterprise version) or
| export options paid. 2. Royalties from the games made(a cut in
| your profits). 3. Ads. 4. Contracts with bigger companies,
| government, orgs, etc. 5. Projects with movie industry and
| other fields(research, simulation, labs, universities). 6.
| There might be more ways.
|
| Free and Open-Source game engines mostly monetize from
| sponsors, donations and contributions or just don't earn.
| mesozoic wrote:
| Probably be purchased by Unity soon to avoid competition.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Brand new venture started by the creator and lead dev of Godot
| to provide better console support for Godot just got millions
| in funding... I don't see why they would sell when they're just
| getting started.
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| The codebase is MIT Licensed, so Unity would be buying a shell
| intended to fund the project, it would be kind of a wasted
| efford really. The entire codebase (even the IDE) is MIT
| licensed last I checked.
| brezelgoring wrote:
| In this scenario, with Unity now being the owners of the
| author company, couldn't they change the license to another,
| or straight up make it closed source?
|
| I know the license says you have to be MIT - in perpetuity.
| That being said the author is the author and can do whatever,
| right? Especially if we're talking about Riccitello here, he
| has a past to consider.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| Disclaimer that I'm no lawyer.
|
| For a project with a single copyright owner/entity (or a
| group in agreement), yeah. You can't change the license of
| existing released versions or prevent people from sharing
| it in accordance with MIT. But you can publish a new
| release and drop the MIT license or even go closed source.
| The MIT license is just a grant of permissions for people
| who are not the copyright holders. The owner doesn't have
| to agree to MIT in order to use their own software.
|
| Godot would be a weird example though where I hope a lawyer
| would chime in. The first part of the MIT license
| establishes the copyright holders. The Godot license says:
|
| Copyright (c) 2014-2022 Godot Engine contributors (cf.
| AUTHORS.md).
|
| And the AUTHORS.md file has like a hundred names in it. If
| some company could acquire the entire rights to Godot then
| they could update the license. But I don't know how
| possible that is here.
|
| It kind of reminds me of when id software had the reverse
| situation. They wanted to open-source Doom 3, but some
| shadow technique they were using was based on a Creative
| Labs patent. So they had to rewrite a small amount of code
| before publishing the source.
| sfink wrote:
| Apologies for being pedantic.
|
| > Copyright (c) 2014-2022 Godot Engine contributors (cf.
| AUTHORS.md).
|
| That doesn't strictly make sense. "cf" means "compare".
| It implies that Godot Engine contributors are _different_
| from what is listed in AUTHORS.md.
|
| I know that everyone mistakes "cf" for "see also", so I
| figured it out. But I really was confused at first.
| squeaky-clean wrote:
| License discussions are 100% the place to be pedantic.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| MIT allows relicensing / sublicensing doesn't it?
| [deleted]
| stu2b50 wrote:
| You can't retroactively delicense the codebase without the
| agreement of all other contributors, so basically you
| can't.
|
| You can make any future work you write a different license.
| So in this hypothetical unity could basically continue with
| closed source fork.
| danjoredd wrote:
| Even if they could, a hard fork can be made. Thats the
| beauty of open source! If, by some mystery they were able
| to do so, someone would continue the work
| ketzo wrote:
| Why would W4 Games agree to be purchased? That seems pretty
| antithetical to, like, their whole thing.
| poetril wrote:
| Very exciting. Godot breathed life into my game dev hobby a few
| years ago, thrilled to see it getting more resources to grow.
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