In theory, Godot founders and Godot Foundation board members Rémi Verschelde and Juan Linietsky were in a prime position to take advantage when developers went on a rampage in outrage after engine maker Unity unveiled its project.”Cost of execution.”
As furious developers scrambled for new engines, many turned to the open source engine named after Samuel Beckett's playWouldn't such a surge in interest be a godsend for the two developers?
No. At least not for most of Godot’s development. Verschelde and Linietsky (who also co-founded W4 Games, a separate company that develops porting tools and licensed multiplayer for Godot users) have been leading community-driven development on the engine since 2014, and all along they said they’ve seen backlash against Unity coming from a mile away. “Even before that happened, there were a few warning shots from Unity,” Verschelde recalled in a conversation at Gamescom 2024. And despite the upside that could have come from an influx of users, the Godot team prayed that Unity wouldn’t make that explosion happen.
As the two tell it, Godot wasn’t ready for primetime until a few months before the Runtime Fee fiasco, and as it blew up, they faced their first test of what would happen when a user base accustomed to Unity’s technology and values responded to Godot’s open source style. It’s a case study in how any team can scale up quickly in the face of surprise growth, and how teams that embrace open source values can incorporate contributions from new members.
Godot Wasn't Ready for Primetime
Linietsky, a longtime technology consultant, told Game Developer that Unity’s push for an IPO was a ticking time bomb. Not necessarily because of the focus on shareholders, but because of the mission to acquire technology companies to make Unity a bigger tool. “They’ve invested in so much technology that I, as a tech expert, know is expensive to maintain,” he said.
Rumors about Unity's IPO push started in 2019, and Godot had only reached version 3.0 in 2018. While the engine has seen “steady growth” in the years since, Linietsky and Verschelde didn’t think that version of the tool was a viable alternative to Unity. If dissatisfied users showed up, they might not find something that met their needs.
Or worse, they might find a tool that Almost met their needs, but lacked key Unity features that they would have liked to implement. But Godot's open source nature means that features can't just be pushed out like they would from a licensed engine. They have to be voted on and implemented by the community. “We were just hoping that Unity would continue to do a good job and keep users happy, so that people would happily embrace Godot for what it is, and not try to change it into something it's not,” Verschelde said.
The pair said it was a great relief that the calamity came after the release of version 4.0 of Godot in March 2023. That version, they said, was more ready for a sudden influx of new developers. That meant that when the calamity hit, the founders were better prepared to deal with the challenges of introducing developers to the open source model.
Godot was forced to confront the needs of Unity users
When the time came, Linietsky and Verschelde said there were some user requests that threatened to exhaust the engine’s capabilities, but they were relieved to find that “Unity refugees” were willing to compromise. Godot’s community-first structure did much of the heavy lifting, with other Godot developers who had worked with Unity since day one ready to explain how newcomers could replicate the desired functionality with their new tools.
They also found that Unity refugees were surprisingly patient with Godot’s shortcomings. Verschelde said users might be frustrated by finding tasks they could do in Unity that they couldn’t replicate in Godot, but then they’d discover tools that existed in Godot that they couldn’t use in Unity.
There was room for the Godot community to do Some accommodations for newcomers. An option to move the file system window to the bottom of the screen, just like in Unity, was a relatively easy operation.
What wasn’t easy to accomplish? Unity’s beloved feature that lets developers edit their game in “Play” mode. The pair said it’s one of their “top 5 most requested features,” but it’s not one that can be added easily.
When Godot generates a playable version of the game you’re working on, it’s run separately to keep both features more stable. It’s not likely to recreate “edit while playing” any time soon, but Verschelde said there’s a community suggestion for a smaller feature: the ability to click on objects in the game and see them in the inspector. “It can be done,” he said.
Don't expect a C Sharp-C++ compiler anytime soon. Godot uses a more “modern” version of C Sharp maintained by Microsoft that has “additional performance optimization capabilities.”
Developers can always fork their own versions of the engine
Godot’s limitations are fascinating in part because, as the two emphasized repeatedly in our conversation, they’re something that tech-savvy developers can work around on their own. Because Godot is open source, developers who want to add key features can fork the engine and modify it themselves, free of charge. That’s not possible with Unity or Unreal Engine.
These open source values even extend to the way the engine's name is pronounced. We asked whether Godot is pronounced “Go-dough,” like the play, or “Go-dot.”
“It’s open source,” Verschelde said with a smile. “Pronounce it however you want.”