Engines and tools

Unreal Engine 5.4 has been officially released. The new version of Epic Games’ technology introduces new features and many improvements to built-in animation tools and overall performance.

Epic Games has officially released an updated version of the Unreal Engine — 5.4. It has significantly improved the quality of animation and improved rendering performance.

On April 17, the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation again included UNIGINE in the register of domestic software. The engine has been missing from the list since the end of February.

On April 11, the global strategy Revival: Recolonization was released on PC in full. App2Top talked with Sergey Ulankin, head of console and PC publishing at HeroCraft, about how development was going, how successful early access was, about working with VK Play, and much more.

Unity has decided to end the support for Ziva Dynamics, a set of tools used for simulation, deformation, and real-time 3D character creation. As a result, the engine maker will sell the license to VFX company DNEG.

Ziva Dynamics is a company that deals with technologies of complex modeling and deformation in real time. Her tools are used to create realistic 3D models of people, animals and other creatures. The other day, Unity, the company that owns Ziva Dynamics, decided to abandon their support.

Divestments of Saber Interactive and Gearbox Entertainment were the last major parts of Embracer Group’s restructuring program. The Swedish holding company plans to retain its remaining portfolio, having no plans to enter into any deals in the near future.

Godot has seen a significant increase in its user base following last year’s controversy surrounding Unity’s new pricing policy. Seems like a big win for the open-source engine.

This was told by one of Godot programmers Adam Scott in an interview with journalist Stephen Totilo from Game File.

Epic Games held a presentation of State of Unreal at the GDC 2024 developer Conference. During it, the company demonstrated the capabilities of the next version of the Unreal Engine and shared a number of news on the development of Fortnite and its business in general. We have collected the most important announcements.

Epic Games just held its annual State of Unreal keynote, showcasing the future of Unreal Enigne and sharing other news related to Fortnite and its business in general. Here are all the major updates announced at the event.

The giant 2024 Unity Gaming Report has been released. It is dedicated to trends in game development. If possible, we will briefly tell you about the main thing from the study.

Good news. Despite the crisis in the industry, new gaming companies are still emerging. Emanuel Palalic and Garrett Young have announced the launch of a new studio. It's called Emptyvessel. This is the second such announcement in the last 24 hours.

In mid-February, OpenAI introduced a new generative network that is capable of generating very high-quality video by text format. It's called Sora. We talked about its prospects in the gaming industry with teams that have already implemented other neural networks into their pipeline. Our experts include representatives of Charisma, Playkot, Lost Lore, Skywaylab and ZiMAD.

Tropic Haze, the maker of Nintendo Switch emulator Yuzu, has agreed to settle with the Japanese company. One of the terms is an admission that the software was “primarily designed” to circumvent copyright protection.

The Defold Foundation has announced that its engine now supports the development of games for PlayStation 5. You can get all the necessary tools, documentation and source code of the engine for free. The only limitation is that you need to be an approved PlayStation developer to access them.

Earlier this month, WN Media Group hosted a conference in the capital of the United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi. It was attended by representatives of Apple, Google, Ubisoft, Unity, TikTok, Tilting Point, Stillfront Group, Riot Games, Huawei, and other companies.

The young Russian Case studio decided to develop its own game engine. She plans to make its use free for indie teams, but without access to the source code.

Epic Games has reportedly become the victim of a cyberattack. As a result, the company’s internal information was stolen by a hacker group under the name Mogilevich.

Unity has published a financial report for the fourth quarter of 2023 and immediately for the whole year. She reported on revenue growth, and also shared new details about the process of "rebooting" the company.

There are no more game engines in the registry of domestic software. On February 20, UNIGINE was removed from it by the decision of the expert council under the Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation.

In January 2018, Autodesk stopped supporting the Autodesk Stingray engine, formerly known as Bitsquid. However, the instrument continues to live. Developer Andy Touch noticed that it was used by the authors of the popular shooter Helldivers 2.

An update has appeared. Eidos Montreal has confirmed the cuts.

In accordance with the new law adopted in Europe, Apple has announced a number of innovations in iOS. These include support for third—party stores and payment systems. But there were nuances. Those who want to use the new functionality will have to pay for each installation. For more information about the situation, see our analysis.

The current head of Roblox Studio, Stefano Corazza, announced that his company has joined the Blender Development Fund.

The organizers of the Game Developers Conference (GDC), with the participation of the Omdia consulting firm, conducted a survey of 3,000 game developers. According to him, over the past 12 months, 7% of developers have already changed the engine, and 28% began to consider this possibility.

Unity continues to restructure, this time preparing for changes in its leadership. The founders of ironSource, an app monetization platform it acquired in 2022, will soon leave the company.

All six ironSource founders will leave Unity within the next six months. This is reported by the Mobilegamer portal, which has read the letter from Jim Whitehurst, interim CEO of Unity, sent to the company's employees.

Less than two weeks into 2024, mass layoffs continue to impact the industry. This time, Unity has decided to cut around 25% of its total workforce as part of its ongoing restructuring.

In a recent report to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Unity announced plans to conduct a record round of layoffs. She decided to lay off a quarter of the staff, or about 1,800 people.

We continue to summarize the results of 2023 with the gaming (or related to the gaming sector) teams. Next up is an interview with Vitaly Agafonov, head of the Nau Engine product.

We continue to summarize the results of 2023 with the gaming (or related to the gaming sector) teams. Next up is an interview with Denis Shergin, CEO of UNIGINE.

The developers of UNIGINE announced the release of a new version of the engine — 2.18. Among the key changes are improved performance, VR "out of the box", improved animation system and editor, and much more.

Electronic Arts has suddenly rebranded the Frostbite engine by presenting a new identity and vision for its proprietary tech. The company is betting big on collaborative efforts, while no longer restricting developers from using third-party solutions.

The creators of the Defold engine have decided to remove the monthly fee for using the source code for console platforms. Now every registered developer can access it for free.

The Defold Foundation has announced that it will no longer charge console game developers for full access to the source code of the Defold engine.

We continue to summarize the results of the year with the game teams. Next up is an interview with Oleg Beresnev, founder and CEO of Beresnev Games.

The streaming service Netflix has reported on the gaming results of this year and shared plans for the next one. He has no ambitions for the segment.

The Irish startup W4 Games, founded by Godot veterans, recently announced a Series A funding round. As part of it, the studio will receive a transfer of $15 million from a group of investors.

The Irish startup W4 Games, founded by Godot veterans, recently announced a Series A funding round. As part of it, the studio will receive a transfer of $15 million from a group of investors.

We continue to summarize the results of 2023 together with the game teams. Next up is an interview with Ilya Boytsov, co-founder and CEO of the MidHard Games outsourcing studio.

Five months after the appearance of Godot 4.1, the open source game engine has a full-fledged new version. It includes more than 1,800 changes made by 359 developers.

Fun gameplay aside, one one of the factors behind Dave the Diver’s success was its combination of pixel art and 3D graphics. Here is how a small team at Mintrocket managed to create the game’s appealing visuals using the Unity engine and its tools.

Unity has decided to terminate an agreement with its subsidiary Weta, a VFX studio co-founded by acclaimed filmmaker Peter Jackson. This will result in another round of layoffs for the engine maker.

Unity has announced new large-scale cuts. This time the reason was the termination of cooperation with Weta FX, a special effects studio directed by Peter Jackson. A total of 256 people or 3.8% of the total number of Unity employees will remain unemployed.

In October, it became known that the basis of the new Russian open engine Nau Engine will be a solution from Gaijin Entertainment — Dagor Engine. App2Top talked with Andrey Karsakov, Head of Nau Engine development, about how it happened and what technologies the engine will support.

The GameMaker team announced that developers who are not going to make money on their games can now not pay for the engine. The only limitation is that the free version of GameMaker cannot be used for console projects.

GameMaker has a special Thanksgiving surprise for its community by announcing major changes to its pricing model. And the team decided to do the opposite of what some other engine makers do.

No game engine is perfect. And sometimes developers may have a hard time working with specific frameworks due to a large amount of legacy code or lack of good documentation.

Unity has announced the new major version of its engine that will feature various improvements such as performance optimization and accelerated multiplayer game creation. However, the biggest highlight is the new AI tools for developers.