Open 3D Engine is launched off the back of Amazon’s Lumberyard

An open source version of Amazon’s Lumberyard engine was launched this week. Named the Open 3D Engine (03DE) it will provide developers with a free alternative to the likes of Unity and Unreal, without fees or commercial obligations, and with full access to the source code. 

This new direction for Lumberyard, itself adapted originally from the Crytek Engine, has been overseen by the non-profit Linux Foundation, alongside twenty founder members. Which includes technology companies such as AWS, Adobe and Genvid, along with hardware firms such as Huawei and INtel, plus developers with Niantic, Apocalypse Studios and Wargaming. 

A raft of those developers lined up to sing the praises of the move in no uncertain terms. 

“The new Open 3D Foundation ushers in a profound change in the video game industry,” said Denis Dyack, CEO of Apocalypse Studios. Which is currently developing Deadhaus Sonata on Lumberyard. “O3DE will lead the way for cloud-first development, freeing developers to collaborate without traditional restrictions allowing them to concentrate on creativity, achieving what was once previously impossible. The video game industry will never be the same again.”

“We at FragLab believe that having a game engine with quality rendering is not enough. Nowadays the more technical side of game development is quickly changing and the ability to adapt your solutions in real-time is extremely important. O3DE has a proven foundation to be not only a high-quality game engine, but also be flexible enough to quickly react to different users’ demands, starting from integrating 3rd party AI systems to new game servers’ orchestration backend technologies,” said Sergey Rustamov, technical director at Wargaming, which is developing on Lumberyard at present. 

“Creators and businesses both benefit when there are open source tools available to them. We are big believers that game engines and interactive streaming will change not just video games but entertainment in general, and think that the mission of the Open 3D Foundation is important not just to our industry (gaming) but our metaverse future. We are honored to join as a founding member of the Open 3D Foundation and are eager to bring our cross-platform interactive streaming services to its developers,” said Jacob Navok, co-founder and CEO of Genvid Technologies, Inc. 

The community which forms around the engine will have a conference to attend as well in October in the form of O3DECon. For those interested there will be a GDC panel on July 22nd as well. More immediately, Amazon has published a blog detailing the move from its side.