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Amazon Launches Free Game Engine Lumberyard

Posted by timothy on from the gratis-not-libre dept.

Dave Knott writes: Amazon has both announced and released a new, free game engine, Lumberyard, which offers deep integration with its Amazon Web Services server infrastructure to empower online play, and also with Twitch, its video game-focused streaming service. Lumberyard is powerful and full-featured enough to develop triple-A current-gen console games, with mobile support is coming down the road. Its core engine technology is based on Crytek's CryEngine. However, Lumberyard represents a branch of that tech, and the company is replacing or upgrading many of CryEngine's systems. Monetization for Lumberyard will come strictly through the use of Amazon Web Services' cloud computing. If you use the engine for your game, you're permitted to roll your own server tech, but if you're using a third-party provider, it has to be Amazon. Integration of Amazon's Twitch video streaming tools at a low level also helps to cement that platform's dominance in the game streaming space. Alongside Lumberyard, the company has also announced and released GameLift, a new managed service for deploying, operating, and scaling server-based online games using AWS. GameLift will be available only to developers who use Lumberyard, though it's an optional add-on. The game engine is in beta, but is freely usable and downloadable today.

11 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. Terrible name by The-Ixian · · Score: 2, Funny

    Our new triple A rated three dimensional action game powered by Lumberyard under the hood.

    It just makes me think of saw dust or Mendards/Home Depot

    --
    My eyes reflect the stars and a smile lights up my face.
  2. Gratis but not free by NotInHere · · Score: 4, Insightful

    From https://aws.amazon.com/de/lumb... :

    Q. Is Lumberyard “open source”?

    No. We make the source code available to enable you to fully customize your game, but your rights are limited by the Lumberyard Service Terms. For example, you may not publicly release the Lumberyard engine source code, or use it to release your own game engine.

    Limberyard is gratis, and free as in beer, but it isn't free as in freedom.

    1. Re:Gratis but not free by Dunbal · · Score: 2

      If by empowering you mean it binds you and restricts you, then yeah, it's empowering. Amazon is a corporation. Lumberyard is a fraction of a fraction of their revenue. One day a new manager will come along and change the TOS and you will be completely fucked with no recourse. By all means, develop away.

      --
      Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
    2. Re:Gratis but not free by null+etc. · · Score: 2

      You're right, we should definitely not engage with any technology or solution whose availability isn't guaranteed to exist until the end of time, and offer us 150% of the features we need. After all, if I'm building sandcastles in the sky, I can't let my dreams of creating a game that makes me a billionaire be threatened by even the most unlikely of hypothetical scenarios.

  3. Meh. Not cross-platform enough. by BenJeremy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    PC, Playstation and Xbox support, Android and iOS in the wings... no specific mention of Windows Metro, Linux or OSX (I assume PC only means standard Windows).

    Unity3D has all the bases covered, and a large number of third-party support through assets and plugins.

    The CryEngine is certainly nice, though.

    1. Re:Meh. Not cross-platform enough. by WPIDalamar · · Score: 2

      They did say linux and osx are coming.

    2. Re:Meh. Not cross-platform enough. by bluefoxlucid · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Unity 3D even has continued support for years and years, whereas Mighty No. 9 is all like, "We're having trouble and have to mess with the source code and maintain and bugfix UE3 ourselves because it's no longer updated even though it cost $350,000 per seat!" That was fucking irresponsible, and I called it from the start: they initially budgeted under a million dollars and wanted a (then) half-million-dollar engine instead of the $1,500 Unity 3D engine; they're struggling now even though they got nearly five million dollars of funding.

      Maybe if you're Blizzard or Bethesda you can use UE4. It makes sense, even though it's expensive: Ubisoft dumps like 30 huge games every year, so of course they get a lower marginal cost (no matter how low you go, when you divide up a licensing cost across dozens of units, there's a limit to how much you're going to save by taking the less-expensive option). If UE4 does something Unity 3D doesn't and your game will be significantly harder to develop without that feature, deal with it; if this happens and you generally develop dozens of games each year, then maybe you should buy UE4. Of course this applies less now than it did with UE3, since UE3 was ridiculously expensive compared to UE4.

      The financials don't make sense. I'd try to fund a moderately-complex game on $100,000 with Unity 3D Pro. It can be done. I computed $58,000 for art for a 2D top-down ARPG, plus another $19,000 for music; I can do the story-writing and much of the programming myself, but a competent programmer will cost you $26,000 in under a full-time 4 months. I'm also a project manager, so I can plan these sorts of things out with reasonable effectiveness, instead of dicking around on a long tail of things going wrong on top of other things going wrong, turning a $100k budget into a $6 million, 9-year project; again, a competent project manager will throw you $100k a year himself. Your real resource costs for a simple 2D or 3D game might be $150k per development-year, plus a relatively fixed cost for assets (3D models, textures, music, animation). If you're making *one* *game*, the cost of your engine is your biggest factor.

      That leaves a big question: What are the marginal costs of Lumberyard? Is low cost plus royalty, like UE4? Subscription, like Unity 3D? High cost, like UE3? Answer: It's free plus monetization, like UE4, but with monetization being tie-in service: you can either build an in-house support infrastructure for your online experience, or you can use Amazon. That means if it comes down to engine cost, you might want to go Unity 3D or UE4. The cost of internal infrastructure would exceed the cost of almost *any* outsource service--Amazon, Azure, Verizon--and being tied to Amazon might cost you a lot more than $1,500 for each developer. If so, you need to decide: Will the royalties on UE4 cost you more than Unity? Between all three, will selecting any given one save you enough programmer time to offset the *lifetime* cost of any of these factors?

      Financials. I love it.

      --
      Support my political activism on Patreon.
    3. Re:Meh. Not cross-platform enough. by war4peace · · Score: 2

      Um... isn't UE4 free of charge for development and then once your game exceeds 3K bucks a month they will take 5% of that?

      5% WHEN YOU SHIP

      The 5% royalty starts after the first $3,000 of revenue per product per quarter. Pay no royalty for film projects, contracting and consulting projects such as architecture, simulation and visualization.

      https://www.unrealengine.com/w...

      --
      ...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
  4. Re:So it's between the BSD/MIT and GPL licenses. by NotInHere · · Score: 2

    The GPL doesn't restrict the use of the compiled binaries, you can use them for everything. The only thing the GPL restricts one to do is to close down the source or harm user freedom. You aren't allowed to share modifications of lumberyard, the GPL allows this. And the GPL doesn't cover assets. You still can monetize your game on an asset only basis.

  5. It's an interesting concept.. by HerculesMO · · Score: 2

    Because they are losing game developers out to Azure. Look at Titanfall, for an example (whether you like it or not is irrelevant).

    The problem AWS has is that it is entirely VM/IaaS based. There is little to no PaaS offerings so developers have to write integration layers for the VMs and at many times, use more resources than they need. With PaaS services they can tailor it to be much more dynamic and that's the allure Azure brings them. The scaling can be elastic but also not waste any resources.

    AWS is providing an engine that is really powerful, adding its customization so that the integration for Twitch and AWS is inherent, and hoping you sign on. Because if you do, you're going to pay more money to run your game and as a result, they will make money as well. That's why they can give it away and to boot -- not open source it.

    That said I think most people would take the power, flexibility and ease of use of the Unreal Engine for 5% revenue share rather than pay 20% more on utilization on AWS. But that's just my logic talking.

    --
    The price is always right if someone else is paying.
  6. Amazon Lumberyard Engine Service Terms by zyche · · Score: 4, Funny

    57.10

    Acceptable Use; Safety-Critical Systems. Your use of the Lumberyard Materials must comply with the AWS Acceptable Use Policy. The Lumberyard Materials are not intended for use with life-critical or safety-critical systems, such as use in operation of medical equipment, automated transportation systems, autonomous vehicles, aircraft or air traffic control, nuclear facilities, manned spacecraft, or military use in connection with live combat. However, this restriction will not apply in the event of the occurrence (certified by the United States Centers for Disease Control or successor body) of a widespread viral infection transmitted via bites or contact with bodily fluids that causes human corpses to reanimate and seek to consume living human flesh, blood, brain or nerve tissue and is likely to result in the fall of organized civilization.

    From: http://aws.amazon.com/service-...