Russia Considers Funding a New State-Backed Home-Grown Game Engine!

Following the outbreak of war in Ukraine earlier this year, Russia has certainly started to feel the metaphorical pinch as tech companies around the world have (mostly) united to remove support for their various products as a sign of protest against the invasion. One such aspect of this is game engine designs which have clearly given Russia’s video game industry a bit of a problem. – You can’t, after all, make a game without an engine platform!

Following a report via Eurogamer, however, it seems that Russia might be looking for a potential solution to this problem. Namely, the creation of a home-grown, and potentially even state-funded, game engine of their own!

Russia to Make its Own Game Engine

Talks surrounding the creation of a Russia-designed game engine apparently started back in May when game developers in the country expressed concern that their access to well-known programs such as Unity and Unreal Engine might be coming to an end following the invasion of Ukraine. – With this in mind, it seems that the creation of a home-grown game engine was deemed a ‘high priority’ to ensure less reliance on other 3rd-party companies who clearly reside beyond the control of the Russian government.

With this in mind though, it clearly created two pretty huge problems. Firstly, if Russia is going to develop its very own game engine, it’ll be starting from what appears to be scratch. In other words, the game engine could take 3-5 years to develop and that’s before it’s available for developers to, you know, actually make games with! – The second issue is a far more basic one. It’s going to cost a hell of a lot of money which, you could argue, Russia can ill-afford to spend at the moment given that there’s an unpopular war going on!

If they do go ahead with it though, who knows, perhaps in around 10 years’ time we might have another major player in the world of game development. That being said though, something about a Russian State-backed game engine just sounds a bit… I don’t know… soviet to me!

What do you think? – Let us know in the comments!