🤴🏼 💕 👧🏼 Own game engines: a little research 👨🏼‍🤝‍👨🏻 ✌🏿 👨🏻

A couple of weeks ago, I played in A Plague Tale at Asobo Studio (and passed it). I was very captivated by this game, thanks not only to beautiful graphics, but also to the plot with locations. I decided to learn a little about the technologies used in its development, and was surprised to find that the game was created on its own engine in a relatively small studio. I know that some companies use their own engines, but it is very difficult to find detailed marketing research with similar information. So I wrote this article.

Today, many companies choose engines such as Unreal or Unity for game development.(or at least that’s what many people think) because it takes a lot of resources to develop your own AAA-level engine. Therefore, I decided to make a list of some of the most popular proprietary engines, indicating the size of the studios and significant games released on these engines.

Most of the engines presented here were developed over the years, many iterations, and for many video games, these engines had several versions or even completely (partially) corresponded from scratch with the subsequent change of name. In addition, it is important to note that most of these engines use a variety of middleware to implement certain functionality (platform compatibility, physics, network, vegetation, UI, rendering, sound ...).

* Note: I tried to maximize accuracy when indicating the number of employees (checked with the company's websites, Wikipedia or LinkedIn companies), but do not treat these indicators with special trust (some values may already be irrelevant).

LARGE companies

From left to right: Assassin's Creed Odyssey, Final Fantasy XV, Red Dead Redemption 2

The following is a list of very large corporations , sometimes having complex corporate structures with several departments (which deal not only with video games) and various studios / contractors who create games. Some of them work with several engines, not only with their own, but also with licensed ones.

Company	Employees	Studios	Engines	Notable games
Activision / Blizzard	~ 9200	~ 9	own engines	Call of Duty, Overwatch, Starcraft II
Electronic Arts	~9300	~36	Frostbite	Star Wars Battlefront II, Anthem, Battlefield 1/V, FIFA 20, Need for Speed
Ubisoft	~16000	~54	AnvilNext 2.0	Assassin's Creed
			Disrupt engine	Watch Dogs
			UbiArt Framework	Rayman Legends, Child of Light, Valiant Hearts
			Snowdrop	Tom Clancy's The Division 2, The Settlers
			Dunia ( CryEngine)	FarCry
			Silex ( Anvil)	Ghost Recon Wildlands
			LEAD engine	Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell
			Dunia	The Crew
Capcom	+2800	~15	MT Framework	Monster Hunter: World
			RE Engine	Resident Evil 7, Devil May Cry 5, RE2:Remake, RE3:Remake
Konami	+10000	~30	Fox Engine	Pro Evolution Soccer, Metal Gear Solid V
Square Enix	+4600	~18	Luminous Studio	Final Fantasy XV
Nintendo	+6100	~8		Zelda: BOTW, Mario Odyssey
Riot Games	~2500	~3	own engine	League of Legends
Rockstar	+2000	~ 9	RAGE engine	GTA V, Red Dead Redemption 2
Cd projekt	+1100	~ 4	REDEngine 3	The witcher 3
Epic	+1000	~ 11	Unreal engine 4	Fortnite

Typically, such companies invest in their own engines in order to have full control over technologies, as well as to avoid the costs of deductions required by licensed engines. Despite this, there are some large companies that in recent years have chosen to develop the Unreal Engine . The most notable of them:

Capcom uses Unreal for new Street Fighter IV / V games.
Bandai Namco's latest major hits include Unreal: Jump Force, Dragon Ball Fighter Z, Dragon Ball Z: Kakarot, Tales of Arise.
When developing several new games, Square Enix also switched to Unreal: Dragon Quest XI, Kingdom Hearts III, Final Fantasy VII Remake

It is curious to note that all three companies from Japan, perhaps this is some kind of regional market trend. It is also worth saying that the Chinese holding Tencent owns 40% of Epic Games ; Surely it has a certain influence on the Asian market.

Medium Studios

From left to right: Rise of the Tomb Raider, Uncharted 4, A Plague Tale

Here we look at medium-sized companies that decided to create their own engines for their games.

The number of employees is a good parameter that you need to consider, because your own engines are usually developed by the company (that is, they are not outsourced), but it is worth noting that some of these companies may have a large staff due to their own art / sound departments, while other companies outsource this work.

It would be very interesting to know how many engineers work in the engine development department of each company; I am sure that a surprise would have been waiting for us: probably a very small team of engineers is working on the engine and tools!

It would also be interesting to learn more about the tools in the composition of these engines, it is very difficult to access such information. The engine toolkit is usually kept secret (the only exceptions are presentations at the GDC and short videos demonstrating the capabilities of the engine).

Left to right: Horizon Zero Dawn, God of War, Death Stranding

Company	Employees	Engine	Noteworthy games
Creative assembly	+650	Warscape engine	Total War Series
Bungie	~ 600	Tiger engine	Destiny Series
Infinity ward	+500	Iw 7.0	Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
Eidos-montréal	~ 500	Dawn Engine (based on Glacier2)	Deus Ex: Mankind Divided
Bethesda	~ 400	Creation engine	Skyrim, Fallout 4, Fallout 76
Valve Corp.	~ 360	Source 2	Dota 2, Half-Life: Alyx
Crystal dynamics	~ 350	Foundation engine	Rise / Shadow of the Tomb Raider
Avalanche studios	~ 320	Apex engine	Just Cause, Renegade Ops, Mad Max, RAGE 2
Naughty Dog	+300	Naughty Dog Game Engine	Uncharted, Last of Us
Rebellion Developments	~300	Asura engine	Alien vs. Predator, Sniper Elite
Techland	~300	Chrome Engine 6	Dying Light
Crytek	~290	CryEngine V	The Climb, Hunt:Showdown
From Software	+280	Dark Souls engine	Bloodborne, Dark Souls III, Sekiro
Remedy	+250	Northlight Engine	Quantum Break, Control
Guerrilla Games	+250	Decima	Killzone Shadow Fall, Until Dawn, Horizon Zero Dawn
Larian Studios	+250	Divinity Engine	Divinity
Platinum Games	~250	Platinum Engine	NieR Automata, Bayonetta, Vanquish
Santa Monica Studio	+200		God Of War
id Software	+200	idTech 6/7	Doom, Doom Eternal, Wolfenstein
Sucker Punch	+200		Infamous Second Son, Ghost of Tsushima?
Insomniac Games	~180	Insomniac Engine	Rachet&Clank, Marvel's Spider-Man
Quantic Dreams	~180		Detroit: Become Human
IO Interactive	~170	Glacier2	Hitman
Asobo Studio	+140	Zouna	A Plague Tale
Ready At Dawn	~120		The Order: 1886, Lone Echo
Mercury Steam	~110		Spacelords, Castlevania:Lords of Shadow
Monolith Productions	+100	LithTech	F.E.A.R., Condemned, Shadow of Mordor/War
11 Bit Studios	~100	Liquid Engine	Frostpunk
Frozenbyte	~100	Storm3D	Trine, Shadowgrounds
Kylotonn	~100	KtEngine	WRC, TT Isle of Man, V-Rally 4
TaleWorlds Entertainment	~100		Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord
Daedalic Entertainment	~90	Visionaire Studio	The Whispered World, Deponia
Media Molecule	~80	Bubblebath Engine	Dreams
Paradox Development Studio	~80	Clausewitz Engine	Imperator: Rome, Stellaris, Europa Universalis
Deck13	~70	Fledge	Lords of the Fallen, The Surge, The Surge 2
Nihon Falcom	~60	Yamaneko Engine	Ys VII, Ys VIII, Ys IX
Croteam	+40	Serious Engine	The Talos Principle, Serious Sam

Conclusions that can be drawn from the list:

Judging by the information in the credits of the game Rise of the Tomb Raider, only 10 programmers are working on the Foundation engine , this number can be used to understand how many people usually work on the engine core.
In Death Stranding, Kojima Productions uses the Decima engine developed by Guerrilla Games; She previously used the Fox Engine in Metal Gear Solid V.
It seems that the latest game / engine Media Molecule (Dreams) was developed by only about 15 coders , awesome!
Companies carrying out development for one platform usually have fewer restrictions and can maximize the capabilities of this platform. Unfortunately, most companies cannot afford such a luxury.
Asobo Studio, , … , , .
, , .

(-)

From left to right: The Witness, No Man's Sky, X-Morph Defense

Here we look at very small studios, which also decided to create their own engines for their games. It is worth noting that for certain parts of the game in such engines other libraries / frameworks are used. Most often among them are SDL (cross-platform library of graphics and input), OGRE (rendering engine), MonoGame (cross-platform game framework, which also uses SDL, SharpDX, OpenTK, OpenAL-Soft ... ).

Many people may be interested in this question: what parts of the engine are actually written by the developers? It happens in different ways, but more often than not, encoders deal with the screen manager ,entity manager and content manager , as well as wrappers / interfaces for external libraries.

Second question: in which parts of the engine are external libraries / middleware typically used? It also depends on the company's resources, but usually it is a sound system , physics , rendering , work with the network , the UI system , relief system , vegetation system and some other elements.

From left to right: Factorio, Thimbleweed Park, Owlboy

In the list below (and the following one too) I added the publication date (only from 2012 onwards), as well as a link to the pages of all games on Steam ... There are not many games with their own engines from small studios, and I believe that they deserve fame and support.

Company	Employees	Engine	Noteworthy games
Runic games	~ 40	Based on OGRE	Hob (2017), Tochlight II (2012)
Klei entertainment	35	own engine	Invisible, Inc. (2016), Don't Starve Together (2016), Shank Series
Shiro games	~ 30	Heaps.io	Northgard (2018), Evoland (2013), Evoland II (2015)
Hello games	~ 25	No man's sky engine	No Man's Sky (2016 )
Frictional Games	~25	HPL engine	SOMA (2015 ), Amnesia
DrinkBox Studios	~25		Guacamelee (2013 ), Guacamelee! 2 (2018 ), Severed (2016 )
Supergiant Games	~20	MonoGame	Hades (2019 ), Pyre (2017 ), Transistor (2014 )
Wube Software	~20	Allegro/SDL	Factorio (2019 )
Chucklefish	~20	Halley Engine	Wargroove (2019 ), Starbound (2016 )
Ronimo Games	~17	RoniTech Engine (SDL)	Awesomenauts (2017 )
Lab Zero Games	~17	Z-Engine	Indivisible (2019 ), Skullgirls (2013 )
Introversion Software	~14	SystemIV (SDL)	Prison Architect (2015 )
Exor Studios	~14	Schmetterling ( OGRE)	The Riftbreaker (2020 ), X-Morph: Defense (2017 )
Tribute Games	~11	MonoGame	Flinthook (2017 ), Mercenary Kings (2014 )
Thekla Inc. ( )	~10		The Witness (2016 )
Numantian Games	~10		They Are Billions (2019 ), Lords of Xulimia (2014 )
Nysko Games Ltd.	~10		The Dwarves of Glistenveld (2019 )
Passtech Games	10	OEngine	Curse of the Dead Gods (2020 )
Terrible Toybox ( )	9	(SDL)	Thimbleweed Park (2017 )
Radical Fish Games	8	Impact (JS)	CrossCode (2018 )
Matt Makes Games ( )	~7	MonoGame	Celeste (2018 ), TowerFall Ascension (2014 )
Coilworks	~7		Super Cloudbuilt (2017 ), Cloudbuilt (2014 )
Lo-fi Games ( )	6	OGRE	Kenshi (2018 )
D-Pad Studio	6	MonoGame	Owlboy (2016 )
BitKid, Inc.	6	MonoGame	CHASM (2020 )
Double Damage Games	5	OGRE	Rebel Galaxy Outlaw (2019 ), Rebel Galaxy (2015 )
Almost Human Games	4		Legend of Grimrock (2012), Legend of Grimrock 2 (2014)
Wolfire games	4	Phoenix engine	Overgrowth (2017)
Nuke nine	3	own engine	Vagante (2019)
Mega Crit Games	3	own engine	Slay the Spire (2017)

Interesting facts about this list:

Shiro Games co-founder Nicolas Kannass is the developer of the Haxe programming language and the Heaps engine used by Motion Twin to create Dead Cells (2017).
Hello Games is a very small studio, given the scale of No Man's Sky and the use of its own engine. Very impressive!
Runic Games 2017 , Double Damage, Echtra Games Torchlight III.
Chucklefish Halley, open-source!
1-3 !
Lo-fi Games ( )!
!
… ...

,

From left to right: Stardew Valley, ScourgeBringer, Eagle Island

At the end, we give a list of heroes.

Games developed by one or two people on their own engines, and these engines were mostly written by one person!

Creating an engine and a game from scratch to the publishing stage is a huge achievement, few in the world are ready for this. Almost all of them are 2D games, usually with very low budgets that have been developed over several years . Developers can be congratulated!

Left to right: Axiom Verge, Ghost 1.0, Remnants of Naezith

Company / Developer	Members	Engine	Noteworthy games
Lizardcube (Ben Fike and Omar Kornut)	2	own engine	Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap (2017)
Guard Crush Games ( )	2	MonoGame	Streets of Rage 4
Pocketwatch Games ( )	2?	MonoGame	Tooth and Tail (2017 )
	2		FTL: Faster Than Light (2012 )
	2		Proteus (2013 )
Mountain Sheep	2		Hardland (2019 )
Flying Oak Games ( )	2	MonoGame	Neuro Voider (2016 ), ScourgeBringer(2020 )
	2		Thumper (2016 )
	2		Heroes of Hammerwatch (2018 ), Hammerwatch (2013 )
Villa Gorilla ( )	2		Yoku's Island Express (2018 )
Two Mammoths ( )	2		Archaica: The Path of Light (2017 )
Bare Mettle Entertainment ( )	1?		Exanima (2015 )
	1	OpenFL	Papers, Please (2013 )
	1		Super Hexagon (2012 )
	1	SDL	Ghost 1.0 (2016 ), UnEpic (2014 )
Grid Sage Games ( )	1	SDL	Cogmind (2017 )
	1		Banished (2014 )
	1 (5 )	MonoGame	Axiom Verge (2015 )
	1	MonoGame	Salt and Sanctuary (2016 )
	1 (4 )	MonoGame	Stardew Valley (2016 )
	1	SFML	Remnant of Naezith (2018 )
	1 (5 )	MonoGame	Eagle Island (2019 )
bitBull Ltd. ( )	1 (4 )	MonoGame	Jetboard Joust (2020 )
	1 (8 )	SFML	MoonQuest (2020 )
	1 (7 )		Kid Baby: Starchild (2019 )
	1		Teardown (2020 )
	1	Star Engine	Sonic Mania (2017 )
Positech Games ( )	1		Production Line (2019 ), Democracy 3 (2013 ), Gratuitous Space Battles (2015 )
	1		Angeldust (2019 )
Zachtronics (Zach Bart)	1	own engine	MOLEK-SYNTEZ (2019), EXAPUNKS (2018), SHENZHEN I / O (2016), Opus Magnum (2017)
Lunar Ray Games (Body Lee)	1	own engine	Timespinner (2018)
sebagamesdev	1	own engine	Fight And Rage (2017)
Loic Dansart	1	own engine	Melody's Escape (2016)

Notes on this list:

Some of these teams were formed by one or two people, but at a certain stage they either grew or outsourced some of the development (graphics, sound ...). Typically, the publisher also helps with resources (localization, marketing ...).
Lizardcube Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap, Dear ImGui — GUI immediate-mode , AAA-.
Lizardcube Streets of Rage 4, Guard Crush Games.
Thumper, .
— Star Engine, Sonic Mania, Headcannon ( ) PagodaWest Games ( ).
!
… ...

Here are some other noteworthy games that use their own engines: Minecraft (2011), Braid (2009), Super Meat Boy (2010), Terraria (2011), Dustforce (2012), Sword and Sorcery EP (2012 year), FEZ (2013), Dust: An Elysian Tail (2013), Rogue Legacy (2013), Dyad (2012), SpaceChem (2013), Darkest Dungeon (2016), Scrap Mechanic (2016 ), Battle Brothers (2015), Renowned Explorers (2015),Yuppie Psycho (2019), Surviving Mars (2018), The End Is Nigh (2017), The Binding of Isaac: Afterbirth (2017), The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth (2014), BattleBlock Theater (2013) ), Full Metal Furies (2017), Binding of Isaac (2011), Rusted Warfare (2017).

findings

To begin with, I'm biased, I really like the technology of creating video games and I love my own engines and tools for creating games. I also made a contribution to the ecosystem of my own engines: raylib and several tools for creating games . I prefer proprietary licensed engines because I think that the extra effort put into product development usually results in the creation of particularly amazing mechanics or amazing features.

Despite this, we must admit that creating our own engine is a serious enterprise, and few people and companies are ready for it. I admit that Unity (and to a lesser extent Unreal) has democratized the development of video games, today many small and medium-sized companies can use this engine to quickly develop games, sometimes with very low budgets ... However, many large companies prefer to rely on their own technologies.

From the point of view of the game development teacher, I believe that students should study the internal structure of game engines as much as possible. Using engines like Unity / Unreal in study allows students to quickly create a beautiful project, but this is the wrong way. In the end, someone has to write an engine and all the tools!

Own game engines: a little research

LARGE companies

Medium Studios

(-)

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findings

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