Amazon has released a new, free game engine, Lumberyard, which offers deep integration with its Amazon Web Services server infrastructure and also with Twitch, its video game-focused streaming service.
The engine, including its full source code, is completely free to download and use to make PC and console games. Amazon will not charge any kind of royalty or subscription fee.
Lumberyard is powerful and full-featured enough to develop triple-A, current-gen console games. The company has signed official tools deals with Microsoft and Sony, so you can immediately build games for the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 with it. Mobile support will come later.
Monetisation 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. GameLift will cost $1.50 per 1,000 daily active users; AWS services will be charged at the normal rates.
The game engine is in beta, but is freely usable and downloadable today.n Lumberyard’s core engine technology is based on Crytek’s CryEngine. Amazon licensed the German studio’s engine and got “full, unencumbered access to the technology” to build upon, says Mike Frazzini, vice president of Amazon Games.
However, Lumberyard represents a branch of that tech, and the company is replacing or upgrading many of CryEngine’s systems. Future versions of CryEngine and Lumberyard will continue to diverge.
At launch, Lumberyard already has components that are not based on CryEngine. Aside from adding the AWS SDK to the engine, Amazon has also brought in new low-latency networking code based on what Double Helix, the Southern California studio it acquired in 2014, developed for Xbox One fighting game Killer Instinct.
The company is hoping that Lumberyard will appeal to developers who make games that thrive on broadcasting, online and eSports scenes, and user-generated content. The engine is “mod-friendly,” meaning that developers can package up Lumberyard’s level and item creation tools as a “subset tool chain” and distribute them with their game for players to use.
