Amazon Announces Free 'Lumberyard' Game Engine

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Amazon Games has launched Lumberyard, a free cross-platform game engine with AWS support and native Twitch integration. Hit the link for the complete rundown.

Amazon Lumberyard is a free, cross-platform, 3D game engine for you to create the highest-quality games, connect your games to the vast compute and storage of the AWS Cloud, and engage fans on Twitch. By starting game projects with Lumberyard, you can spend more of your time creating great gameplay and building communities of fans, and less time on the undifferentiated heavy lifting of building a game engine and managing server infrastructure.
 
Launching a game engine as their own? Does this seem not legal?
 
I think that qualifies as the stupidest game engine name ever, and that's saying something (cough, CryEngine, cough).
 
It is free, but since it works with all their platforms and services it will cost you in the end. Still it is good to have options.
 
I think it's a great name for what looks to be a great product. CryEngine sounds perfectly natural as well.
 
I don't understand why a game should need the "vast compute and storage of the AWS Cloud". Just give us good local games, that users can set up their own community servers for.

We don't need or want a cloud, or developer run servers.
 
Zarathustra[H];1042129896 said:
I don't understand why a game should need the "vast compute and storage of the AWS Cloud". Just give us good local games, that users can set up their own community servers for.

We don't need or want a cloud, or developer run servers.
Click to expand...

Online games with a shit ton of in app purchases need to store account data in the cloud :(
 
Zarathustra[H];1042129896 said:
I don't understand why a game should need the "vast compute and storage of the AWS Cloud". Just give us good local games, that users can set up their own community servers for.

We don't need or want a cloud, or developer run servers.
Click to expand...

According to their FAQ, anyone using Lumberyard can give you just that, no catches, no tricks. I haven't delved into the licensing terms to confirm it, but up front, it seems that they're banking on games being bigger with that cloud support and Twitch integration obviously and for devs to want to cash in on that. If anyone wants to build a little single-player game, they're not going to shake them down. Of course, who can say whether that won't change in the future if this doesn't turn out as profitable as it could be.
 
Zarathustra[H];1042129896 said:
I don't understand why a game should need the "vast compute and storage of the AWS Cloud". Just give us good local games, that users can set up their own community servers for.

We don't need or want a cloud, or developer run servers.
Click to expand...

Yeah you can do local games, but if a developer wants to make money (micro transactions and/or new features) they'll need a backend infrastructure to do that. Most developers\game makers who just want to make games don't want to spend time on that stuff and it looks like Lumberyard helps ease that process.
 
Is it legal?

I don't like the name!!


Good grief people.
 
Zarathustra[H];1042129896 said:
I don't understand why a game should need the "vast compute and storage of the AWS Cloud". Just give us good local games, that users can set up their own community servers for.

We don't need or want a cloud, or developer run servers.
Click to expand...
Because if a game is local, it doesn't die permanently when they inevitably shut down the central servers.
 
CryEngine was always expensive to license and having some financial issues when this deal happened. If anything it's one more quality game engine out there more widely available to developers. I don't see how that could be a bad thing. The other big plus is support for all the platforms.

For the cloud part, that might be the most interesting thing they are offering. A lot of games now offer cloud storage so you can load your games on whatever platform is available. Not something everyone will use, but for more mobile users that could be a solid feature. For smaller developers it's probably the way to go for data integrity and management. That could remove a lot of upfront costs on hardware. It should also be backed by knowledgeable IT staff that can avoid a lot of the issues some devs encounter. Getting swarmed on patch days, DDOS, simple hacking, etc.
 
I think it's pretty awesome, especially the inclusion of source code, but I also image it's going to keep Jim Sterling busy in a few weeks/months when a whole new batch of utterly worthless "baby's first video game" crap hits Steam Greenlight.
 
Exavior said:
Why do people think this isn't legal?
Click to expand...

Seriously, it's like if people started asking if Unity was legal. Why wouldn't Amazon be allowed to provide an engine that works on their platforms? Does it lock out other engines, and even if it did they can make a closed system if they want. It's the beauty of owning something. It's similar to the Xbone using directx.
 
Litfod said:
I think it's pretty awesome, especially the inclusion of source code, but I also image it's going to keep Jim Sterling busy in a few weeks/months when a whole new batch of utterly worthless "baby's first video game" crap hits Steam Greenlight.
Click to expand...

I'm okay with that. Sometimes the shovelware is entertaining to watch him get frustrated with.

At least now maybe will quit thinking he hates the Unity Engine if he has a new free engine to bitch about.
 
Nolan7689 said:
Seriously, it's like if people started asking if Unity was legal. Why wouldn't Amazon be allowed to provide an engine that works on their platforms? Does it lock out other engines, and even if it did they can make a closed system if they want. It's the beauty of owning something. It's similar to the Xbone using directx.
Click to expand...

Unity is free, Unreal is free, cryengine is free (think I had some requirements such as your game can't make over $X otherwise you have to pay), source is free

This is the new norm free game engines for Indy devs
 
Amazon licensed the engine from Crytek. And is probably the only reason they still exist.
 
The fact that everyone in this video is older than 30 is impressive. I am used to seeing zero people except maybe the head over the age of 25.
 
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