After invading Ukraine, Russia has been banned by many well-known tech companies across the globe. While such global isolation could threaten the Russian game developers to lose their jobs, it seems like the tech giants of the country are already looking to find alternatives by seeking to fund a national game engine.

Now, months after the invasion, it is reported by the Russian outlet Kommersant (courtesy of PC Gamer) that some tech giants of the country, including VKontakte and Rostelecom, are in talks with the Ministry of Digital Development to fund a national game engine in Russia.

While there is still no official confirmation from the Russian government on such a project, the fact that some big tech companies in the country are pursuing the idea could be proof that it could actually turn into a reality in the near future.

Regarding the fact that VKontakte itself is an alternative to Facebook in Russia and has already achieved great success in the country, it wouldn’t be surprising to see a big-budget game engine becoming an alternative to Unreal Engine in the future. That being said, it still remains unknown how big of a budget the government would need to develop and support a game engine as big as Epic’s Unreal Engine.



Furthermore, even if Russia builds its own engine, there is an additional problem with publishing the games in the global market, as the country is in global isolation at the moment. Also, a new engine would require support from AMD and Nvidia to include features such as Ray-Tracing, DLSS, and FSR. But we already know that both of those GPU manufacturers have sanctioned Russia.

No matter wherever you live in this world, if you attempt to make a big-budget game, you either need to create your own engine or use third-party engines. Regarding the fact that many companies don’t have the knowledge and resources to create a new engine, they rather use a third-party engine like Unity, Unreal Engine, or Cry Engine to develop their title.

However, if for any reason you are not allowed to use the high-profile third-party game engines, you have no choice other than to make your own. Currently, that’s the problem Russian game developers are struggling with. After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Epic Games blocked Russian IPs from creating new projects in Unreal Engine, which made many Russian game developers worry about their future.

Posted: Jul 19, 2022 8:07 pm
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://www.dualshockers.com/russian-tech-giants-seeking-to-fund-a-new-national-game-engine/