Retail giant Amazon has made its Lumberyard game engine available as an open source project.

The firm has released a version of this tech into the newly-created Open 3D Foundation, which has been created by 20 companies, including Amazon, Adobe, Huawei and Niantic. This is being overseen by The Linux Foundation.

The version of Lumberyard that's included in this scheme is called Open 3D Engine (O3DE), which Amazon says is actually different to Lumberyard. The tech is inspired by its own engine, but it features a number of new features to futureproof it.

"We aimed to build an engine that could stand the test of time in an open source world," the firm wrote.

"Because game engines tend to be monolithic, we leaned heavily toward becoming modular with extensibility, embracing open standards tooling from the onset."

Amazon created Lumberyard back in 2016. It's based on Crytek's CryEngine, which it licensed until 2015.

The tech has had some issues, with staff at Amazon Game Studios telling reporters that the engine is a nightmare to work with. Amazon was reportedly thinking about allowing its developers to use other game engines.