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Russia is looking to make its own game engines

Russia is looking to make its own game engines

It seems that Russia is trying to create its own version of game engines like Unity and Unreal.

That's according to local news publication Kommersantas spotted by The Game Spoof – which reports that some of the country's biggest tech players – including Facebook equivalent VK – are in talks with the Ministry of Digital Development about the possibility of making a game engine. The Russian Ministry of Digitization has even confirmed that yes, this is a thing that the country is looking to do with deputy minister Maxim Parszyn overseeing the initiative.

Talks about a Russian game engine first took place back on May 18th, with developers pointing out that many game projects rely on Unity and Unreal. With the ongoing war in Ukraine and the ensuing sanctions, it's entirely possible that studios in Russia will have their access to this tech cut off over time.

Funding might come from the Russian Foundation for Information Technology Development. One developer is reported as saying that while the project is entirely possible, it would be a challenging feat, not least due to the fact that most of the popular third-party game engines on the market have been around for a long time and therefore have had chance to evolve and become very advanced.

Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, chip makers Intel and AMD stopped selling hardware to Russia.


PCGamesInsider Contributing Editor

Alex Calvin is a freelance journalist who writes about the business of games. He started out at UK trade paper MCV in 2013 and left as deputy editor over three years later. In June 2017, he joined Steel Media as the editor for new site PCGamesInsider.biz. In October 2019 he left this full-time position at the company but still contributes to the site on a daily basis. He has also written for GamesIndustry.biz, VGC, Games London, The Observer/Guardian and Esquire UK.