Russian government considering the creation and support of a game engine that will cost billions of Rubles

Russian developers met with representatives of the government and various grants to ask for millions of Rubles towards the creation of a game engine

As global economic pressure on Russia continues following the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian state is considering funding its own game engine. The idea would be to replace Unity, Unreal and the like in a situation where access to those is completely impossible. It would also make the Russian games industry – which is pretty massive – self-sufficient.

As reported by Kommersant, and translated by GLHF, various governmental bodies and funds are considering investing serious money into the development – “billions of Rubles.” It would require redeveloping all the many tools Unity and Unreal have had created for them over the years, as well as properly supporting graphics cards that may be difficult to get ahold of in Russia, again due to the war.

A game engine is the underlying framework that a video game is built on. It controls everything else and governs low-level things like optimisation and the basics of physics and movement. Good engines like Unreal and Unity can be wrestled to do just about anything, while some companies (id, Crytek, Bethesda) build their own for specific purposes. It’s a billion dollar element that forms the basis of just about the entire industry.

The information comes from a Kommersant source, who is close to the Russian government, who says that big tech players in the country, including VKontakte (VK), a massive social media platform, are discussing the possibility with the Ministry of Digital Development and the hopes of state funding. Said Ministry told Kommersant that they are “discussing with relevant market players the issue of the need for state support in terms of creating their own game engine and its relevant forms.”

Things are still in the earliest stages of planning, but it is moving ahead. The idea is to get together developers and find out what they need and how much work it would take. Then they’d start the work – though the Russian Foundation for the Development of Information Technologies (RFRIT), the fund they’d be applying for, says it hasn’t received any requests yet.

Saber Interactive, developers of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, are just one studio with developers in Russia. Others include 1C, Ice-Pick Lodge, and many more.

An expert from Russian IT company Innotech, speaking to Kommersant said they believe grant funding for such a project could be obtained through RFRIT and similar funds. Usually RFRIT provides funding of 20-500 million Rubles per project, but for projects deemed high-profile grants can reach six billion Rubles (~$153 million AUD, 100 million US). “To obtain it, it is necessary to prove the compliance of the solution with the priority areas of support, among which there are gaming services.”

The problem, of course, is that game engines take a huge amount of time and effort to become valuable. It would cost those billions of Rubles, and many more, to get a new game engine to the same point of usefulness as any major engine – just in terms of vital features, ready-made assets, and plugins that allow for ease of development. Then there would be training, troubleshooting, and so on.

The situation has come about following a meeting between the Russian government and various developers (also reported on Kommersant) surrounding the economic sanctions being put on the country. Russian MPs have shown support for the idea already. The state-owned telecoms company Rostelecom also sees it as an “important and topical task.” That’s the kind of strong backing this scale of investment requires to get off the ground.

Criticism would likely come from Russian developers and Western consumers. It’s unlikely there would be an upswell of support for a Russian state-owned game engine, given the country’s actions in recent years. Developers would also be committing very hard to working only in Russia were they to specialise in it, versus the international appeal of Unreal Engine. Plus, as another expert Kommersant spoke to points out, would Nvidia or AMD be willing to make any concessions to these engines in their own graphics drivers? It seems unlikely in the current climate.

Written by GLHF.