Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Computing
  3. News

Amazon gets in on gaming with Lumberyard, a free engine to rival Unreal and Unity

By

Over the past few years, Amazon has been acquiring a number of companies and technologies relating to video games. In 2014 the company acquired both Killer Instinct developer Helix Games and game live-streaming service Twitch. Now the reasoning behind that seems to make much more sense, as the company has revealed its own game engine designed to compete with Unreal Engine and Unity.

The engine, dubbed Amazon Lumberyard, was announced today by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is available to developers for free. In addition to the standard features of a 3D game engine, it also features built-in Twitch integration. Alongside Lumberyard, the company also announced GameLift, a service to help developers scale servers for multiplayer games up and down depending on how many people are playing at a given time.

Recommended Videos

“When we’ve talked to game developers, they’ve asked for a game engine with the power and capability of leading commercial engines, but that’s significantly less expensive, and deeply integrated with AWS for the back-end and Twitch for the gamer community,” said the vice president of Amazon Games, Mike Frazzini, in a statement. “We’re excited to deliver that for our game developers today with the launch of Amazon Lumberyard and Amazon GameLift.”

The Twitch integration goes far beyond simply streaming gameplay. Lumberyard includes a feature called ChatPlay that allows developers to build features that let Twitch viewers directly impact the game they’re watching. Support for chat commands is included, which means that “Twitch Plays” game runs will be supported without any additional work on the part of those setting up the channels.

If you’ve ever wanted to hop into a game you’re watching, another feature of Lumberyard called Twitch Join will let you do just that. Assuming the developer builds support for the feature into the game, streamers will be able to invite viewers to join them in-game with one click.

lumberyard-pirate
Image used with permission by copyright holder

If you’re wondering why Amazon would give this away, it’s similar to why Unreal Engine and Unity are both available for free. The difference here is that instead of collecting royalties or selling developers extra features, Amazon plans to make money using GameLift and AWS. GameLift costs $1.50 per 1,000 daily active users, and developers will have to pay the standard rate for AWS.

Still, this looks to be a promising tool for developers, with Amazon boasting that the tools included in Lumberyard allow developers to quickly create stunning worlds and characters. For studios focused on multiplayer or social games, the new engine could be the best place to start.

Amazon Lumberyard is currently available in beta for developers who are building games for both the PC and consoles. Mobile and VR platforms are both planned as well, and are currently listed as “coming soon.” For more information, see the Lumberyard website.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Kris Wouk
Kris Wouk
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…
How Unreal Engine 5 is tackling the biggest problem in PC gaming
unreal engine 5 tackling biggest problem pc graphics respec

During its State of Unreal address at GDC 2023, Epic announced a wide-ranging suite of features for Unreal Engine 5.2. But perhaps the most important feature coming in the updated engine doesn't relate to lighting, geometry detail, or ray tracing. It's all about performance.

Unreal Engine games, rightly or wrongly, have been associated with stuttering and hitches over the past few years. With the new release, Epic is finally tackling the problem head-on, so I thought it was high time to break down why Unreal games so commonly show stutter, what Epic is doing to solve the problem, and when we can expect to see those efforts show up in new releases.
Remember the stutter
These frame time spikes manifest as severe stutters in Gotham Knights. Image used with permission by copyright holder

Read more
You need to get this oddball Zelda game for free before the 3DS eShop closes
legend of zelda twilight princess nintendo wii grandma grandmother reddit 755 hours

The day of reckoning is fast approaching: The Nintendo 3DS and Wii U eShop isclosing down on March 27. When that happens, you’ll no longer be able to make any digital purchases on those systems. Considering that several games on each platform only ever got digital releases, it’s creating a bit of a preservation nightmare. Hidden gems that never came to another platform, like Affordable Space Adventures, will be totally lost to time.

But it isn’t just obscure indies that are impacted by that change: One of Nintendo’s biggest franchises is about to lose a piece of its storied history. You’ve only got just over a week to grab a certain Legend of Zelda game before it disappears forever -- though it’s probably not one you’re expecting.

Read more
Amazon Games will publish the next Tomb Raider title
Rise of the Tomb Raider

Amazon Games today announced that it will publish the next Tomb Raider game from Crystal Dynamics.

Crystal Dynamics first teased this new Tomb Raider title during an Unreal Engine 5 showcase in March. Shortly thereafter, Square Enix sold Crystal Dynamics -- as well as its sister studios Eidos Montreal and Square Enix Montreal -- to Embracer Group for $300 million. This obviously left the new Tomb Raider without a publisher, and rather than self-publishin,g Crystal Dynamics has decided to partner with Amazon Games.

Read more