Over a Quarter of UK Studios Deploy Internal Proprietary Engine
TIGA, the network for games developers and digital publishers and the trade association representing the UK video games industry, has released new data showing that 72 per cent of UK studios use the Unity 3D Engine, while 27 per cent use an internal proprietary engine. TIGA’s data is based on a survey of over 10 per cent of UK games studios. A representative sample of small, medium and large studios developing games for mobile/tablet, PC, console and VR took part in the survey.
| Engine | Percentage of developers using engine[1] |
| Unity 3D Engine (Unity Technologies) | 72 |
| Unreal Engine (Epic Games) | 27 |
| Internal proprietary engine | 27 |
| Amazon Lumberyard (Amazon) | 4 |
| Cocos2d-x (Cocos) | 4 |
| Swift | 4 |
| Corona SDK | 3 |
| CryEngine (Crytek) | 3 |
| GameMaker Studio | 3 |
| Phyre Engine (Sony) | 2 |
| PixiJS | 2 |
| playCanvas | 2 |
| Octane | 1 |
| Clickteam Fusion 2.5 | 1 |
| Marmalade SDK (Marmalade) | 1 |
| Ren’PY | 1 |
| Virtygon | 1 |
Dr Richard Wilson OBE, TIGA CEO, said:
“Our survey shows that 27 per cent of participating UK studios use an internal proprietary engine, whilst Unity Technologies dominates the third party engine market.
“The majority of UK studios now self-publish. Studios often look for a third party engine that supports self-publishing operations, monetisation and analytics. The more that third party engine providers enable studios to self-publish effectively, the greater will be the opportunity to grow market share.”
Chris Kingsley OBE, CTO at Rebellion, which uses the internal proprietary engine Asura, said:
“Whilst the initial investment in developing your own game engine is greater, the technical challenges are higher and the time to start is longer, the ongoing costs tend to be lower, the general frustration level is lower and the long-term gains are greater.
“Your game engine will be tuned to your game type and its requirements. You will have all the access you need to the source code and at no extra cost, so you can find and fix bugs quickly. You will not have to constantly integrate changes every few months, which can take your engine and your game out of use for weeks. You will not have to pay engine royalties to anyone, or manage multiple seat licenses. Unless you want them to, no one can buy your engine and take it off the market, or redeploy the engine development team onto another project. Finally, your engine can be used for free on your next project.”
[1] Percentages exceed 100, because studios were allowed to select more than one response. For example, a studio might use both an internal proprietary engine and a third party engine, depending on the nature of the game being developed.