What You Gain by Building Your Own Game Engine

Developing a custom game engine can still make business sense, despite a reported decrease in the percentage of games released on Steam using custom engines from 2012 to 2024. Games built with custom engines still accounted for 43% of units sold in 2024. A game engine is a reusable software framework that allows the creation and running of a computer game, sitting between the actual game code and the operating system.

Its primary role is to keep the game loop running and handle interactions with the operating system. This blog post explores the reasons why one should make a game engine, despite the popularity of commercial game engines like Unity and Unreal.

Building a custom engine provides insights into how commercial engines work, teaching developers about the range of possible game-engine architectures. This knowledge is particularly valuable for students who want to enter the game industry, as it allows them to explore alternative approaches and learn the fundamentals of game engine architectures, as opposed to simply learning the Unity or Unreal way.