What is Godot?

Godot is a fully featured modern game engine, providing all of the features described in the previous section and more. It is also completely free and open source, released under the very permissive MIT license. This means there are no fees, no hidden costs, and no royalties to pay on your game's revenue. Everything you make with Godot 100% belongs to you, which is not the case with many commercial game engines that require an ongoing contractual relationship. For many developers, this is very appealing.

If you're not familiar with the concept of open source, community-driven development, this may seem strange to you. However, much like the Linux kernel, Firefox browser, and many other very well-known pieces of software, Godot is not developed by a company as a commercial product. Instead, a dedicated community of passionate developers donate their time and expertise to building the engine, testing and fixing bugs, producing documentation, and more.

As a game developer, the benefits of using Godot are vast. Because it is unencumbered by commercial licensing, you have complete control over exactly how and where your game is distributed. Many commercial game engines restrict the types of projects you can make, or require a much more expensive license to build games in certain categories, such as gambling.

Godot's open source nature also means there is a level of transparency that doesn't exist with commercial game engines. For example, if you find that a particular engine feature doesn't quite meet your needs, you are free to modify the engine itself and add the new features you need, no permission required. This can also be very helpful when debugging a large project, because you have full access to the engine's internal workings.

It also means that you can directly contribute to Godot's future. See Chapter 7, Additional Topics, for more information about how you can get involved with Godot development.