STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN - May 19, 2021 - Exactly one year ago we had the pleasure of announcing that King had made the decision to share the Defold source code and transfer ownership of Defold to the Defold Foundation. We are very proud of what we have achieved during our first 365 days of operations and we would like to take the opportunity to share some of the highlights.
The launch
The news of the new Defold Foundation and the availability of the Defold source code quickly spread and the announcement was covered by Gamasutra, Pocket Gamer, GameIndustry.biz, Gaming on Linux, Game from Scratch and many more. There was some initial confusion regarding the license but the overall launch was indeed a success. A longer interview in the Game World Observer a few weeks later covered the launch and the reasons behind the move from King.
The corporate partners
Defold is and always will be a free to use game engine, without licensing fees or royalties and it is made available with a developer-friendly license. The fact that Defold is free to use now and in the future is ensured by the objectives of the foundation.
The foundation offers a partnership program to corporations and organisations that wish to support the goals of the foundation and fund specific functionality and features. The support from our corporate partners ensure that we can continue to develop and offer a free game engine for professionals and hobbyists alike.
The first corporate partner to join the Defold Foundation was HeroicLabs. Soon after, the foundation was awarded a substantial grant from Grant for the Web to promote and explore the use of the Web Monetization standard in games.
In August Melsoft Games joined as a platinum partner. Thanks to the corporate partnership the foundation has been able to accelerate development of new features for Android and iOS that are used in Melsoft’s hit game Family Island and by the Defold community at large.
At the end of the year Game Distribution joined and in February the foundation announced a partnership with Rive Inc. to add support for Rive real-time animations in Defold.
We thank our corporate partners for their continued support!
Nintendo Switch
The biggest development milestone is without a doubt the launch of Nintendo Switch support in Defold. Not only had our community asked for Nintendo Switch support for quite some time but the capabilities of Defold were perfectly suited for the Nintendo Switch. It also turned out to be very easy to port to the platform and it was a real pleasure to work with the Nintendo Switch SDK!
Games made with Defold
The Defold developer community has continued to release great games made with Defold. We’ve seen a number of games released on Nintendo Switch, with Interrogation by Critique Gaming, being one of the most well known.
We have also heard of success stories from Defold developers releasing games on Poki, GameDistribution and Yandex.Games. 7Spot Games has released a series of co-op games on Poki, and Puffy Cat with its adorable squishy physics is another notable release on Poki. Open My Game have had great success with their puzzle games on Yandex.Games.
Finally, Ben James has continued to be extremely productive with a handful of new games released on itch.io.
Final thoughts
Defold has come a long way since it was first launched by King in 2016 as a closed source, but free to use game engine. At times the engine has evolved rapidly at a pace where it is hard to keep up, and other times a bit more slowly, but ever improving! We’ve had the pleasure and privilege of making this journey together with an absolutely amazing community of game developers. The community has encouraged us at every step of the way and we are truly grateful for their support. Defold could not exist without all of the great developers out there releasing games using our engine. Thank you!
Sincerely,
Björn Ritzl
The Defold Foundation