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Godot adoption is rising: what are devs getting out of the engine?

Aug 18, 2026 | 5 min read

Godot's 'lightweight' features are a major reason why devs are sticking with the open source engine.

It's been three years since Unity upended the world of game development with the announcement of its now-canceled runtime fee—an event we may one day recognize as a major inflection point for engine-based game development. That's not just because it showed the limits of Unity's business model, but because it put a spotlight on an open-source engine attracting developer interest: Godot.

As their rage at Unity mounted, a number of developers realized that the engine named for the the titular character of Samuel Beckett's Waiting For Godot could be a viable alternative for those seeking affordable game development tools. But as Unity reversed course, it was worth watching if the engine would see widespread adoption, or if developers would resentfully return to familiar tools.

Three years later, it seems Godot is making major ground among developers. That's according to two data points we gathered in the last month—one from YouTube channel Game Makers Toolkit, which runs the long-running GMTK game jam, and statistics gathered from our peers at Omdia via the Game Developer Collective.

According to the Collective, which surveys a panel of developers on a wide range of topics, 12 percent of respondents said they use Godot as their engine of choice, an eight percent year-over-year increase. Meanwhile, according to Game Makers Toolkit, Godot was the engine of choice for 47 percent of game jam entrants, toppling Unity's nine-year run of being the most-used engine. Adoption of the tool spiked after the Unity runtime fee saga, and it's been increasing ever since.

Both data points show sure signs that developers are indeed finding Godot useful in ways that Unity or other engines aren't. So what's winning over developers? By sheer coincidence, this data landed right around our visit to Godotcon 2026, where we were able to quiz developers from a diverse range of backgrounds—hobbyists, toolmakers, artists, and newcomers—about why they've converted to using the engine.

While features like custom scripting language gdscript were "controversial," everyone we spoke with agreed: the engine's "lightweight" nature and ability to quickly test their work were what made it their new favorite tool of choice for making great games.

The phrase "lightweight" was one that kept popping up with Godotcon attendees, though for those who aren't always hip-deep in game engines, it's not clear what that might mean at first glance. According to Joey Yeo, a veteran game designer showcasing her team's game Ruffed Up, it refers to how quickly and easy it is to open the engine, implement a feature, and test it out.

"When you make a new Unity project right now, it takes like forever to open," she explained. "Meanwhile Godot just starts up and you start editing. That [slowness] really turned me off of using Unity for my personal projects."

This speed is made possible by the "particular way" that Godot's debugger is implemented, according to Xogot co-founder Miguel de Icaza. Icaza and his peers at Xogot make a version of Godot that runs on iOS and Mac devices, and he explained he had just been "dealing with this" while implementing C sharp and Swift support for the engine.

"When you're running your game and the game is suspended on the debugger, the engine is not suspended," he said, noting that suspending the engine is generally a requirement when working with compiled languages. But because Godot doesn't suspend the engine, only the user's script, developers are able to quickly jump in and out of their project. "The feedback loop is incredible."

That's also what we heard from developer Thomas Gelman, a recent graduate at the event showcasing his team's game Apocalypse Approaches. He and his friends had all learned Unity and Unreal Engine during their time in school, but began picking up Godot for game jams and settled on it as their engine of choice when setting out to make their first commercial game. "It can run on a potato," he said with some glee, referring to the lighter technical specifications needed to run the engine.

"It has a very composition-focused object model, which as a programmer I really enjoy because you can run things very atomically," he said, noting also that the fast testing time meant he and his team didn't need to make any "fancy theatrics or gyms" to test a feature in isolation.

Michael Grewer, head of Luna Chippy Games, comes to Godot from the opposite direction. A veteran programmer who's worked at Glu Mobile and Google, Grewer went independent to get back to the game-making side of game development, and even though he prefers C# over gdscript, they told us they find the engine's open-source nature, with its thorough documentation and access to the source code, to be a true boon to their work.

"The documentation is really good, but a couple of gaps. But I can look at the source code. It's really well written as far as I could tell, and it just really helped understand what was going on."

Something else played a part in Grewer's decision to adapt Godot: the runtime fee debacle with Unity. They noted that they had just started work on their game Iron Village just one day before the runtime fee announcement. It gave them motivation to look at different engines, and now they're a Godot believer. "I think I was surprised by just how well built everything was," Grewer recalled.

The topic hung over multiple conversations taking place around Godotcon, and wove its way into conversations about how long it takes to start up a project and implement changes in Unity (something Unity hopes to address in Unity 7).

It's no surprise that Unity veterans would have felt the impact and frustration of the aforementioned debacle, but even newer developers, like computer engineer Morgan Schneiss, said it influenced their decision to pick up Godot. "The thing that really made me say 'okay, [Godot] is probably ready for prime time... is knowing that like the Slay the Spire dev team actually jumped ship, and they got Slay the Spire 2 out really quickly after that announcement."

"You can make a make a real, serious game out of this that people will spend money on and like, feel passionate about. This isn't a toy. This is this is a real tool now."

Of course, even "real tools" have room for improvement. Gelman made one passionate plea that he hoped would reach the ears of the Godot Foundation: a request for multi-pass 2D shaders.

"Currently, if you want to have multiple shader effects on a single object, you either have to do something really hacky with something called a 'SubViewport' or you have to make an entirely new shader with all of your passes baked into it. That adds a lot of extra time and lots of extra files which could be handled in a much more simple way."

Game Developer and Omdia are sibling organizations under Informa.

Update 8/21: This story has been updated with additional image crediting and the correct spelling of "SubViewport."

Bryant Francis is a writer, journalist, and narrative designer based in Boston, MA. He currently writes for Game Developer, a leading B2B publication for the video game industry. His credits include Proxy Studios' 4X strategy game Zephon, Iron Anchor Studios' Down With The Ship, and Amplitude Studio's 2017 game Endless Space 2.

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Source: Bryant Francis · https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/godot-adoption-is-rising-what-are-devs-enjoying-about-the-engine-