After the Russian government declared war on Ukraine, many people left the country, leaving a void in the games industry.

We’ve reported on several occasions that the invasion of Ukraine has led to several studios and companies leaving the two countries (or three, including Belarus). We recently reported that Halo Infinite’s post-launch content was slowing down. However, we must also approach the Russian situation from a different angle.

They already have Facebook’s alternative, VKontakte, but Kommersant reports that Russian tech companies (including VK) are starting to ask whether it would make sense to spend billions of rubles on a national game engine. According to a source close to the Russian government, tech companies are talking with the digital development ministry to find a local alternative to Unity and Unreal Engine to replace the departing Western technology.

The Russian government has been talking about digital sovereignty for a long time (when the disconnection from the internet was announced, it was about that, too), and this local engine topic has been floating around since the end of May. Big supporters include Anton Gorelkin (a ruling party member) and Rostelecom, the state-owned telecom company. They consider the implementation of the Russian engine “an important and urgent task”.

VK has recently been bought by companies close to the state gas giant Gazprom, probably to give the government more power over the company. With the backbone of the Russian internet backed by the state-owned company, it is almost certain that the idea has government backing. Still, it should be remembered that it is not easy to build an engine from scratch, and even if it were to be made, neither AMD nor Nvidia have ‘cut the cord’ with Russia and would not support the technology.

In short, there are ideas and support, but is there the competence to do it? If there isn’t, there’s not much chance of producing a quality engine that can be used. (Even in DRM, Starforce was pretty lame in hindsight… PC users remember it as a rootkit.)

Source: PCGamer