How's PC Game Engine Usage Changing?

GameDiscoverCo's March 2026 newsletter uses newly added engine-scanning data on more than 33,000 Steam games to examine how PC game engine usage has shifted over roughly a decade. The scanning adapts SteamDB tech detection. The sample covers all games with over $500k lifetime Steam revenue, thousands of others, and all free or demoed titles, so it is imperfect but broad. The headline finding is that Godot has grown sharply without taking share from the two dominant engines.

By number of released games, Godot rose from 0.9% in 2020 to 7.1% in 2025 and accounts for 8.6% of unreleased games scanned. Its footprint in game jams is larger still: 39% of 2025 GMTK Jam entries used it, up from 13% in 2021. Unity has held steady at about 50-51% of releases, dipping to 49.4% in 2025, while Unreal climbed from 15% to roughly 20%. The big loser is the custom-engine approach, with "no obvious engine" falling from 27% in 2017 to 13% in 2025. GameMaker appears to have lost about 2% of share, likely to Godot. Brotato is the highest-grossing Godot title on Steam, and the Godot games examined together gross around $100m.

Filtering to games earning over $500k changes the picture: Unity rises to 53.7%, Unreal to 22.5%, and Godot falls to 4.1%. A GDC 2026 developer survey, likely skewed toward larger studios, found 42% naming Unreal as their primary engine versus 30% for Unity. Unity shows more small-team breakouts such as Schedule I, Megabonk and CloverPit, while Unreal's top new releases are mostly larger productions. The top 50 new Unreal games of the past year grossed about $1.8 billion on Steam versus roughly $930m for Unity's top 50, though development costs likely differ widely.

The newsletter also covers Steam wishlist trends led by Crimson Desert, GDC awards, platform news, and February Roblox charts, where Rivals took the top-earning spot.