July 28, 2026
Engine drama hits start
So, you want to make a game engine (2023)
Gamers are ditching big tools and yelling, ‘Fine, I’ll build my own!’
TLDR: After Unity’s pricing mess, one developer made the case for building your own game-making tools instead of trusting big platforms. In the comments, people split between calling it empowering and calling it the ultimate procrastination move: fun to build, harder to actually ship a game.
A blog post about making your own game engine—basically the software toolkit used to build a video game—has turned into a mini soap opera about freedom, ego, creativity, and whether developers secretly enjoy suffering. The writer, reacting to Unity’s recent pricing chaos, argues that building your own tools can mean more control, lower costs, smaller games, and no surprise corporate nonsense. It’s also, in their telling, a huge learning experience and, yes, genuinely fun.
But the comments are where the real fireworks are. One camp is deeply romantic about it: building from scratch is about mastery, ownership, and becoming the boss of your own creative world. Another camp immediately delivered the funniest roast in the thread: making the engine is the fun part; making the actual game is the boring part. Ouch. That hot take practically writes the meme itself: developers spending years crafting the perfect toolbox just to avoid finishing the house.
There’s also a culture-war edge to the discussion. Some readers say custom tools are the antidote to one giant company dominating everything, with one commenter openly warning against an “Unreal Engine monoculture.” Others pushed back on the caricature that every coder thinks they can casually whip up a game engine over the weekend, pointing out that not everyone is delusional—and yes, some people actually have shipped games. The vibe is half inspiring manifesto, half group therapy, with a side of “look, I just don’t want a corporation changing the rules after I’ve built my whole career there.”
Key Points
- •The article uses Unity’s 2023 pricing controversy as context for renewed debate over switching engines versus building a custom one.
- •The author says they have spent about three years developing a personal engine that has grown to roughly 100,000 lines of code.
- •According to the article, the custom engine has been used for more than a dozen game jam titles and one released commercial game.
- •The article lists practical motivations for building an engine, including independence from corporate decisions, cost control, optimization, architectural flexibility, and full technical control.
- •The author emphasizes that enjoyment of programming and the learning gained from engine development are major reasons to pursue such a project.