The open source Godot game engine just announced they are the recipient of a $120,000 USD development grant from the game development company Kefir. Kefir is a game development firm based out of Russia responsible for survival mobile titles Last Day on Earth and Grim Soul. There seem to be no strings attached or preconditions on the development grant.
Details from the GodotEngine blog:
We are delighted to announce that the game development studio Kefir is giving the Godot Engine project a USD 120,000 grant to fund further development of the engine. Thank you Kefir for supporting our free and open source game engine!
Kefir is known for hit survival games such as Last Day on Earth, Grim Soul and Frostborn (not made with Godot). They’re currently using Godot for internal prototypes and are considering using it more in the future.
Like all grants, sponsoring and donations given to the not-for-profit Godot project, these funds are managed by our legal and fiscal sponsor Software Freedom Conservancy, and will be used to accelerate development of our free and open source game engine.
Such funding enables us to hire more contributors to work on the areas which need it most, as well as renew contracts for the currently hired contractors – always with the guarantee that all the work done by contractors is under Godot’s MIT license and beneficial to the community as a whole.
Kefir executive Alyosha Stalin had the following comment on the grant:
Many thanks to the Godot team for their incredible contribution to game development. It’s a great honor for us to provide a little help in this grand endeavor. And we are always ready to support powerful, cool, and unusual games and teams, regardless of their platform, tools, and stage of development.
You can learn more about the grant in the video below.