Video Game Insights: Game Engines on Steam in 2025
Unreal Engine is slowly capturing the market of PC development.
The sample size is over 13,000 games on Steam.
Overall state of engines in the market
51% of all games released on Steam in 2024 were made with Unity. 28% were made with Unreal Engine, 5% - with Godot, 4% - with GameMaker.
However, when it comes to revenue, the situation changes dramatically. 41% of all money was earned by games on custom internal engines (mainly AAA projects). Games on Unreal Engine earned 31%, while on Unity - 26%. The shares of other engines in revenue are minimal.
When looking at projects by category, several dependencies are visible. Smaller projects are most often made with Unity, Godot, and GameMaker. The more successful the project, the more likely it's made with a custom engine. It's also evident that Unreal Engine is more popular among developers working on medium-sized and larger projects.
Trends in engine usage over the past 13 years
The popularity of custom engines is decreasing. In 2012, 71% of all games were released on them, while in 2024 - only 13%. This is due to the growth in the number of indie projects, increased accessibility of public engines, as well as high costs of maintaining proprietary engines.
Unreal Engine has been gradually capturing a larger market share since 2015. Unity, on the other hand, has started to lose some ground since 2021.
The popularity of Godot and GameMaker has grown over the past few years, mainly among small teams.
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When looking at engines in the revenue structure, custom engines account for 42% of all money earned. For the first time since 2014, they accounted for less than half of all revenue on Steam.
❗️This was likely influenced by two factors: firstly, there are AAA developers who have completely switched to Unreal Engine 5. Secondly, there's pressure from small developers and their financial success on the platform.
2024 turned out to be extremely successful for games on Unreal Engine. Projects on this engine account for 31% of all money earned on Steam. For the first time since 2018, more than projects on Unity.
Video Game Insights predicts that the share of custom engines in the market will continue to fall while the role of Unreal Engine will grow.
The transition from a proprietary engine to a public one is associated with many factors - both positive (develops faster; large community; often - turns out cheaper than maintaining an internal team; easier to hire people) and negative (pricing can be unpredictable; the engine needs to be customized for own needs; lack of control; cost of transitioning from one engine to another).
The share of Unreal Engine 5 reached 72% in 2024. Adaptation is taking a bit longer than with Unreal Engine 4.
Some of the biggest games of 2024 were made with Unreal Engine - Black Myth: Wukong, Palworld, Manor Lords, Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth; S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.
Godot is the only small engine that has grown significantly in recent years.
Statistics show that the choice of game engine heavily depends on the genre. Unity is popular among creators of city builders, turn-based RPGs, Roguelike projects. Unreal Engine's popularity is significantly higher among FPS, Souls-like projects, Action RPGs.
