At Embark Studios, we're on a mission to blur the line between playing and making.
Technology is reshaping our industry, and open source is a big part of that. We want to be part of this change, by exploring and applying the latest technology, by being honest and transparent in our relationship with each other and our community, and by allowing our curiosity to lead us down unexpected paths.
Want to know more about how we're applying our strategy day-to-day? Check out How to Open Source at Embark.
Why we think open source brings value to Embark.
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It's the right thing to do.
Our computers, our software, our games, and our world run on open source. Without a thriving open source ecosystem, we would not be where we are today. To make sure we (and others) keep innovating, we contribute back to this ecosystem and help enabling an open and collaborative games industry.
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Supporting open tools is more efficient than building our own
The era of massive closed-source game engines and bespoke, proprietary tooling is coming to an end. Today, the open source community is thriving and building amazing and innovative tools in many areas. By investing in or contributing to these open tools, we can build and innovate faster at a lower cost while enabling others at the same time.
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Sharing our work gives us new perspectives
Instead of working in isolation, we can share what we're building with the world. This gives us unique insights from people outside of the company and even outside of the industry, which help us find new ideas and solutions.
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Being transparent helps us find collaborators
By openly sharing what we're interested in and working on, we connect and start to have conversations with others who are interested in collaborating with us. We've already found multiple new unlikely partnerships outside our immediate network and industry.
How we engage with open source as a company.
🗃 Open-source by default.
For everything new we develop, we consider if and when it can be open sourced.
We don't open source everything, but we do open source our projects where it makes sense. If we develop something that is reusable, not tied to proprietary systems or game products, and will be maintained for the foreseeable future, we make it public.
(See our how-to guide for information about assessing whether to open-source a project)
🎤 Lead the conversation.
We work in a lot of spaces where there are big problems with no clear answers. Embark should drive open conversations and collaborations around solving these problems, acting as a "thought leader" in the space. We do this by building open projects, joint communities, and actively inviting collaboration.
💶 Support strategically.
We give back to the community and support developers who are making great things, and we strategically invest in projects and developers that share and work towards our goals, directly or indirectly. This can involve monetary sponsorship of individuals or projects, contract work for specific tasks, or allocated resources.
We strongly believe companies that professionally use and rely on open source software have a responsibility to support the developers and maintainers of it.