W4 Games, the business company behind the open source game engine Godot, announced an $8.5 million investment led by OSS Capital, a world-renowned open source business investment firm, and Silicon Valley’s leading VC LUX Capital, which specializes in emerging technology venture capital. Industry veteran and Red Hat founder Bob Young and gaming-focused venture capital fund Sisu Game Ventures also participated in the investment.

According to reports, the funds will be used to expand the core development team of W4 Games and accelerate the development of the product and service suite of the Godot ecosystem, allowing all developers toCreate and publish games and applications on all major platforms. W4 Games will present its product roadmap at GDC 2023.

Juan Linietsky, CEO of W4 Games and co-founder of Godot, said this is a great opportunity to help Godot and the game development community reach their potential and make a significant contribution to the open source ecosystem. The video game industry has long lagged the rest of the software industry when it comes to open source technology adoption, and he hopes to help change that by providing a high-quality service that benefits both the Godot community and the gaming industry as a whole.

W4 Games was founded by Godot’s core developer team with the goal of enhancing and improving Godot’s open source ecosystem through commercial products and services, and providing services to help developers or companies create successful products in the commercial game field. W4 Games will also directly support the Godot project through donations, talent development and code contributions.