I am new to game dev, I like godot and intend to use it. I learned of a semi-recent internet storm involving some bans and blocks at least on social media over social topics. I’m not commenting on the issue itself, I understand there are very strong opinions on it, but I would like to know if I need to be concerned about future controversies affecting some product that uses the engine. I don’t have anything in mind, I just want to know ahead of time to avoid another unity problem where new policies hurt small devs. I’m pretty sure this is all just internet drama but I’d like to know for sure.
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The short answer is: no.
I don’t have the energy at the moment to go into a longer explanation.
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Godot does not require any account to use the engine and does not even need internet connection so it is not possible to ban anyone from using it.
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No, Godot’s license (MIT) is very permissive. You can use the engine as you see fit, no one can legally prevent you from doing so.
In it’s entirety:
Copyright (c) 2014-present Godot Engine contributors (see AUTHORS.md).
Copyright (c) 2007-2014 Juan Linietsky, Ariel Manzur.Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy
of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal
in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights
to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell
copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is
furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all
copies or substantial portions of the Software.THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY,
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE
AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER
LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM,
OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE
SOFTWARE.
You may heard of people being banned from submitting pull requests to work on the engine itself. These bad actors’ spam wastes real contributors time and energy, in total there were less than a dozen banned from contributing to the Godot engine. Those people are still able and allowed to work on games using Godot, and able to play games made in Godot.
As mentioned above the source code in Godot does not have accounts nor connects to the internet for any reason other than downloading plugins.
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No one can block you from using an open-source engine; to be active official spaces (like this forum) you simply need to follow the Godot Code of Conduct to ensure a safe environment for everyone involved.
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Short answer is no dear
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