New research from Perforce Software, the DevOps solutions company, has discovered that companies are increasingly using cutting-edge game engines for projects outwith traditional game development.

According to the recently-published 2024 State of Game Technology Report, 50% of survey respondents said they’re using game engines in non-games-related instances, such as education and training (12%), 3D art creation (9%), film and television (8%), marketing (7%), and digital twins (6%), among others.

Projects like these are also being undertaken by many industries and sectors outside of gaming, including the automotive industry, architecture, healthcare, transportation, finance, and military and defence.

“The report’s findings on game engine use aligns with the unprecedented adoption of game technology we’ve seen in other industries,” noted Brad Hart, CTO and VP of product management of digital creation at Perforce.

One of the main reasons for adopting and using games engines—otherwise known as “real-time 3D engines”—is the fact that game tech like this is usually at the bleeding edge of technological advancement, and not least when it comes to meeting needs of performance and scale.

Additionally, there’s inherent versatility, with game engines having integrations for usage across different workflows and industries—which is also as helpful for enhancing collaboration as it is consolidating toolsets.

“I really credit the game developers,” Hart added. “They have pioneered versatile workflows, around a set of foundational tools, that streamline collaboration and manage complexity at a global scale.”

In terms of the most popular engines, Unreal Engine—also called Unreal, or UE—is the preferred among respondents, with 63% of teams utilising it. Meanwhile, 47% of respondents said they use Unity, and 9% make use of Godot. 11% of respondents noted that they use their own custom-built engine.

Interestingly, when it comes to the media and entertainment industry in particular, the gap dramatically widens: teams prefer Unreal (51%) over Unity (16%).

Unreal and Unity aside, and generally-speaking, the report notes that Godot is being adopted at a rapid pace, with the fact that it’s free and open source being a key driver in its popularity. Further, there’s a community of over 600 contributors working to improve the engine by debugging and making user-requested enhancements.

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To uncover the report’s findings, 567 leaders and creators across different technical industries—and across 64 countries—were questioned. A third of people questioned worked in industries outside of gaming, and over 20 different staff roles and positions were represented, not least executives, product managers, and researchers.