In a major move for the game development industry, COCOS has announced the full open-sourcing of its COCOS 4 game engine. This strategic decision, following its acquisition by SUD, releases the engine's core repositories under a permissive MIT license, removing all previous commercial clauses and marking a significant shift towards community-driven, AI-native development.
Quick Intel
COCOS 4, the evolution of Cocos Creator 3.x, is now fully open-source under an MIT license.
Key repositories for the engine, CLI, and cross-platform code are publicly available on GitHub.
The primary motivation is to accelerate AI-native development and activate a global developer community.
Long-term development will focus on six areas: AI Native, Lightweight design, Cross-Platform support, Reliability, Completeness, and 3D capabilities.
SUD confirms no direct commercialization targets for COCOS 4, focusing instead on ecosystem growth.
The Cocos Creator editor is evolving into a separate IDE called PinK, designed to work with the open-source engine.
A Complete Open-Source Release
The scope of the open-source release is comprehensive, making the core engine, cross-platform compatibility code, command-line interface (CLI), and the headless mode of the Integrated Development Environment (IDE) publicly accessible. Crucially, the project adopts the standard MIT License, a permissive agreement that grants developers unrestricted use rights and removes previous commercial restrictions. This move is designed to fully unlock community collaboration and innovation.
Strategic Development Pillars
The long-term roadmap for COCOS 4 is built around six core directions. The foremost is becoming AI Native, with JavaScript/TypeScript remaining primary and new features designed specifically for AI agents. The engine will also pursue being Lightweight and highly modular, expand Cross-Platform support to new native platforms, improve Reliability by addressing long-standing bugs, enhance Completeness with essential systems like terrain and networking, and patiently strengthen foundational 3D capabilities.
Driving Ecosystem Growth Through Open Source
The company outlined a clear strategic motivation for this shift. Open source is viewed as the best path to create a truly AI-native engine that artificial intelligence can effectively understand and utilize. Furthermore, it aims to activate a global developer community through pull requests, drawing in international talent committed to open-source values. SUD’s strategy is complementary: by fostering a robust ecosystem where developers can succeed more easily with a free, powerful engine, it stimulates the creation of more game content, which is critical to SUD's long-term platform success.
Clarifying the Future Structure
A key clarification was made regarding the product lineup. Moving forward, COCOS will refer specifically to the open-source game engine, now at version 4. The familiar Cocos Creator editor is evolving into a separate, fully-featured IDE called PinK, which will offer visual tools and built-in AI agents designed to support development with the COCOS engine. The company encourages secondary development and packaging based on the open-source components, welcoming high-quality contributions back to the main projects.
This full open-sourcing of COCOS 4 represents a foundational change in strategy, betting on community and AI to drive the next era of lightweight game development. By removing licensing barriers and focusing on developer success, COCOS and SUD are positioning the engine as a cornerstone for an open, collaborative, and innovative global game development ecosystem.
About SUD
As the world's leading GI (Gamification Interactive) platform — also known as an in-app game distribution platform — SUD provides services to more than 2,000 top-tier traffic platforms worldwide.
For more information, visit www.sud.tech/en
About COCOS
As the world's leading lightweight general-purpose game engine, COCOS boasts a complete workflow including an IDE, along with a global community of over 1.7 million game developers. COCOS holds an absolute leading position in the in-app game space.
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