25 years in, Havok unveils royalty-free pricing for budgets up to $20 million
For 25 years the logo of middleware tech company Havok has graced the loading screens of big-budget games from across the industry.
Its plugins drive the ragdoll and particle physics of games like Helldivers 2, its cloth simulation technology makes the capes of Destiny 2 flap in the wind, and its pathfinding tech helps the monstrosities of Elden Ring wander the The Lands Between.Despite how far its name has traveled, the company's kept a low profile in that time, letting its clients take the bulk of the credit for the boundary-pushing physics.
But economic shifts in the industry seemed to drive the company to surface at the 2025 Game Developers Conference.At the event, Havok announced a new pricing model for developers working on budgets under $20 million.
The company's normally high-end offerings haven't been affordable for many developers, and while they aren't ready to support low budget indies just yet, general manager David Cochrane told Game Developer that the company now wants to work with studios with "tens" of employees, not necessarily "hundreds."Developers on those lower budgets can now license tools like Havok Physics and Havok Navigation for the low low price of $50,000 per Havok product.
There's no royalty fee, and studios can also use plug-in versions of the tools for Unreal Engine.Related:To see a company known for selling premium tools for big-budget games open up to the lower-tier market is quite a phenomenon—especially in an era where the biggest hits of 2025 include Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 and RuneScape Dragonwilds.
Small games are becoming bigger hits—and to hear Cochrane tell it, Havok seems to be following the trend.Havok is the rare middleware company to last 25 yearsCochrane explained to Game Developer that Havok began planning the new pricing scheme after studying how many mid-sized studios were planning more ambitious games using Unreal Engine.
Havok is a "good fit" for Unreal he said, and to see developers embracing the kinds of solutions Havok offers—but not being able to afford its offerings—began to shift their thinking.It's the kind of adaptation Havok has made repeatedly over the last 25 years, following what Cochrane described as the "creativity" of developers.
But it's not the kind of creativity you might think of at first glance.
Cochrane praised the gameplay advancements and new kinds of ideas that emerged from the last two-and-a-half decades, but the company's primary focus has been the creativity of technical problem-solving the industry has produced.
"The industry has always found creative ways to deliver games that make the most of the of their chosen platform," he said, alluding to the ways developers adapt to online networking or "diversity of hardware." Most recently, he said Havok has paid close attention to the rise of powerful handheld devices like the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck—and how developers are making "new kinds of games" suited for those devices.Related:But not every trend Havok's been around for has stuck.
He recalled the rise of early Facebook games around 2009-2012.
If that trend had stayed around, Havok would have been in a tough spot since Facebook games don't need expensive physics or cloth simulation technology.
"There was almost a sense of 'was the whole industry gonna have to pivot hard toward this?'" he recalled.It didn't.
"There can be a new style of game that comes along—whether that's a live service, or whether it's a social game, or whatever—when MAU numbers are high, the whole industry will take notice, but the game industry always tends to drift back toward an equilibrium which involves many different types of games across many different platforms."So even with the surge of fast-followers for UGC games like Roblox and Minecraft—few of which need Havok's high-end physics and cloth technology—Cochrane said there will still be an audience for games gushing with plentiful particles.Related:The next space for innovation: AI navigationLike everyone else at GDC, Cochrane had a lot to say about AI—but not the same kind of AI that had everyone else aflutter.Cochrane explained that Havok's most overlooked product its its AI navigation tech—but it's also one the most quietly groundbreaking pieces in the company's portfolio.
"What we're really seeing now is an increased diversity in the the scale of different characters that [players] come across in a game," he said.
Games have had enormous enemies for years, but newer pathfinding tech allows gigantic creatures to share space with smaller in-game characters instead of having their own dedicated areas.Image via Havok.He referenced FromSoftware's Elden Ring here, a game where players can be fighting twisted knights in ruins one minute, then be ambushed by a dragon the next, often in the same area.
It's not the only game in 2025 we've seen playing with new ideas of what NPCs should be doing in a game.
Just hours later the folks at Bloober Team showed us the ambitious combat system of Cronos: The New Dawn, and earlier this year we were surprised by how the massive monsters of Eternal Strands were able to smoothly navigate through the game's open environments.He called this evolution a "common theme" across the industry—one that makes for a fascinating pairing with Havok's decision to chase smaller studios.
"The reality is...the sizes of worlds that people are dealing with at the moment are stressing some of the historic techniques that would have been used to build [methods] for navigation," he said.
"Some of the things we're doing is showing ways in which we can have very memory-efficient representations for navigation.
We can allow characters to navigate across large worlds that might include streamed geometry in and out.""Now you won't actually hold the whole game world in memory at one point in time, but you still want NPCs that can actually navigate naturally through those larger environments.
That's an area we're investing a lot in."Game Developer and GDC are sibling organizations under Informa Tech.
Source:
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#years #havok #unveils #royaltyfree #pricing #for #budgets #million25 years in, Havok unveils royalty-free pricing for budgets up to $20 million
For 25 years the logo of middleware tech company Havok has graced the loading screens of big-budget games from across the industry.
Its plugins drive the ragdoll and particle physics of games like Helldivers 2, its cloth simulation technology makes the capes of Destiny 2 flap in the wind, and its pathfinding tech helps the monstrosities of Elden Ring wander the The Lands Between.Despite how far its name has traveled, the company's kept a low profile in that time, letting its clients take the bulk of the credit for the boundary-pushing physics.
But economic shifts in the industry seemed to drive the company to surface at the 2025 Game Developers Conference.At the event, Havok announced a new pricing model for developers working on budgets under $20 million.
The company's normally high-end offerings haven't been affordable for many developers, and while they aren't ready to support low budget indies just yet, general manager David Cochrane told Game Developer that the company now wants to work with studios with "tens" of employees, not necessarily "hundreds."Developers on those lower budgets can now license tools like Havok Physics and Havok Navigation for the low low price of $50,000 per Havok product.
There's no royalty fee, and studios can also use plug-in versions of the tools for Unreal Engine.Related:To see a company known for selling premium tools for big-budget games open up to the lower-tier market is quite a phenomenon—especially in an era where the biggest hits of 2025 include Clair Obscure: Expedition 33 and RuneScape Dragonwilds.
Small games are becoming bigger hits—and to hear Cochrane tell it, Havok seems to be following the trend.Havok is the rare middleware company to last 25 yearsCochrane explained to Game Developer that Havok began planning the new pricing scheme after studying how many mid-sized studios were planning more ambitious games using Unreal Engine.
Havok is a "good fit" for Unreal he said, and to see developers embracing the kinds of solutions Havok offers—but not being able to afford its offerings—began to shift their thinking.It's the kind of adaptation Havok has made repeatedly over the last 25 years, following what Cochrane described as the "creativity" of developers.
But it's not the kind of creativity you might think of at first glance.
Cochrane praised the gameplay advancements and new kinds of ideas that emerged from the last two-and-a-half decades, but the company's primary focus has been the creativity of technical problem-solving the industry has produced.
"The industry has always found creative ways to deliver games that make the most of the of their chosen platform," he said, alluding to the ways developers adapt to online networking or "diversity of hardware." Most recently, he said Havok has paid close attention to the rise of powerful handheld devices like the Nintendo Switch and Steam Deck—and how developers are making "new kinds of games" suited for those devices.Related:But not every trend Havok's been around for has stuck.
He recalled the rise of early Facebook games around 2009-2012.
If that trend had stayed around, Havok would have been in a tough spot since Facebook games don't need expensive physics or cloth simulation technology.
"There was almost a sense of 'was the whole industry gonna have to pivot hard toward this?'" he recalled.It didn't.
"There can be a new style of game that comes along—whether that's a live service, or whether it's a social game, or whatever—when MAU numbers are high, the whole industry will take notice, but the game industry always tends to drift back toward an equilibrium which involves many different types of games across many different platforms."So even with the surge of fast-followers for UGC games like Roblox and Minecraft—few of which need Havok's high-end physics and cloth technology—Cochrane said there will still be an audience for games gushing with plentiful particles.Related:The next space for innovation: AI navigationLike everyone else at GDC, Cochrane had a lot to say about AI—but not the same kind of AI that had everyone else aflutter.Cochrane explained that Havok's most overlooked product its its AI navigation tech—but it's also one the most quietly groundbreaking pieces in the company's portfolio.
"What we're really seeing now is an increased diversity in the the scale of different characters that [players] come across in a game," he said.
Games have had enormous enemies for years, but newer pathfinding tech allows gigantic creatures to share space with smaller in-game characters instead of having their own dedicated areas.Image via Havok.He referenced FromSoftware's Elden Ring here, a game where players can be fighting twisted knights in ruins one minute, then be ambushed by a dragon the next, often in the same area.
It's not the only game in 2025 we've seen playing with new ideas of what NPCs should be doing in a game.
Just hours later the folks at Bloober Team showed us the ambitious combat system of Cronos: The New Dawn, and earlier this year we were surprised by how the massive monsters of Eternal Strands were able to smoothly navigate through the game's open environments.He called this evolution a "common theme" across the industry—one that makes for a fascinating pairing with Havok's decision to chase smaller studios.
"The reality is...the sizes of worlds that people are dealing with at the moment are stressing some of the historic techniques that would have been used to build [methods] for navigation," he said.
"Some of the things we're doing is showing ways in which we can have very memory-efficient representations for navigation.
We can allow characters to navigate across large worlds that might include streamed geometry in and out.""Now you won't actually hold the whole game world in memory at one point in time, but you still want NPCs that can actually navigate naturally through those larger environments.
That's an area we're investing a lot in."Game Developer and GDC are sibling organizations under Informa Tech.
Source:
https://www.gamedeveloper.com/programming/25-years-in-havok-unveils-royalty-free-pricing-for-budgets-up-to-20-million
#years #havok #unveils #royaltyfree #pricing #for #budgets #million
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