W4 Games raises $18M to expand its international team

Diego Argüello,Contributing Editor, News,GameDeveloper.com

August 25, 2026

2 Min ReadImage via W4 Games

W4 Games, the startup established in 2021 by former Godot veterans Juan Linietsky, Rémi Verschelde, and Fabio Alessandrelli, has raised $18 million in funding primarily led by Tencent.

Announced earlier today, the Series B funding is intended for W4 Games to expand its international team by 50 percent, accelerate development of its enterprise offering, and support growing demand from enterprise developers using open-source game engine Godot.

Tencent led the funding round with support from other investors, including OSS Capital, LUX, Naval Ravikant, and Tobias Lutket's family office. In addition, Tencent and W4 Games signed a multi-year strategic partnership to help the company scale the business and the Godot ecosystem in Asia.

Regarding the partnership, it will revolve around the development and adoption of W4 technologies through the region. "This will include go-to-market initiatives, localization, ecosystem support, advocacy and market development."

"This collaboration with Tencent marks an important next step for W4 Games as we expand globally and bring Godot to more studios and developers," said W4 Games co-CEO Nicola Farronato. "With Tencent as both a strategic partner and an investor, we have an opportunity to accelerate the adoption of enterprise-ready Godot technologies, particularly in Asia, while continuing to strengthen the open-source ecosystem that sits at the heart of everything we do."

It's worth noting that W4 Games previously raised $15 million at the end of 2023 to "drive video game development inflection." That round had a similar goal of expanding internationally as well as increasing headcount.

Adoption of Godot has been on the rise since the now-canceled Unity runtime fee debacle in 2023. In a recent interview, people told Game Developer that the engine's "lightweight nature" is playing a major role in their decision to use it.

"The thing that really made me say 'okay, [Godot] is probably ready for prime time... is knowing that like the Slay the Spire dev team actually jumped ship, and they got Slay the Spire 2 out really quickly after that announcement," computer engineer Morgan Schneiss said.

"You can make a make a real, serious game out of this that people will spend money on and like, feel passionate about. This isn't a toy. This is this is a real tool now."

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About the Author

Diego Argüello

Contributing Editor, News, GameDeveloper.com

Diego Nicolás Argüello is a freelance journalist and critic from Argentina. Video games helped him to learn English, so now he covers them for places like The New York Times, NPR, Rolling Stone, and more. He also runs Into the Spine, a site dedicated to fostering and supporting new writers, and co-hosted Turnabout Breakdown, a podcast about the Ace Attorney series. He’s most likely playing a rhythm game as you read this.

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