Ubisoft has not publicly confirmed which engine March of Giants runs on, so the honest answer is that the engine is 待确认. What is documented is the project's history: it was developed at Amazon's Montreal Games studio before Ubisoft acquired it, and that history is the source of most engine speculation online.
Is the engine confirmed?
No official statement names the technology behind March of Giants. Neither the official site, the Steam page, nor Ubisoft's vision post mentions an engine, and no developer interview in the material gathered here states one either.
That silence matters because the game changed hands. March of Giants started at Amazon Games Montreal, and Amazon's publishing and technology history invites guesswork about what the studio built on.
If you see a page claiming a specific engine with confidence, check whether it cites Ubisoft or the development team. Without that citation, treat the claim as 待确认, however plausible it sounds.
The Amazon to Ubisoft handover
The one formally documented change is ownership. Ubisoft announced that it "has acquired March of Giants, formerly developed by Amazon's Montreal Games studio," confirming that the team would join Ubisoft to continue development of the free-to-play title.
The r/Games thread that carried the announcement summarised it the same way and added that the team was working on the next major update at the time. IGN's trailer page still lists Amazon Games Montreal alongside the game, which is why older articles credit Amazon.
The studio's own vision post describes the transition from the inside, saying that "during the transition to Ubisoft, much of our attention needed to remain focused inside the studio." It then describes reopening the game to players through the Pioneer Playtest.
Why people assume Amazon's Lumberyard
The engine speculation comes from Amazon's own tooling history rather than from anything said about this game. In the r/Games discussion, commenters noted that Amazon discontinued its Lumberyard engine and replaced it with an open-source branch called O3DE, or "Open 3D Engine."
The same thread points out that Lumberyard itself was a modified version of CryEngine, and that Star Citizen's StarEngine is another heavily modified CryEngine branch. None of that mentions March of Giants.
This is context, not evidence. The studio has never said it used Lumberyard or O3DE, and the project could equally have used a third-party engine, which is exactly why the correct label remains 待确认.
What is technically confirmed about the build
The confirmed technical facts come from the store page. March of Giants runs on PC through Steam, requires a 64-bit version of Windows 10 or 11, and uses DirectX 12.
It needs 15 GB of available storage, a broadband internet connection and a persistent connection to play, so there is no offline mode. Steam also lists Easy Anti-Cheat running at kernel level alongside a required third-party EULA.
Those details describe how the game behaves rather than what it is built with. They still matter, because they rule out console and mobile builds and set the floor for what the client can do.
Development priorities the team has described
Developers have been unusually open about what still needs building. During the official premiere they said the Pioneer Playtest is "just the beginning," and named ranked play and meta progression as the work that has to be done for a competitive game.
They also said the team needs to "add more giants," arguing that more Giants means more choice and added depth. That is an open statement that the roster is unfinished, which is worth remembering when reading tier lists.
Feature gaps are acknowledged too. Community commentary from the playtest noted that there is "no replay functionality yet, though it's planned in the short notice," which the caster described as a limitation while casting live.
The roadmap and what it implies
The published roadmap covers playtests and Early Access across 2026 and 2027, and the developers described the sequence on camera. That sequence runs another playtest in winter 2027, another in spring 2027, and then Early Access in summer 2027 for about six months.
That is a plan, not a promise. The official messaging asks players to stay tuned for more information on each milestone, and Steam still lists the release date as coming soon with no date attached.
Reading the roadmap as an engine or technology signal would be a mistake. It describes testing windows and a staged release, nothing more, and any technical claims drawn from it should be marked 待确认.
What we still do not know
Beyond the engine, several development details remain unpublished: the size of the team, the length of the current development cycle in months, the external middleware in use, and whether the game will support mods or private servers.
The studio says it was founded six years ago and "built from the ground up to make March of Giants," which is the closest thing to a development timeline the team has shared. Any more precise history should be treated as 待确认.
For the ownership side of the story, see the Ubisoft page; for the interface rather than the technology, see the UI page.
The development timeline as described
The team's own statements are the only timeline available. The vision post says the studio was founded six years ago and built from the ground up to make March of Giants, which places the start of the project well before the first public test.
The first public milestone was the Closed Alpha, which began on September 2, 2025 and closed out in November 2025. The Pioneer Playtest followed in October 2026, after the acquisition and the internal transition period the studio describes.
That sequence matters for engine questions, because a studio founded for one game and then acquired is more likely to keep its existing technology than to switch mid-project.
What changed during development
The studio has described substantial rework rather than a fresh start. The vision post says Soldiers, Battleworks, the spaces between lanes and itemisation were all expanded, and that new Giants were added while the returning roster was updated.
It also lists improvement areas as the map, UI, visuals, animations and game clarity, which is a description of iteration on an existing codebase rather than a rebuild. A team that had switched engines would be unlikely to describe the work this way.
None of that identifies the technology, and it is not evidence of any specific engine. It does, however, argue against the idea that the game was rebuilt from scratch after the acquisition.
How to verify engine claims yourself
Start with the official pages. If an engine were confirmed, it would appear in a developer interview, a technical talk or a store page detail, and it would be quoted in the news feed.
Failing that, look for platform clues. The confirmed requirements are Windows 10 and 11 64-bit with DirectX 12 and a kernel-level anti-cheat driver, which describes the behaviour of the client rather than its internals.
Finally, check the date on any claim. A statement about the game technology from the Amazon era may describe a build that no longer exists, which is one more reason to treat it as 待确认.
Sources
- r/Games, Ubisoft Acquires March of Giants From Amazon: https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1pncscb/ubisoft_acquires_march_of_giants_from_amazon/
- Ubisoft news hub, Our Vision for March of Giants: https://www.ubisoft.com/en-gb/news/ignt.63864/our-vision-for-march-of-giants
- Steam store page, March of Giants: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1924600/March_of_Giants/
- YouTube, official Pioneer Playtest premiere: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo-neUPxKoA
- Official site, marchofgiants.com news feed: https://marchofgiants.com/en-gb/