Chrome Engine: Techland’s Game Engine Behind Dying Light — and What Replaced It

First, the disambiguation, because two very different things share this name. This page is about Chrome Engine, the proprietary 3D game engine built by the Polish studio Techland. It has nothing to do with Google Chrome, Blink or V8. Techland named it after Chrome, the science-fiction shooter it shipped in 2003 — the engine and the game arrived together.

Second, the correction that matters most. Chrome Engine 6 powered Dying Light in 2015, and a great many pages — including this one until now — go on to credit Dying Light 2 to the same engine. They are wrong. Techland announced in 2018 that it had stopped using Chrome Engine, and both Dying Light 2 Stay Human and 2025’s Dying Light: The Beast run on its successor, C-Engine. This page sorts out which engine ran which game, what changed between them, and what Techland is building on now — which turns out not to be a single answer.

What Is Chrome Engine?

Chrome Engine is a proprietary C++ game engine developed in-house by Techland, the Wrocław studio behind Call of Juarez, Dead Island and Dying Light. First released in 2003 alongside the shooter Chrome, It ran through six publicly numbered versions, ending with Chrome Engine 6 and Dying Light in 2015. Techland then replaced it with C-Engine, which powers Dying Light 2 (2022) and Dying Light: The Beast (2025). Techland has never published an SDK, pricing or licensing programme for either.

Which Engine Ran Which Game

This is the table most people arrive looking for, and the version-to-game mapping is the part that gets garbled elsewhere.

Dying Light itself is the clearest demonstration of Chrome Engine 6’s reach: it launched in January 2015 on Windows, Linux, PS4 and Xbox One, picked up macOS in December 2016, and was still being ported years later — Nintendo Switch in 2021, PS5 and Xbox Series X|S in 2022.

Why Dying Light 2 Is Not Chrome Engine 6

Techland said so, publicly, four years before the game shipped. In 2018 the studio confirmed it was no longer using Chrome Engine and had moved to new technology called C-Engine — described at the time as a complete rebuild that was nonetheless an evolution of the old tech, with more complex architecture, denser foliage and substantially reworked AI.

Techland’s own rendering director, Tomasz Szałkowski, later set out what C-Engine added over Chrome Engine 6: support for the new generation of consoles, ray tracing, and “very extensive AI systems compared to CE6”, all held together by a new component-based architecture and a new world editor.

Dying Light: The Beast, released on 18 September 2025, runs on an evolved C-Engine rather than anything new — unsurprising, since it began life as a second expansion for Dying Light 2 before growing into a standalone game.

So the clean rule: anything up to and including Dying Light (2015) is Chrome Engine. Anything from Dying Light 2 onward is C-Engine.

Can You Use Chrome Engine or C-Engine?

No. Techland has not published an SDK, pricing model or licensing programme for either engine, and no public route to a licence has been identified. There is no public documentation or pricing page for either — they are internal technology built to make Techland’s own games, in the same category as Ubisoft’s Snowdrop or 4A Games’ 4A Engine.

The previous version of this page told readers they could email Techland for a licence, sourced to having “read somewhere” that invitations existed. There is no evidence of a licensing programme, and that advice has been removed rather than softened.

For developers outside Techland, the practical route into this technology is the same one that applies to every in-house AAA engine: employment. Techland recruits engine programmers directly, and its own listings describe the work as designing and developing core C-Engine subsystems — memory management, scene management, physics, data streaming — for teams shipping AAA games.

If you want to build something rather than read about it, the practical comparison is with engines you can actually license: Unreal Engine for comparable open-world fidelity, or Godot if you want no royalties at all.

What Techland Runs On Now

Here the picture is more interesting than “C-Engine replaced Chrome Engine,” and it comes from Techland’s own recruitment material rather than from announcements.

C-Engine is alive and being actively developed. Techland advertises senior engine-programmer roles dedicated to it, and describes its technology as supporting all Techland products across all consoles.

But Techland is also hiring Unreal Engine 5 programmers. Its listings for UE5 gameplay and AI programmers — working in Behavior Trees, AI Controllers, C++ and Blueprints — state explicitly that the position is “for a new IP, in addition to Dying Light and the fantasy game.”

Read carefully, that says three things: Dying Light continues on C-Engine; there is an unannounced open-world action RPG in a new fantasy universe, described by the studio as its biggest project to date; and at least one further new IP is being built in Unreal Engine 5. Which engine the fantasy RPG uses is not something Techland has stated publicly, and this page does not guess.

That is a familiar pattern among studios with their own technology: keep the in-house engine for the franchise it was shaped around, and reach for Unreal when starting something unrelated.

Who Owns Techland Now

Worth knowing, because in-house engines depend entirely on the company funding them. Tencent announced in July 2023 that it would become Techland’s majority shareholder, taking a reported 67% stake, with the acquisition of the controlling stake reported as completed in January 2024. Techland was reported at the time to be retaining creative independence and control of its brands.

The studio now runs over 550 staff across Wrocław and Warsaw, and the Dying Light franchise has passed 30 million copies sold.

Key Takeaways

• Chrome Engine is Techland’s, not Google’s. It is named after Chrome, the studio’s 2003 shooter, and has no connection to the browser.
• Chrome Engine 6 powered Dying Light (2015) and the shelved Hellraid. It was the final Chrome Engine version.
• Dying Light 2 is not Chrome Engine 6. Techland announced the move to C-Engine in 2018; both Dying Light 2 (2022) and Dying Light: The Beast (2025) run on it.
• C-Engine added next-generation console support, ray tracing and much more extensive AI than Chrome Engine 6, per Techland’s own rendering director.
• Neither engine is licensable in practice. No public SDK, pricing or licensing programme has been identified for either.
• Techland is hiring around two engine stacks: C-Engine for the Dying Light franchise, and Unreal Engine 5 for at least one unannounced new IP.
• Tencent holds a majority stake, completed in January 2024, with Techland reported to retain creative control.

Frequently Asked Questions

Conclusion

Chrome Engine’s story is a tidy illustration of how studio-owned technology actually ages. It ran for twelve years and six versions, carried three separate franchises, and was superseded rather than abandoned: Techland’s own account of C-Engine is about new-generation hardware, ray tracing and AI, not about Chrome Engine breaking. The studio described the replacement as a complete rebuild that was nonetheless an evolution of the old technology.

For anyone searching the version numbers: Chrome Engine 6 is where the line ends, Dying Light is its monument, and everything after 2022 belongs to C-Engine. Neither is something you can use — but if you want to see what studio-built engines look like next to the ones you can license, our directory of 100+ C and C++ game engines sorts the field by licence and category.