The Godot Foundation have just announced the new Godot Development Fund. This is a mechanism, similar to the Blender Development Fund, meant to help support the development of the Godot game engine through financial donations.
Details from the Godot blog:
Reducing platform fees, amplifying impact
The Development Fund will make the Godot Project more sustainable and independent. This new platform lets us significantly reduce platform fees, and as a non-profit we do not charge VAT on donations, unlike a platform like Patreon does. So your contributions go directly towards the development and improvement of the Godot Engine itself.
If you are currently supporting us through Patreon, we encourage you to switch to the Godot Development Fund to increase the effectiveness of your donations.
Giving back to the community
The support of the community is what keeps making it possible to reach new heights. With you, we can achieve even more!
Every donation, no matter the size, helps us immensely! With your help we can hire more developers, create high quality demos, pay for hosting services and infrastructure, and make the best possible Godot Engine. The more funds we have, the more we can give back to you and the entire gamedev community.
Future enhancements
While this is a good, fully functioning starting point for the platform, we will keep improving the Developer Fund.
In the future, the platform will give automated rewards, like a special Discord role, and you’ll be able to showcase your contribution level next to your username on our main platforms.
Freedom and independence
By relying more on recurring user-funded contributions and company sponsorships, we reduce our dependence on large one-time grants from corporations. This financial independence empowers us to prioritize the needs and interests of our community and the open source principles at the core of our projects. Your help ensures that we can create our own journey, uphold our core values, and continue to evolve the engine in ways that truly benefit you, the users.
In a nutshell, this is simply a more efficient mechanism to donate to the Godot foundation than existing solutions like Patreon. You can learn more about the Godot development fund in the video below.