King's mobile and web game engine Defold is to be made available as an open source project.

As part of the move, King is spinning out a new software foundation called the Defold Foundation. The foundation's board will be headed by Candy Crush Saga producer Sara Cederberg, who was formerly the director of engineering for the engine.

With Defold going open source, King hopes that it will bring more transparency to game development, and that external developers will lend their expertise to make the engine better for everyone who uses it.

Welcomed back to Defold

"We're hugely impressed by the Defold team and look forward to seeing many great gaming experiences come to life," said King chief development officer Tjodolf Sommestad.

"We've seen millions of players already playing the King games run on the Defold engine and we're excited to see the community come together even more, with the support of the Defold Foundation."

King made Defold freely available to all back in March 2016, and we spoke to King's then-evangelist Oleg Pridiuk in September that year about why the developer entered the game engine space.