Epic Games announced today they have created a new version control system that is now open-source as Lore. Given the proliferation and excellence of Git, you may be wondering why Epic Games is pursuing another VCS option... They are specifically catering Lore to games and entertainment purposes with large file sizes.

While there is Git LFS for large file storage with Git, Epic Games has crated Lore as a version control system designed entirely around the large file needs of modern game development as well as multimedia/entertainment purposes. Lore is designed to be fast and efficient for large files including binary files, and be easy-to-use including for 3D artists and more.

The Lore documentation elaborates more on its differences and motivation for development compared to Git:

"No existing system was designed for the combination of constraints that large game and entertainment projects require: arbitrary content types, multi-axis scale, multi-tenant safety, and a fully open specification and license.

Git’s content-addressed revision graph is excellent, but it treats binary files as second-class citizens—large files require bolted-on LFS rather than first-class chunked storage, sparse checkouts have sharp edges in offline use, and there is no native multi-tenant isolation.

Centralized systems designed for large binary content handle those assets well but typically require server round trips for everyday operations, use proprietary wire protocols that foreclose third-party implementation, and offer limited deduplication at the binary level.

Lore is designed to combine what works in each: a centralized server-of-record for durability, access control, and conflict resolution; content-addressed storage with fragment-level deduplication that is as effective on a multi-gigabyte binary as on a kilobyte of text; sparse, lazy working copies that materialize only what you need; free branching; and a fully open, publicly versioned specification and MIT license. Normal editing operations—staging, committing, branching, diffing—never require a network round trip."

Lore is open-source under an MIT license. All the code to Lore is available on GitHub. Lore is written in the Rust programming language.

Those wishing to learn more about Epic Games' Lore version control system can do so at Lore.org.