[13] Lumberyard launched on February 9, 2016 alongside GameLift, a fee-based managed service for deploying and hosting multiplayer games, intended to allow developers the easy development of games that attract "large and vibrant communities of fans.

[13][16] Virtual reality integration was added in Beta 1.3, allowing developers to build games supporting devices like Oculus Rift and HTC Vive.

[17][18] Despite being based on the architecture of Crytek's CryEngine, the engine has been developed to use many of its own custom-developed systems, some of which are in a preview mode.

[19][20] The audio solution Audiokinetic Wwise, which is used in many popular games, was added in Beta 1.0, released in February 2016.

[16][22] On August 16, 2017, the engine's source code was released under a source-available arrangement on GitHub, but remained under a proprietary license.