Changed files in your working copy
MODContent/Characters/Hero.uassetπ your lock
NEWContent/Weapons/Sword.uasset
MODSource/Combat/Damage.cpp
Commit β
Game repositories are massive: packed with hundreds of gigabytes of unmergeable binaries and artists who just want to lock a file and get to work. Git chokes on huge files. Perforce is expensive and doesn't understand your code. TouchQuill fixes both: commit a 200 MB file in milliseconds, and lock assets with a single command.
Change a texture or a model inside a huge file and TouchQuill sends just the piece that changed, not the whole file. A repo full of assets stays fast to push and pull, even on a slow connection.
See the benchmarks →Ask what happened to one function and get the real answer, even after it was renamed and moved to another file. A plain blame loses the trail at the first rename; Lens keeps it, across the whole project and across a refactor. It works on Unreal Blueprints too.
See how Lens works →A game is built by many hands at once: programmers write code, artists make models and textures, sound designers record audio. All of it has to live in one place, so you can see who changed what, undo a mistake, and never overwrite someone else's work. That's what version control is for. The catch: popular tools either choke on a game's huge files or cost a fortune. TouchQuill handles both.
Textures, models, or whole levels often weigh hundreds of megabytes. Git crawls under that weight, and LFS add-ons love to break. Here, a massive file is just a file. Save it in a fraction of a second and move on.
You can't merge two versions of a 3D model. Take the file exclusively with one command. Whoever needs it next joins an automated queue. No more asking "are you done with this file?" on Slack.
When two people change the same thing, other systems halt work until someone untangles it. Here, the clashing change is set aside, assigned, and resolved calmly without blocking everyone else.
Ask "who changed this specific function, and when?" and get a direct answer, even if the file was renamed and the code moved. Ordinary tools lose the trail.
Every file gets a digital fingerprint derived from its contents. If anything is corrupted in transit or on disk, the system catches it. You won't quietly get a broken file. And the "who did what" record is protected so it can't be altered later unnoticed, not even by someone with full access.
A mistake isn't a disaster. Nearly any operation can be reversed with one command. You can even recover work you hadn't saved yet, because TouchQuill snapshots your working copy before every operation.
The full time a person waits for a change to land, or to arrive from a teammate, on an office link. Systems ordered fastest first. See all seven scenarios, including where we trail →
Performance is one thing, but choosing a VCS for a game is mostly a decision about your working model. Here's a feature comparison against eight systems used in game dev: from Git to Epic's freshly open-sourced Lore. Data based on each vendor's public materials (July 2026).
| Feature | TouchQuill | Git | Perforce | SVN | Unity VCS | Ark | Diversion | Lore |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Model | Local + server | Distributed | Centralized | Centralized | Hybrid | Server + client | Cloud (SaaS) | Central + offline |
| Large binaries natively (no LFS) | β | β | β | ~ | β | β | β | β |
| File locks with a queue | β | β | ~ | ~ | β | β | ~ | β |
| Conflict as data (never blocks) | β | β | β | β | β | β | β | β |
| Content-addressed (hashing) | β | β | β | β | β | β | β | ~ |
| Symbol history / Lens | β | β | β | β | β | β | β | β |
| Offline work (commit / branch) | β | β | ~ | β | β | β | ~ | β |
| Self-host / on-premise | β | β | β | β | β | β | β | β |
| Open source | ~ | β | β | β | β | β | β | β |
| Pricing | Free | Free | Commercial (perβseat) | Free | Freemium | Freemium (free for indies) | SaaS (subscription) | Free (MIT) |
We're not pretending to win everywhere. Lore (Epic) and Ark are strong, recent players with a similar philosophy: Lore is even MIT-licensed open source, and Ark ships the exact same queue-based locking we do. The two things you won't find anywhere else are a conflict kept as data (integration never stalls) and Lens, symbol history that survives file renames and refactors. Perforce and Diversion win on maturity and ecosystem; we're betting on the working model.
Day to day it's a handful of plain commands in a terminal, or clicking around the Studio desktop app, if you prefer. Runs on Windows, Linux and macOS.
# start locally, zero configuration tq init MyGame tq commit -m "first sword" # join your team tq remote https://vcs.studio.com tq login --user ola # prompts for a password tq push # take exclusive hold of a binary tq lock Content/Weapons/sword.uasset β Lock acquired. Marta is #2 in the queue. # who touched this function? tq lens blame --symbol calculate_damage
Each task gets its own branch: experiment freely without breaking the main build, then merge when done. Artists can mount just the asset folder, without the code. Rules (who can push, what needs a lock) are handled via a config file reviewed like any other commit.
Saving changes and checking "what did I actually change" takes a fraction of a second even when the project has hundreds of thousands of files and years of history. The system only looks at what you really touched, instead of grinding through the whole repository every time.
You self-host TouchQuill. Run the server on your own machine or your own cloud; your repositories and data never leave your infrastructure. Nothing is locked to an outside provider.
Not everyone lives in a terminal. Level designers and audio engineers just want to pull the project and work. Studio is a lightweight desktop app (Windows, Linux, macOS) delivering the full power of TouchQuill through a clean UI. Everything is in one window: diffs, history, active locks with queues, conflicts, and the Lens function view.
Running a project where Git or Perforce is starting to bottleneck your pipeline? Drop us a line. We'll get back to you about pilot access or just chat about your setup. No strings attached.