If I understand correctly, the easiest way to use Spine in Godot 4.1 (the .NET version) is to download a pre-built Godot editor that has the Spine support built in.
Is there perhaps plan a to switch this to using a Godot Plugin to simplify this down the line?
Thanks
Yes, there's a plan for going GDExtensions for Godot 4.x going forward. However, this is currently blocked by GDExtensions not exposing all APIs we need, and time. I have not yet figured out the concrete APIs that are missing since I haven't started the "port" yet. I'll report it to the GDExtensions maintainers in the hopes they'll add them.
Glad to hear it, (as I'm sure you know) there's a bunch of us coming from Unity right now trying to see if Godot can cover our needs. A cleaner Spine integration story would go a long way 
Yeah, it totally doesn't stress me out 
Mario Is it possible that spine can become a game engine in the future?
suanLoBeach No (99.9%). They got to support other game engines.
Yeah, we'll not create a game engine. We already build this https://libgdx.com/, which is a framework, not an engine, and has served us well over more than 10 years. Spine is also built using libGDX. 
kloot Unfortunately, we cannot answer when exactly. There is a thread that Mario answered about two weeks ago, so please refer to it for more information:
https://esotericsoftware.com/forum/d/25318-spine-for-godot-as-a-gdextension
