Author Topic: Unreal Engine 4 is Free for Everyone  (Read 1532 times)

Offline mopython on: March 05, 2015, 12:52:09 AM

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Believe me, I would love to have a more rich vocabulary in my brain's possession. But all I can say is that this news is simply.. EPIC.

A year ago, Epic Games decided to support both smaller developers & students by opening Unreal Engine 4 to everybody for just $19 per month subscription. This year, Epic is going a step further. The studio has just announced that Unreal Engine 4 is available for free, along with all future updates. Yes, this is the real deal - the complete technology Epic uses to build their own games. And if you want to play with it, you no longer have to pay for a solo subscription or pretend you really need to create a BFG model for your IT class.

"You can download the engine and use it for everything from game development, education, architecture, and visualization to VR, film and animation," writes Epic's co-founder Tim Sweeney.

For the dev (hey, that's us!) there is a small catch (oh..) as you have to pay a 5% royalty on gross revenue after the first $3,000 per product, per quarter. But every "free" game engine has different costs and options for commercial projects, right? And some are better fit for you than others. Do we really need an engine this powerful? Yes, obviously we do. We are megalomaniacs in disguise. And considering how versatile the engine is, the so called "catch" is actually a small price to pay anyway, especially for complete access to software like this with no upfront licensing fees.

But more importantly, for the players and especially modders this is a great news - full, cost-free access to one of the most powerful and fully-featured game engines out there. Unreal Engine is a flexible tool and we are sure many fans will create great things. PC gaming has a long and rich history of amateur map & stuff making for multiplayer shooters, and now anyone who fancies trying their hand can wade in without spending a penny. And even if you are newcomer, don't worry - to help you get started, the engine includes game templates, samples, content, and several video tutorials.

UE 4 is free in its entirety, the full C++ source code, and supports Windows PC, Mac OS X, Android, iOS, virtual reality (Oculus Rift and Gear VR), Linux, SteamOS and HTML5. Anyone can also freely access the engine's entire toolset—along with the Unreal Engine Marketplace, which allows users to buy and sell custom-made art and programming assets. The hottest news is that NVIDIA opens PhysX Code to UE4 Developers as well.

So that's it. Starting now, anyone can download the Unreal Engine 4 and use it to build whatever they want. And we are glad to say, that now the situation with future Murnatan modding is as it was planned from the beginning, when we were using UDK.



Unreal Engine 4 - GDC 2015 Demo on Youtube
« Last Edit: March 13, 2015, 05:55:41 PM by mopython »