Unreal Engine 4 is now free

P

poispois

Guest
"Last year, Unreal Engine 4 switched to a $19/month subscription plan. It was the first in a couple of attempts to coax indie developers away from Unity—and CryEngine announced their own low cost subscription soon after.

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.

"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 Tim Sweeney. "When you ship a game or application, you pay a 5% royalty on gross revenue after the first $3,000 per product, per quarter. It’s a simple arrangement in which we succeed only when you succeed."

Later in the announcement, Sweeney hints at what prompted the switch. "The state of Unreal is strong, and we’ve realized that as we take away barriers, more people are able to fulfill their creative visions and shape the future of the medium we love. That’s why we’re taking away the last barrier to entry, and going free."

According to Sweeney, anyone who has paid for a UE4 subscription will receive $30 credit to spend in the Unreal Engine Marketplace.

This is potentially a huge deal. Unreal Engine is a flexible tool, and now everybody has free access. Some—ie. me—will be too unbearably stupid to do anything with it. Others could potentially create great things, and there's very little that can now stop them."

How is up for some creating?

http://www.pcgamer.com/unreal-engine-4-is-now-free/
 

RivaCom

Forum Master
Staff member
Bronze Donor
Supporter
It's always technically been free. The subscription was a trial thing they wanted to try out since the Hero engine went from revenue based to subscription only. So Epic thought they'd make more money that way, but didn't want to fully stop creative minds. So they kept UDK 3 revenue based and licensed UDK4, they had plans to release it down the road to revenue based similar to UDK3 year or two ago. It was more like, pay 19 bucks for a beta version and the final version will be free.
 
S

SamSkumm

Guest
It's always technically been free. The subscription was a trial thing they wanted to try out since the Hero engine went from revenue based to subscription only. So Epic thought they'd make more money that way, but didn't want to fully stop creative minds. So they kept UDK 3 revenue based and licensed UDK4, they had plans to release it down the road to revenue based similar to UDK3 year or two ago. It was more like, pay 19 bucks for a beta version and the final version will be free.
it was technically free before, but the free version never had access to source code meaning it was very difficult to make big changes to the engine without paying some crazy licence fee, now they have given us the full version for free which is a huge benefit to the dev community. 5% royalty tho. unity 5 is now completely free for small teams no royalty :D
 

RivaCom

Forum Master
Staff member
Bronze Donor
Supporter
it was technically free before, but the free version never had access to source code meaning it was very difficult to make big changes to the engine without paying some crazy licence fee, now they have given us the full version for free which is a huge benefit to the dev community. 5% royalty tho. unity 5 is now completely free for small teams no royalty :D
But you miss out on a lot of advanced features with unity 5(similar to how unity 4 was). I've tossed back and forth and I think UN 5 will be the choice for Rex and I.
 

RivaCom

Forum Master
Staff member
Bronze Donor
Supporter
I take that back, looks like they updated their webpage. Hmm very tempting. I need to find some decent bone rigging/dismemberment in it and i'd be convinced to switch.
 
Top