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General: Unreal Engine Goes Free For All
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Epic has announced that the Unreal Engine will now be available free to all developers. Previously, use of the Unreal Engine cost developers $19.00 per month and a 5% royalty above $3000 per month. Epic is still asking developers to contribute 5%, though the engine itself remains free and will include all tools and future updates.
"Our goal is to give you absolutely everything, so that you can do anything and be in control of your schedule and your destiny. Whatever you require to build and ship your game, you can find it in UE4, source it in the Marketplace, or build it yourself - and then share it with others. 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."
Read the full announcement and information at GamesIndustry.biz.
Comments
hahaha
5% on the back end still adds up.
Lol. Yeah.
Almost certainly.
Nothing lowers prices quite as fast as competition.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Unity has a long way to go before it even comes close to what Unreal offers. Unity is more of a Lite version of an engine. It has it's limits. You won't see any AAA games being made with Unity.
Unity is drawing market share, even If only indie developer's. Those developers will take their experience with Unity and apply it to their next game, and so on.
By making Unreal free to use during development, the barrier to entry becomes lower and more of the indie developers will chose the more mature game engine. This increases Unity's market share in the long run as some of those indie games will inevitably prove successful.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Benjamin Franklin
Unity 5 has a lot of great graphical improvements. Unreal's engine obviously has a higher end capability, but that doesn't mean there will be a lot of great games won't be made on unity..
Ya if you use the free version Unity Pro is up there I do this professional and can get AAA looks from it, Unity 5 even better so not sure were you think Unity is not as good, when it is. Also for an indie the asset store is great.... The community is also ten times better with Unity.. I use Unreal 3 and 4, Hero , Unity Pro 4 and 5. I also have used Cry Engine among many others.
So I hate when people try and say Unity is not as good, when that is wrong , now out of the box some things graphic wise is better, but with Assets like Shader Forge, Skyshop its amazing. RTP, Terrain Composer will smoke Unreal terrain tools. or any of these engines.. So again the asset store is great and I love that I can make assets as well to get income for my games since I free lance professionally for AAA and Indies.
But Unity Free you don't have light maps soft shadows LOD support unless you have Pro..So I would agree with you besides the asset store. Unreal store sucks right now.
I think Unity will change some pricing because of this. I bet soon. They will have no choice.
This is fantastic for the indie dev scene. I tried out the Unreal Editor in its first incarnation and absolutely loved it. I wish I could have stuck with it but my military career interferred with that.
The engine has moved so far beyond even what it was back then, and back then it was still insanely powerful.