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Free Unreal Engine Release Planned

Posted by simoniker on from the really-unreally-really-unreal dept.

Thanks to Beyond Unreal for pointing to an article revealing that Epic are planning a standalone, non-commercial release of the Unreal Engine. The previously un-noticed September email from Epic's Mark Rein reveals "...a free version of UT2003 but without any of the gaming content or code" is in the works, including a standalone executable and a full release of Epic's Unreal toolset. According to Rein, "The runtime will be a free download, and free to use for non-commercial and educational use", and commercial licenses for this forthcoming release are also possible, with limited Epic support, and "...will [cost] considerably less than the US$350,000+ we charge for [an Unreal engine license]."

4 of 26 comments (clear)

  1. "Wow, useful" is right. by mcasaday · · Score: 3, Informative

    No. This is clearly an attempt to compete with companies like GarageGames. I'm guessing that it will be met with a bit of fanfare. I can already see the ears perking and tongues lolling at the prospect of publishing a game using the Unreal Engine. This is tech that is largely out of reach for indie developers looking to sell their games due to the high price for a commercial license and now all of a sudden it's within reach.

    "Wow, useful" is right, minus the cynicism.

    1. Re:"Wow, useful" is right. by mcasaday · · Score: 2, Informative
      Oops. I should prolly RFTA, eh?
      "We're creating a version of our engine which can be licensed for non-gaming use"

      This isn't as useful to indie game developers (looking to publish games commercially) as I at first thought. :)

  2. Re:Deus Ex by mraymer · · Score: 2, Informative
    Heh, yeah, the funny thing is last time I checked the Loki site was still up and said the Deus Ex port was coming soon. Hah... not likely.

    It's just kind of frustrating that the Unreal engine favors 3dfx cards so much... had they used quake2/3 engine, that game would run insanely fast today. Like 200 FPS probably, heh. But as it is now my GeForce3 barely chugs along in the game, while my lost voodoo2 ran it perfectly.

    At least DX2 should actaully perform better on my current system. That's funny.

    --

    "To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking

  3. Re:NON GAMING USE ONLY by Kyouryuu · · Score: 2, Informative

    Indeed, and I think this is definitely worth pointing out. The license makes it clear that they are only licensing the free runtime of the engine for NON GAMING USES. I suppose their intent is to have it exist for simulations, walkthroughs and whatnot. But, it's really meaningless as far as fan game creation goes, sad to say.