Unreal Engine 4 Is Now Free

jones_supa writes In 2014, Epic Games took the step of making Unreal Engine 4 available to everyone by subscription for $19 per month. Today, this general-purpose game engine is available to everyone for free. This includes future updates, the full C++ source code of the engine, documentation, and all sorts of bonus material. You can download the engine and use it for everything from game development, education, architecture, and visualization to VR, film and animation. The business scheme that Epic set in the beginning, remains the same: when you ship a commercial game or application, you pay a 5% royalty on gross revenue after the first $3,000 per product, per quarter. Epic strived to create a simple and fair arrangement in which they succeed only when your product succeeds.

Comments

But is it "free software"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or is it still freedom-disrespecting software?

Re:But is it "free software"?

[davydagger]

terms are pretty fair actually.

Re:But is it "free software"?

[stonefoz]

Of all the things that benefit from being free software, games aren't entirely gaining. A game with source code include all the "spoilers". Part of the magic of a new game is exploring, not drudging though code (an entirely different game). If there is anything given less criticism, let it be games. Sometime it's entertaining to be surprised. That is a games intended purpose, to entertain.

Re:But is it "free software"?

[rogoshen1]

Oh, I respect his viewpoint -- he's a net good for the world -- however he's also kind of a crank.

To be clear though, it was that zealotry, attacking any piece of software that isn't under a license such as the GPL that I was poking fun at. I think it's naive to think that we'd be where we are now if literally everything was 'free' via something similar to a GPL license.

It's a lot like that APK guy, I use his host file. But I'll still poke fun at him coming out of the blue to spam the shit out of a thread.

PS: I feel like a dunce for misspelling his name.

Thank you Epic

[EmperorOfCanada]

Thanks epic. I literally just started re-coding my game from Cocos2d to Unreal. My only regret is not doing this sooner; once I saw how well this worked with mac and the clean C++ just wow.

Re:Thank you Epic

[jbssm]

I literally just started re-coding my game from Cocos2d to Unreal

Can you share some experiences with us. What did disappoint you in Cocos2d and what did you find appealing in Unreal Engine?

I'm about to start developing a 2D game (mostly for fun tough) and I was quite indecisive between Godot and Cocos2d... now I'm indecisive between Godot, Cocos2d, and Unreal Engine. The more choices the more I stall this...

For the Law Nerds

[Anonymous Coward]

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/391/244/case.html

United Shoe Machinery got broken up under the Sherman Antitrust act, because they dominated the market (90%+) for shoe-making machines. Also, they had a pricing scheme that charged more when your company produced more shoes - so they made the real bank on the big manufacturers, but they were cheap enough for the little guy that other manufacturers of shoe machines couldn't get a foothold.

In other words, they succeeded only when their customers succeeded. Sound familiar?

(For the record, you couldn't actually break up Epic using this argument, for at least 3 reasons: (1 - factual) the Unreal Engine has nowhere near that market dominance that USM did in its heyday, (2 - political) the judiciary these days is way more pro-business, and (3 - appeal to justice) the decision in US v. USM was actually bullshit and should never have been decided that way. I'll leave (3) as an exercise for the reader.)

Re:5% on gross is absurdly high

[gnupun]

If 5% seems high, what about the 30% cut that Apple and Google take on games in iOS and Android? Unreal seems to be following ios and android, and before that, Playstation -- charging a percentage of sales as "platform" fees.