Unreal Engine 4 Is Now Free

Someone might actually release a proper game using it now.
 
This is important since a lot of modern games make it difficult to make the next counter strike or team fortress.
 
It's only been around for, what, a year or so? Who finishes a proper AAA game on a new engine in less than a year?
 
You can download the engine and use it for everything from game development, education, architecture, and visualization to VR, film and animation. 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.
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So now you sell it like an app market?
 
Figures. I was subscribing to UE4 and was just charged, a week ago, for this month lol. Oh well, nice to see that it's now free.

Tim need to get Cliffy B back and do a true UT reboot, 99 style.
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It's already in the works. Epic is, more or less, letting the community develop the game. You can grab the pre-alpha now (even help work on it, if you want). I'm pretty excited about it, personally. Epic released a 'demo' for UE4 subscribers showing off a few levels (so developers can see how it was put together and stuff) and it's pretty amazing how good everything looks and performs. I have a feeling that its going to turn out amazing.

http://www.unrealtournament.com/blog/

Semantics said:
So now you sell it like an app market?
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More or less. It's the same system that Epic had for UE3
 
pbassjunk said:
Is it Crystal Space style free? Or is it Cryengine style pretend free?
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Its not free you have to give them 5% of whatever you make. I thought they had the exact same scheme for UE3. There were multiple different ways you could license the engine. I also think that if you use the engine in this way you cannot modify the engine.
 
FYI: That's a link to the old version, for comparison purposes...

Epic has made some cool decisions lately IMO. Watching the UT4 development is also pretty fun, and cool to see community folk getting into it (and even hired by Epic!)
 
rudy said:
I also think that if you use the engine in this way you cannot modify the engine.
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No, this time around, they really really want you to modify the engine (and especially contribute back). The full source has been available on GitHub to all subscribers since UE4 was released, and it's pretty easy to get started hacking at the engine.
 
This is a good development. Now modders won't have to pay $19 a month to make mods for games.
 
I am still wondering why no games using this engine are out yet. UE3 had a massive following even while it was still in beta.
 
I don't know anything about this. Can you make a full game out of this, or is meant to be used with hooks for other stuff like AI, interface and mechanics? Can you make games for iOS on this engine?
 
And apparently the guy that made flappybird:(
https://www.unrealengine.com/what-is-unreal-engine-4
mobilev3-min-660x430-512874933.png
 
Youn said:
https://www.unrealengine.com/previous-versions/udk-licensing-resources

I see 25% royalty fee, not 5%... or am I mistaken?
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:eek:

A quick read tells me it seems that way: Above $50,000 revenue you get hit with a 25% royalty fee?!?! Holy CRAP!!!!!

Eehhh, no Dev fees is good, but 25% just seems like too much especially if a studio is looking at making a AAA game, using UE4 will just be to expensive in lost revenue.

So only mediocre games using UE4 with that pricing structure?
 
rudy said:
Its not free you have to give them 5% of whatever you make. I thought they had the exact same scheme for UE3. There were multiple different ways you could license the engine. I also think that if you use the engine in this way you cannot modify the engine.
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I do recall something similar for UE3. My hazy memory says the $3000 threshold and the 5% rate are changed though.
 
westrock2000 said:
I don't know anything about this. Can you make a full game out of this, or is meant to be used with hooks for other stuff like AI, interface and mechanics? Can you make games for iOS on this engine?
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Yup. You can do an entire game no problem. It has a new coding environment called blueprints, which is pretty awesome (although still confuses me, as a non-coder). It's essentially coding done visually opposed to something like C++, so even a novice can get in there and program elements of a game. It has more overhead than traditional coding though, but it's still pretty impressive stuff.

Epic has lots of examples that you can download (and even use in a final commercial product)... and there is also a marketplace where other uses can give away and/or sell resources (blueprints, models, scenes, shaders, materials, etc).

IMHO, you can probably do an entire game with just the engine and a copy of Photoshop and 3Dsmax (and possibly some audio mixing software) and nothing else.

The other nice thing about the engine, to answer your last question, is that a developer can compile the same game for Windows, Linux, MacOS, iOS, Android and/or WP. So it makes supporting multiple OS's easier on a developer.

And apparently the guy that made flappybird:(
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lol that's not flappy bird. Epic just released that as a demo to show, by example, how to make a touch based 2D mobile game. IIRC, the demo is called tappy chicken lol
 
coolpurplefan said:
If you register here: https://forums.unrealtournament.com/forum.php you can get a pre-alpha demo of the new Unreal Tournament. And, you have a link to Unreal Engine 4 inside the graphical user interface. (I haven't tested that feature so I don't know if it's the whole Unreal Engine 4 or not.)
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Yup, that's the full binary engine right there, for the source code you need to associate your Epic credentials with a github account.

They also have a tab to have a signup for the Fortnite Alpha.
 
I installed it yesterday and lol my laptop's GPU is slow. On the positive side, Unreal Editor is much better than the last time I used it in an older version of the engine.
 
Yakk said:
:eek:

A quick read tells me it seems that way: Above $50,000 revenue you get hit with a 25% royalty fee?!?! Holy CRAP!!!!!

Eehhh, no Dev fees is good, but 25% just seems like too much especially if a studio is looking at making a AAA game, using UE4 will just be to expensive in lost revenue.

So only mediocre games using UE4 with that pricing structure?
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Other engines are similar. Why do you think so many studios develop their own engines?
 
PCunicorn said:
Other engines are similar. Why do you think so many studios develop their own engines?
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Because licensing is a nice source of essentially free money.

Once you have the engine developed, most of YOUR work is done.
 
so if you made a basic 2D game, how would they prove you used their engine? Can they just go around ordering you to prove your source....or is there some form of watermarking that occurs? Like a splash screen you can't remove?
 
westrock2000 said:
so if you made a basic 2D game, how would they prove you used their engine? Can they just go around ordering you to prove your source....or is there some form of watermarking that occurs? Like a splash screen you can't remove?
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I'm sure there is some sort of digital watermark that they could check if they really wanted to. :p There is a splash screen, but not sure if you can remove it or not (I'm guessing not).

Realistically though, why open yourself up to the legal problems? If I made 50K off a mobile game and was still pulling in $$$, I wouldn't have a problem paying the 25% royalty personally.

For that matter, how do they prove how much revenue you've generated? What if said game is Ad supported?

I haven't released anything myself, so I really have no idea how that stuff works. It could be honor system based.
 
Guys, it's not 25%, that's for the UDK, that's a years-old policy.

For Unreal 4, It's 0% if you earn $3000 or less per quarter. Anything ABOVE that is 5% of profits. The end.
 
westrock2000 said:
so if you made a basic 2D game, how would they prove you used their engine? Can they just go around ordering you to prove your source....or is there some form of watermarking that occurs? Like a splash screen you can't remove?
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There might be watermarks in the memory when it gets loaded up.
 
westrock2000 said:
so if you made a basic 2D game, how would they prove you used their engine?
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It'll have an Unreal Engine splash screen and it copies run-time files (libraries that do various things like handle assets and run scripts) to a shared location. Proving that a game was made using UE is very trivial.
 
Unity, Unreal Engine, and now Source 2 are free to developers with variable levels of strings-attached based on income levels.

Did the engine business just go free-to-play? :) :D
 
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