• long running

Unreal Engine 4 Now FREE for Everyone (PC & MAC) Was $19/Month

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Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free, and all future updates will also be free! You can download the engine and use it for everything from game development, education, architecture, and visualization to VR, film and animation. Enjoy :)

For developing with UE4, we recommend a desktop PC with Windows 7 64-bit or a Mac with Mac OS X 10.9.2 or later, 8 GB RAM and a quad-core Intel or AMD processor, and a DX11 compatible video card. UE4 will run on desktops and laptops below these recommendations, but performance may be limited.

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Comments

  • +5

    This is awesome!

    • +56

      No, it's unreal

      • It's really awesome.

        • Yeah awesome stuff, i've been paying for it about 6 months now but happy to get it free

      • +9

        I thought it was EPIC

      • No. It's Unreally awesome

  • +1

    RIP Unity

    • +4

      Not necessarily. UE4 looks to still have a 5% cut of revenue after the first $3000, so it may still make sense to go Unity for people looking to actually ship something. Based on their FAQ (http://unity3d.com/unity/faq), Unity looks to be royalty free. For commercial games on pricing alone, it may come down to upfront fixed costs vs ongoing non-fixed costs (scales at a fixed percent).

      For commercial titles, $19 a month probably wasn't a massive expense for many companies already anyway, although it is still a hit sure.

      Good news for hobbyist but.

      • I think Unity will end up just competing with other mobile game engines, its very unlikely any PC/console game would be done in Unity now. While realistic engines would be cryengine and frostbite.

        • Yeah I dunno. The $19 fee might sway some, but I'm not sure whether that'd have been the biggest roadblock for those that are currently adopting Unity. The lack of a 5% royalty fee might still make Unity more appealing too.

          Either way it's a great move. Hopefully it helps small up starters with a few staff who can knock off $100 or so in licensing cost a month.

        • @Smigit:
          Smart sales move wrapped up as a community favor. The mobile games market stood at $25bn in 2014 and expected to reach $40bn in 2017. Based on their current strong market standing now think how much they would make each year if say only 10-15% of that money belongs to the apps built using Unreal, more than half a billion dollars each year. I would be happy to buy a home ($19/month is easy to afford) than paying rent in '%' forever…

        • +2

          @spiderdash: Exactly. I imagine it's a move to encourage a start up to trial their offering in the hope that some stick with it and in turn out to be the next Mojang or whatever, in which case 5% of sales could be considerable. Many of the more successful projects probably started without huge financial ambitions, which is where this deal could come into play. Realistically 5% not too bad a deal for a developer either, but if you are forward planning you'd certainly still consider other royalty free options given moving away from the UE may prove to not be viable down the road should your title take off. In the end it's still 5%, which adds up if you have credit card companies or online stores also taking a percentage of their own.

          Unity also has free options too for companies under a certain volume and not requiring some features which is worth keeping in mind, so it's not as though upfront cost has to be an inhibitor for that engine for upstarts either. Even as a company starting out with Desktop/Console options, Unity could still end up being appealing.

          Certainly I've seen a fair few Kickstarter games leaning towards Unity over the past 24 months, and cost wasn't always the cited reason.

    • +3

      Both have their pros and cons.

      Unity is stronger in mobile programming, Unreal in desktop.

      Unity uses C#, Unreal uses C++.

    • UDK was free when it was first released, then they set up a subscription for it, now they're back to free. There must be a reason for this. I predict Unity will still strong as ever.

      • +2

        I think you are confusing UDK and Unreal Engine 4. UDK uses Unreal Engine 3 and has been free since 2009 (where it wasn't free from it's first version beck in 2005). Unreal Engine 4 is a separate product which was released and then went to a subscription based model for $19 per month. UE4 had never been free… until now.

  • -2

    They made 3.5 free and now 4. I think it the end for unity. Great but difficult tool to use.

  • Ok guys lets makes some games in ios with unreal engine!

    • lol.

  • Can a novice make simple stuff with it or would I need a free Udemy course to teach me? ;)

    • +3

      Its honestly not that hard, I know a girl who took a subject at uni making things with an earlier unreal engine.

      This guy made a very impressive model of an apartment in seven weeks, which included the time he need to learn how to use the engine.

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6PQ19BEE24

      A lot of shops are able to complete projects without a single engineer just by using the engine.

      • Wow- that's incredibly realistic. Scary.

  • I believe that infinity blade and many ios games are using this, looks impressive.

  • +1

    I don't think 5% of your revenue after $3,000 for an engine is much at all. They are after all a big part of your development team, their engine is multi-platform allowing you release the same game across multiple platforms and they offer fantastic support.

    Thanks OP for pointing this out I fully intend to release a multi-million selling game using this Unreal 4 engine, I've just got to get past playing games.

  • Brilliant engine. The blueprint system is fantastic. I spent about a month learning it and found it more intuitive, more stable and more enjoyable than Unity.

    • I had a quick look this morning at Unreal 4, between Blueprint and C++, you think Blueprint is better?

      • As to whether UE4 or Unity is better - I'm not sure whether you can say. Which you end up using comes down what you're doing and your personal preferences. UE4 seems more stable to me. I always felt like I had to be careful with Unity so as not to get on its bad side. In saying this I haven't used Unity 5.0 - so many of these issues might have been resolved. Unity might be easier for a beginner as there are millions of excellent tutorials out there, where there aren't as many for UE4. Also, IMO, C# and/or JavaScript are easier to learn than C++.

  • This is awesome!

    Thank you for sharing this OP.

  • +1

    Unity is free now too!

  • +1

    Unreal 4 is free, but you pay a 5% royalty on gross revenue after the first $3,000 per product, per quarter.

    This only really applies if your business makes games.

    3D Visualisation, Animation, CAD or Architectural firms employing UE4 for concept art/videos won't have to pay a cent since they do not produce applications nor games.

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