Epic Games today announced they will be making Unreal Engine 4 available for free and all future updates free. You can download the engine and use it for everything from game developer, education, architecture and visualization to VR, film and animation. Once you ship your first game you pay a 5% royalty on gross revenue after the first $3,000 per product, per quarter.
This is a great incentive for indie studios and those seeking to learn video games development or the various forms that the engine can be used for. It scales from indie project to high-end blockbusters; supports all the major platforms and includes 100% of the C++ source code. Providing you with the complete toolset an AAA developer studio would have. But it doesn’t end there, there’s even a marketplace available for you to find the assets you require to complete your project or even build them yourself and share it with others.
Epic Games has also included a pre-alpha version of the latest Unreal Tournament with Unreal Engine 4’s launcher.
Existing subscribers of the Unreal Engine 4 sub system prior to the announcement of the free release will receive a $30 credit that can be spent in the Unreal Engine Marketplace and their most recent month payment refunded.
You can download the Unreal Engine 4 via UnrealEngine.com