It's been an amazing year for Unreal Engine 4. We've grown a lot, we've learned a lot, and with your help and feedback, made the engine easier to use and more powerful than ever. Now we're making Unreal Engine 4 freely available to developers everywhere.
Before we do, we wanted to say a sincere thanks to those of you who've been with us all along the way. We're humbled by your energy, enthusiasm, and the incredible stuff you're doing with the engine. And because of you, we're motivated to work even harder so that together, we can all create great things that inspire and shape the future of the medium that we love.
If you have paid for a subscription on or after January 30th, you will receive a pro-rated refund for your latest month's payment after March 12th. You'll continue to receive all future updates for free.
And, because you were a paying subscriber, we're also giving you a gift of €30 that you can spend in the Marketplace now or save for a future use.
Happy creating!
- The Team at Epic Games
Not bad!!
Re: Unreal Engine for free
Posted: 02 Mar 2015, 22:17
by Draise
How exciting. The road has never been clearer.
Re: Unreal Engine for free
Posted: 03 Mar 2015, 01:08
by MauricioPC
This is freaking awesome!
Re: Unreal Engine for free
Posted: 03 Mar 2015, 05:16
by angus_davidson
Going to be interesting to see how Unity responds to this. Personally I am hoping for at least free for EDU institutions ;)
Unreal are being very aggressive. Which is only ever good for the end user.
*edit* Forgot to add that Unity has an announcement thing scheduled for today. The plot thickens ;)
Re: Unreal Engine for free
Posted: 03 Mar 2015, 18:53
by MauricioPC
angus_davidson wrote:Going to be interesting to see how Unity responds to this. Personally I am hoping for at least free for EDU institutions ;)
Unreal are being very aggressive. Which is only ever good for the end user.
*edit* Forgot to add that Unity has an announcement thing scheduled for today. The plot thickens ;)
Free until 100k. New engine looks closer to what UE is, but not quite there yet. 21 platforms. WebGL looks very interesting with the new il2cpp (up to 8x improvement on performance - iPhone 6).
Re: Unreal Engine for free
Posted: 03 Mar 2015, 19:07
by Rez007
angus_davidson wrote:Going to be interesting to see how Unity responds to this. Personally I am hoping for at least free for EDU institutions ;)
Unreal are being very aggressive. Which is only ever good for the end user.
*edit* Forgot to add that Unity has an announcement thing scheduled for today. The plot thickens ;)
Just out of curiosity, why don't you guys push Unreal at your institution instead of Unity? I know Unity has a massive user base right now, but I feel they tend to be slow on releasing updates - wasn't Unity 5 originally supposed to come out last Summer? Personally, I think Epic made a huge move right here, and having it already free to Institutions and now free to everyone, is really building on the learning and projects that students and post-grads can continues to use beyond their school/college years. Currently, with Blueprint and Metal integration in Unreal, I think it leads Unity in features and quality achieved.
Re: Unreal Engine for free
Posted: 03 Mar 2015, 19:11
by angus_davidson
Mainly because we have students wit 2 -3 year of Unity experience and its not so easy to switch. In time it will happen though. We cant afford Unity at EDU rates going forward.
Re: Unreal Engine for free
Posted: 03 Mar 2015, 19:12
by Rez007
MauricioPC wrote:
angus_davidson wrote:Going to be interesting to see how Unity responds to this. Personally I am hoping for at least free for EDU institutions ;)
Unreal are being very aggressive. Which is only ever good for the end user.
*edit* Forgot to add that Unity has an announcement thing scheduled for today. The plot thickens ;)
Free until 100k. New engine looks closer to what UE is, but not quite there yet. 21 platforms. WebGL looks very interesting with the new il2cpp (up to 8x improvement on performance - iPhone 6).
Most Indies make mobile games so this is a really good pick-up for them anyway. Judging by upfront costs this is the winner, unless Unity does something drastic as well. I believe from a report I read last year that the average mobile game pulls in $2,000.00 in its lifetime, which is not good at all. Having something totally free -that is FULL featured - is something that allows for greater risk.
I think all the engines are really nice for anyone looking to do games. I think it mostly depends on what the user wants to create and what product fits better for them.
Re: Unreal Engine for free
Posted: 03 Mar 2015, 19:15
by Rez007
angus_davidson wrote:Mainly because we have students wit 2 -3 year of Unity experience and its not so easy to switch. In time it will happen though. We cant afford Unity at EDU rates going forward.
That definitely makes sense...maybe there is a way to have a couple of copies of Unreal installed on some computers incase a student wants to try something else in their free time? When I was in college, it was mainly Max everywhere, but there were some systems with Maya and Softimage for students later in the learning cycle who might want to try fiddling with different packages.
Re: Unreal Engine for free
Posted: 03 Mar 2015, 19:41
by angus_davidson
Rez007 wrote:
angus_davidson wrote:Mainly because we have students wit 2 -3 year of Unity experience and its not so easy to switch. In time it will happen though. We cant afford Unity at EDU rates going forward.
That definitely makes sense...maybe there is a way to have a couple of copies of Unreal installed on some computers incase a student wants to try something else in their free time? When I was in college, it was mainly Max everywhere, but there were some systems with Maya and Softimage for students later in the learning cycle who might want to try fiddling with different packages.
Thats definitely on the cards ;)
Re: Unreal Engine for free
Posted: 03 Mar 2015, 22:02
by angus_davidson
Finally got to watch the Unity announcement video , not particularly blown away.
Re: Unreal Engine for free
Posted: 03 Mar 2015, 22:20
by nDman
It's 2 years i'm working with unity and honestly the only reason i see to use Unity is it supports low-end Mobiles (and other low-end systems). Except that, in any way i think UE4 is much more superior to Unity and i just started to move on UE4.
With UE4 i can have full source code for free! I can do scripting with C++ or Blueprint which i see some similarities between it and ICE. and that's good
Re: Unreal Engine for free
Posted: 04 Mar 2015, 08:22
by pluMmet
One needs only do a youtube search for Unity 3d tutorials then one for Unreal Engine Tutorials it won't take but a few moments to see why Unity wins hands down...
It's the same logic that tells me that Houdini sucks @ Character animation but is great at Rigging.
When people enjoy using a program they are delighted to show people what they are doing.
It's not just more Unity tutorial videos but the various topics that are voluminous while the Unreal Engine has few topics.
Unreal Engine does not even have 1/10 of the video tutorial exposure.
Unity wins ... end of line (-Tron Master Controller)
Re: Unreal Engine for free
Posted: 05 Mar 2015, 05:21
by dwigfor
Wow.
Re: Unreal Engine for free
Posted: 05 Mar 2015, 05:25
by dwigfor
Perfect timing on the freebie! Now I get to switch my ~$240/year allocation over to Houdini Indie/Houdini Engine (for UE4) and still save some!
Re: Unreal Engine for free
Posted: 05 Mar 2015, 07:44
by angus_davidson
dwigfor wrote:Wow.
Downloaded both in HD and have to say the Kite one is just so much more impressive.
