It's available at no charge, but it's not free.
It's free to the 99.99% of people who "have this great idea for a killer game" but never get beyond the first baby steps.
Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free
161–170 of 249 posts
Re: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free
#162I just subscribed two days ago. The $19 subscription fee wasn't a big deal, but even so, I now have a $30 Unreal Engine Marketplace credit. What a great way to handle it.
Oh wow, just noticed this in my e-mail:
"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."
So not only do I get most of my money back, but also the $30 credit.
Epic rocks.
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EDIT: I see now it also says as much in the announcement, if only lacking the specific details.
Re: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free
#163How does it fare against Unity? My understanding, from previous versions, is that Unity offered a lot more tooling than Unreal. Also, Unreal's SDK demanded a lot of C++ code, which can be unappealing for small studios compared to Unity's Mono and several possible (managed) language choices. However, Unreal appears to be much more capable, and better performing. Also, is Crytek still competitive? It used to be competi…
I'm actually super curious as to why you have that opinion, UnrealEngine has been around longer, and has always had significantly more in the way of production quality tools and features. There are certainly differences, especially when you get down into the details, but two large features Unreal has had for 10 years, shader graph tools, and animation blend trees, are either new and still painful in Unity (mechanim) or only existent as a third-party add-on (shaderforge)
Re: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free
#164I always thought it would eventually be free, but I had never imagined it'd be so quick! This is great news for the adoption rate.
However, while I like Blueprints and hate C++, I still think it needs something in between such as Lua or C# (I'm fluent in both, both come with pro/cons)
Also, with this news I'm a bit concerned about it being free, the growth that may lead in a lot of trolling on forums and misinformation. By that I mean, if you have a financial commitment to something, you're a lot less likely going to bash it publicly since you've put your money down towards it. I hope that they can keep the quality of the community to high standards like they have, with clear questions and answers.
Re: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free
#165I always thought it would eventually be free, but I had never imagined it'd be so quick! This is great news for the adoption rate. However, while I like Blueprints and hate C++, I still think it needs something in between such as Lua or C# (I'm fluent in both, both come with pro/cons) Also, with this news I'm a bit concerned about it being free, the growth that may lead in a lot of trolling on forums and misinformati…
> However, while I like Blueprints and hate C++, I still think it needs something in between such as Lua or C#
I'm actually a little curious about this, What does Lua or C# provide for you that using C++ in the context of UE does not? or is it simply familiarity with Lua and C#?
Re: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is free as in beer, which is the natural definition of "free" for most people.
It's free as beer until you take a sip from the glass. Also, the US isn't the land of the cheap sakes, which kind of doesn't fit "for most".
Just in case this helps you in the future: "cheapskate" is the term you're looking for.
Re: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free
#167How does it fare against Unity? My understanding, from previous versions, is that Unity offered a lot more tooling than Unreal. Also, Unreal's SDK demanded a lot of C++ code, which can be unappealing for small studios compared to Unity's Mono and several possible (managed) language choices. However, Unreal appears to be much more capable, and better performing. Also, is Crytek still competitive? It used to be competi…
I think Crytek's graphics look quite a bit better and more realistic then Unreal 4, but I don't know if the tools are just as good. Also not sure if Cryengine is competitive from a performance point of view (could be a trade-off with the better graphics).
Unreal Engine 4 is capable of producing VERY realistic environments. Check this out:
Re: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Lawsuits. I imagine the revenue distribution would follow a power law here. So it would only really make sense for Epic to go after non-compliant "whales", where the unpaid royalties exceed the legal costs. Also, the more profitable the project, the lower the non-compliance rate, probably. It makes little sense to defy the royalty agreement if you have a successful project.
To handle noncompliers, they can get off of the various App stores with a simple DMCA request, no complicated lawsuits required, unless the developers appeal the take down, which probably involves a lot of "under penalty of perjury" lying.
Why would breach-of-contract have anything to do with the DMCA?
Re: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does $3000 reset every quarter or it it a one-tune limit? Is it (gross - $3000) * .05 or gross .05 when the condition is met? The phrasing is ambiguous, unless I'm missing some grammar rules. And no, I'm not asking out of pedantry.
>When you ship a game or application, you pay a 5% royalty on gross revenue after the first $3,000 per product, per quarter. Not only does it reset per quarter, it is per product as well.
That seems pretty gameable (and who would be better at gaming systems than games devs?). "Oh, yeah, we made $2999 on Gem Clan Quest, then $2999 on Gem Clan Quest Super Deluxe Edition, and $2999 on the Gem Clan Quest Candy Kingdom DLC, which is more of a sequel really, so it's a totally different product..."
Re: Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was really $20 then $20 whenever you want to upgrade. And it's mainly for kids with gaming rigs. Good luck running any demos on Intel Integrated Graphics, much less the editor. Unity can be used for free, with limits on certain features but good enough for school. Runs even on crappy $500 laptops.
As someone that has used both UE and Unity, Unity is far more restrictive in its free state (no soft shadows, forced Unity splash screen, no level of detail support, no inverse kinematics for animations, no profiler, and many more). Also the Pro license for Unity is pretty expensive up front -- a few hundred for Pro and then another $100-200 for iPhone, another $200 for Android, etc and thats per month (or $4500 one-…
I've built ok looking things in free Unity. One of the most irritating limitations was the ugly light gray theme instead of the darker gray theme.
Pro is $75 per month or $1500, then $75 per month for iPhone. And you can't just stop paying, it's a 12 month contract! If you pay up front then try to upgrade it's $700.
If they had an option to pay royalties and less up front it would be a much better proposition for upcoming indie devs. But they had some pricing thread where they asked the community after Unreal's $20+5% offering and decided it was best to keep current pricing. Perhaps the community felt that if you can't pony up a few K, don't crowd the market with your games?