Unreal Engine -- FREE
by Quinton Delpeche · in General Discussion · 03/02/2015 (10:18 pm) · 20 replies
So I don't want to cause any issues or problems ... but I thought this was valuable information to share:
Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free, and all future updates will be free!
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.
Unreal Engine: Now Available to Everyone for Free
I think it is a great time to be an Indie Developer ... no matter what engine you are using ... so keep doing it and make great games. 8-}
Good luck to all of you with your projects ... this is your time to shine.
Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free, and all future updates will be free!
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.
Unreal Engine: Now Available to Everyone for Free
I think it is a great time to be an Indie Developer ... no matter what engine you are using ... so keep doing it and make great games. 8-}
Good luck to all of you with your projects ... this is your time to shine.
About the author
Gobbo Games is an Independent Games Development company operating from Durban in South Africa. We believe in creating high-quality cost-effective games that remain true to the belief of Independent Game Developers around the world.
#2
03/03/2015 (1:37 am)
@Nils, you didn't even have to do that. You could've paid the 19 bucks, and then stopped paying and kept the engine :P You just wouldn't get updates :P 
#3
It may be free and open source, but it is still proprietary software with restrictions, they "just" grant you a free license.
So it is not an option for me, since you are not allowed to redistribute the engine's source code or the editor and tools that come within it.
I like to see companies open source their stuff, but in that case it is more false marketing for me, since many people mistake it with real open source licenses and may think that unreal is a real alternative to it.
If you just want to get out a good game quick it may be fine, but you do not "own" the engine, like you can do with Torque and have all freedoms to do with it as you like.
03/03/2015 (4:40 am)
What most people do not see is that "free" does mean "not free" as in the free software sense.It may be free and open source, but it is still proprietary software with restrictions, they "just" grant you a free license.
So it is not an option for me, since you are not allowed to redistribute the engine's source code or the editor and tools that come within it.
I like to see companies open source their stuff, but in that case it is more false marketing for me, since many people mistake it with real open source licenses and may think that unreal is a real alternative to it.
If you just want to get out a good game quick it may be fine, but you do not "own" the engine, like you can do with Torque and have all freedoms to do with it as you like.
#4
It is just no longer a subscription model.
03/03/2015 (4:45 am)
It was never pitched as Open Source. I need to be clear about that.It is just no longer a subscription model.
#5
If you don't like the license, don't use it - same as it ever was.
03/03/2015 (5:53 am)
Yeah, I don't think anyone believes it is "Richard Stallman free." They're pretty clear that you pay royalties, and they're pretty clear you don't own it - "no gaming applications" (no gambling/slot machines) is pretty fundamental here since it means you are restricted in where your game is placed.If you don't like the license, don't use it - same as it ever was.
#6
Carry on the discussion in a civil manner (as I expect you all will) and we are all good. In fact, I'll contribute. I'm really looking forward to seeing how they improve their 2D components (Paper2D), due to my love of all things 2D tech. I'll continue to work on my own Torque 2D improvements, but I love playing with other tech.
03/03/2015 (6:57 am)
Quote:So I don't want to cause any issues or problems ...Discussing exciting tech news related to our passion/hobby won't cause any issues or problems. I think we are all intelligent, civilized developers who can talk about the going-ons in our world. After all, this isn't a certain other game engine forum where threads are instantly locked and users attack everyone else with a different opinion (cough).
Carry on the discussion in a civil manner (as I expect you all will) and we are all good. In fact, I'll contribute. I'm really looking forward to seeing how they improve their 2D components (Paper2D), due to my love of all things 2D tech. I'll continue to work on my own Torque 2D improvements, but I love playing with other tech.
#7
03/03/2015 (7:19 am)
You don't think anyone believes that? I already saw a bunch of people doing so.
#8
My point is that it is NOT OPEN SOURCE ... doesn't stop people trying but they are breaking the law and that is their problem not mine.
03/03/2015 (9:23 am)
Well Duion ... then those people will need to live with themselves and need to take it up with Epic ... or visa versa.My point is that it is NOT OPEN SOURCE ... doesn't stop people trying but they are breaking the law and that is their problem not mine.
#9
http://gamasutra.com/view/news/237853/Unity_5_released_with_upgrades_fullfeatured_free_version.php
Seems like game engines are hitting the f2p mode where all games are worth 1$ and or free and you are expected to buy stuff in game or with game engines the marketplace/store/etc.
So my dear fellow developers.... which engine do you chose?
Ehhh... analyze paralyze.... a never ending while loop starts to execute....
03/03/2015 (10:56 am)
And now Unity 5 engine with all feature is also free to use until you reach 100.000$ in revenue...http://gamasutra.com/view/news/237853/Unity_5_released_with_upgrades_fullfeatured_free_version.php
Seems like game engines are hitting the f2p mode where all games are worth 1$ and or free and you are expected to buy stuff in game or with game engines the marketplace/store/etc.
So my dear fellow developers.... which engine do you chose?
Ehhh... analyze paralyze.... a never ending while loop starts to execute....
#10
03/03/2015 (11:05 am)
Quote:So my dear fellow developers.... which engine do you chose?The one best suited for the project I'm on.
#11
Pretty much exactly how I see it. 8-}
03/04/2015 (2:01 am)
Quote:The one best suited for the project I'm on.
Pretty much exactly how I see it. 8-}
#12
03/05/2015 (7:07 pm)
Amazing times to be an indie, indeed!
#13
Ladies and gentlemen get ready for the flood-wave of frenzy young indies with access to the new branded game engines :O)
I will stick with any engine that I like :O)
03/07/2015 (8:07 am)
If drowning in competition is amazing then yes :O)Ladies and gentlemen get ready for the flood-wave of frenzy young indies with access to the new branded game engines :O)
I will stick with any engine that I like :O)
#14
Not going to far in, I found the following:
Not having read any farther so far, I'd guess there's more in the finer print.
03/08/2015 (2:08 pm)
Has anyone read the fine print yet?Not going to far in, I found the following:
Quote:
The 5% royalty starts after the first $3,000 of revenue per product per quarter. Pay no royalty for film projects, contracting and consulting projects such as architecture, simulation and visualization.
Not having read any farther so far, I'd guess there's more in the finer print.
#15
Yes $100,000.00 is a nice high revenue point to meet before royalties are put in place, but in the Gamasutra article there was no mention of the royalty %.
But looking at Unity's site, there's a nice little one liner:
And farther in you'll find the following:
So as you can see Unity isn't as "FREE" as thought if you really want to work with it.
And then Unity has hidden away in the documentation the following:
03/08/2015 (2:23 pm)
@ Dwarf KingYes $100,000.00 is a nice high revenue point to meet before royalties are put in place, but in the Gamasutra article there was no mention of the royalty %.
But looking at Unity's site, there's a nice little one liner:
Quote:
Access to the new Asset Store Level 11 program: Available for free to Unity 5 Professional customers, and soon to be available to Unity Personal Edition users for $19/month.
And farther in you'll find the following:
Quote:
With a host of new services available for Personal Edition users at low monthly prices:
Unity Cloud Build Pro $25/month
Coming soon! Unity Analytics Pro $25/month
Team License $20/month
Coming soon! Asset Store Level 11 $19/month
So as you can see Unity isn't as "FREE" as thought if you really want to work with it.
And then Unity has hidden away in the documentation the following:
Quote:
Which Version You Can Use - Unity Personal Revenue Restrictions
Unity Personal (including the iOS and Android platform deployment options) may not be used by:
- a Commercial Entity that has either: (a) reached annual gross revenues in excess of US$100,000, or (b) raised funds (including but not limited to crowdfunding) in excess of US$100,000, in each case during the most recently completed fiscal year;
- a Non-Commercial Entity with a total annual budget in excess of US$100,000 (for the entire Non-Commercial Entity (not just a department)) for the most recently completed fiscal year;
[li] or an individual (not acting on behalf of a Legal Entity) or a Sole Proprietor that has reached annual gross revenues in excess of US$100,000 from its use of the Software during the most recently completed fiscal year, which does not include any income earned by that individual which is unrelated to its use of the Software.
#16
03/08/2015 (2:25 pm)
Personally I'm sticking with GarageGames, as they have never hidden things from us and have supported the community better than other Game Engine Developers.
#17
I don't know much from before the MIT release, but they always seemed to be indie friendly and I had a good feeling since I tested the engine first, while on the other big commercial engines I always felt so lost.
03/08/2015 (3:49 pm)
The reason Torque3D is so free is that garagegames has quit the engine business and since the MIT release, there has not been much support for the engine or community, only for maintenance.I don't know much from before the MIT release, but they always seemed to be indie friendly and I had a good feeling since I tested the engine first, while on the other big commercial engines I always felt so lost.
#18
Yups so it is all "free" or kind of "free".
I am pretty happy with Torque 3D MIT after spending a whole year testing other game engines like Unreal 4(UE4) and HeroEngine(HE) out. My little interesting trip using other engines taught me a lot about level design, editors, different ways of scripting. What it means not to have access to source codes(HE it was actually not a bad engine after all) and what a long time used proven engine(T3D) has to offer(resources, plugins, addons, books etc.) in contrary to a more newly game engine(UE4).
I was amazed with both engines mentioned above. Almost moved to both of them when trying them out( O_o ). UE4 can do some crazy stuff extremely fast. Items that gets into the player hand(socket stuff) when you collide with the item and you can even cast to player on the item in its own Blueprint so it affects the player etc. The same can of course be done with TorqueScript in the items.cs file :O)
The thing is that I have not found anything that can replace my dear AFX 2.0 and UAIK. UE4 has AI Behavior trees and that is actually not bad but with UAIK most of the ground work has been done and it is more about tweaking the stuff and the documentation is actually pretty okay. UE4 also has vector fields and good addons that you can use to make special effects in Blueprint with, but AFX 2.0 has everything set up for you and you feel like you are modding stuff as such with some fun scripting. PureLight means complete control over the light baking process for real. In UE4 one can tweak the cast shadows for each model instead or the nearby static light to stop the baking(or use stationary or movable light) and the results are good. That is not an issue when using PureLight as I Bake models in PureLights' own editor before importing it into T3D. If you do not know what PureLight is then it has also been used by UDK(Unreal 3) users. Even the amount of online resources and books for TGE/TGEA/T3D is a true feast of awesomeness(sure some are outdated).
I also find a personal mind of calmness in using TorqueScript(actually I love scripting languages such as Python and PHP as well). I find it to be faster and more efficient than Blueprint when searching through a whole project for specific code. Blueprint is indeed a very neat feature and it takes some of the need to code away... Ahem but I prefer to script and code as such :O) HE and Unity offers good scripting options and UE4 offers a C++ solution instead but you will need to combine it with Blueprint sometimes.
All the royalties and revenue limits are not really an issue. It is hard to reach an income level of that size in a market with so many competitors anyway.
What is more important is to try out as many engines as possible, make some levels and small games in them with some simple AI stuff or look through some demos made with them so one get a hang of the workflow and then ask yourself these questions:
1. Does the engine handles my tasks(light, level design etc.)?
2. Is it fit for my project?
3. Do I feel productive after a while working with it?
4. Does it has a good online community?
5. which platform do I develop for?
You could have other questions inserted above. Most engines will fulfill 1, 2 and 4 while 3 is more about personal preferences. Question 5 will dictate your choice a bit if your platform is for more modern game consoles. Most indies do not hold such a license.
Beside that T3D MIT now compiles on Visual Studio 2013, supports 64bit OS systems and is soon to run on Linux as well.
So after a year of amazingly fun researching I still find Torque 3D to offer a great competitive solution in this crazy game engine market. But I foresee many non coders will fall madly in love with UE4 for its Blueprint even though working with variables and Boolean logic in Blueprint is a must for them as their projects evolves.
And in the end all engines I have tested and worked with would crash to desktop during terrain sculpting or material editing from time to time, hence they all had their annoying issues or bugs. However, I hated when UE4 would crash during Blueprint scripting(lap or desk both happen for me :O) ) or simply slow down my laptop when on the run that problem I have never seen with Torsion so far. Scripting work in Torsion is rock solid and never give any crash what so ever.
I am now looking forward to see Torque 3D MIT 4.7, but also how UE4 will shape out in the near future :O)
Well that text came out a little long... Sorry :O)
Edit: using both engines. Neat tools :O)
03/08/2015 (5:28 pm)
@PierreYups so it is all "free" or kind of "free".
I am pretty happy with Torque 3D MIT after spending a whole year testing other game engines like Unreal 4(UE4) and HeroEngine(HE) out. My little interesting trip using other engines taught me a lot about level design, editors, different ways of scripting. What it means not to have access to source codes(HE it was actually not a bad engine after all) and what a long time used proven engine(T3D) has to offer(resources, plugins, addons, books etc.) in contrary to a more newly game engine(UE4).
I was amazed with both engines mentioned above. Almost moved to both of them when trying them out( O_o ). UE4 can do some crazy stuff extremely fast. Items that gets into the player hand(socket stuff) when you collide with the item and you can even cast to player on the item in its own Blueprint so it affects the player etc. The same can of course be done with TorqueScript in the items.cs file :O)
The thing is that I have not found anything that can replace my dear AFX 2.0 and UAIK. UE4 has AI Behavior trees and that is actually not bad but with UAIK most of the ground work has been done and it is more about tweaking the stuff and the documentation is actually pretty okay. UE4 also has vector fields and good addons that you can use to make special effects in Blueprint with, but AFX 2.0 has everything set up for you and you feel like you are modding stuff as such with some fun scripting. PureLight means complete control over the light baking process for real. In UE4 one can tweak the cast shadows for each model instead or the nearby static light to stop the baking(or use stationary or movable light) and the results are good. That is not an issue when using PureLight as I Bake models in PureLights' own editor before importing it into T3D. If you do not know what PureLight is then it has also been used by UDK(Unreal 3) users. Even the amount of online resources and books for TGE/TGEA/T3D is a true feast of awesomeness(sure some are outdated).
I also find a personal mind of calmness in using TorqueScript(actually I love scripting languages such as Python and PHP as well). I find it to be faster and more efficient than Blueprint when searching through a whole project for specific code. Blueprint is indeed a very neat feature and it takes some of the need to code away... Ahem but I prefer to script and code as such :O) HE and Unity offers good scripting options and UE4 offers a C++ solution instead but you will need to combine it with Blueprint sometimes.
All the royalties and revenue limits are not really an issue. It is hard to reach an income level of that size in a market with so many competitors anyway.
What is more important is to try out as many engines as possible, make some levels and small games in them with some simple AI stuff or look through some demos made with them so one get a hang of the workflow and then ask yourself these questions:
1. Does the engine handles my tasks(light, level design etc.)?
2. Is it fit for my project?
3. Do I feel productive after a while working with it?
4. Does it has a good online community?
5. which platform do I develop for?
You could have other questions inserted above. Most engines will fulfill 1, 2 and 4 while 3 is more about personal preferences. Question 5 will dictate your choice a bit if your platform is for more modern game consoles. Most indies do not hold such a license.
Beside that T3D MIT now compiles on Visual Studio 2013, supports 64bit OS systems and is soon to run on Linux as well.
So after a year of amazingly fun researching I still find Torque 3D to offer a great competitive solution in this crazy game engine market. But I foresee many non coders will fall madly in love with UE4 for its Blueprint even though working with variables and Boolean logic in Blueprint is a must for them as their projects evolves.
And in the end all engines I have tested and worked with would crash to desktop during terrain sculpting or material editing from time to time, hence they all had their annoying issues or bugs. However, I hated when UE4 would crash during Blueprint scripting(lap or desk both happen for me :O) ) or simply slow down my laptop when on the run that problem I have never seen with Torsion so far. Scripting work in Torsion is rock solid and never give any crash what so ever.
I am now looking forward to see Torque 3D MIT 4.7, but also how UE4 will shape out in the near future :O)
Well that text came out a little long... Sorry :O)
Edit: using both engines. Neat tools :O)
#19
no it was a good break-down of the whole topic.
well said! :)
03/08/2015 (11:37 pm)
@ Dwarf Kingno it was a good break-down of the whole topic.
well said! :)
#20
The very topic of this thread mentions the 5% royalty and so does Epic at their frontpage.
More games for everyone! :)
I agree with your points. T3D is awesome but so is Ogre3D, Unity and UE4 in their own ways. They all fit different requirements. Like for Duion, who needs it to be licensed under a Copyleft or free license.
Thanks a lot my friend!
03/09/2015 (10:11 am)
Quote:
Pierre (DragoFire) Hay:
Has anyone read the fine print yet?
The very topic of this thread mentions the 5% royalty and so does Epic at their frontpage.
Quote:
Dwarf King:
If drowning in competition is amazing then yes :O)
More games for everyone! :)
I agree with your points. T3D is awesome but so is Ogre3D, Unity and UE4 in their own ways. They all fit different requirements. Like for Duion, who needs it to be licensed under a Copyleft or free license.
Quote:
Dwarf King:
Oh and I really like your Awesomium for Torque :O)
Thanks a lot my friend!
Torque Owner Nils Eikelenboom
Studio DimSum