Epic releases Unreal Engine 4 to developers under attractive licensing


Epic's goal is to put the engine within reach of everyone interested in building games and 3D content, from indies to large triple-A development teams, and Minecraft creators as well. For $19/month you can have access to everything, including the Unreal Editor in ready-to-run form, and the engine's complete C++ source code hosted on GitHub for collaborative development.

Unreal Engine is the 3D muscle behind a number of popular games such as the Infinity Blade series on iOS, Unreal Tournament, Gears of War series, and many others. The new engine release is being made available under some pretty attractive licensing terms. Developers just have to pay $19/month for access to the tools and then a payment of 5-percent on gross sales. By gross sales means if an app sells for $10, you'll owe Epic a nickel for each sale even though the developer only gets typically $7 back from Apple, for example. The terms provide the full engine and source code.

With the new licensing, it should be more attractive for developers to build games with the kit.