Epic Games makes Unreal Engine 4 available to public for $19 a month

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At the 2014 Game Developers Conference, Epic Games' Tim Sweeney announces that one of the most powerful engines in game design is now widely available.

(Credit: Epic Games)

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--In a pivotal shift in how it licenses its massively popular and widespread game engine, Epic Games has made the next-generation version of that software, the Unreal Engine 4, available to the public as a subscription-based service. It will cost $19 a month and involve a royalty agreement asking for 5 percent in gross sales to users. The engine is available for download today.

'We've always made this available to AAA game developers, costs many millions of dollars, involves negotiating for weeks or months at a time, but for the very big teams that have wanted access to it, they've been able to get it and build some really great games,' said Tim Sweeney, Epic Games founder and technical director, at an event held at the 2014 Game Developers Conference here on Wednesday.

'How could we make the most valuable and useful engine available to everyone as practical as possible? We came up with an entirely new business model for the Unreal Engine,' he added.

Game developers can still negotiate custom terms that involve heftier upfront fees. If the game is free-to-play, Epic will still take 5 percent of any microtransactions and ad revenue. If it's completely free and made for fun, there is no royalty agreement.

'You get access to everything: The unreal editor, for PC and Mac, and on those platforms you can then deploy to iOS and Android. All those platforms stay and more coming in the future,' Sweeney said.

Epic is also released the source code of the Unreal Engine 4 in the hopes that it will foster a community of tinkering and manipulating and user development.

'The source code is Epic's crown jewel. The entire code base we use to make all of our games. The entire code base we make available to the licensees who pay millions,' Sweeney said. 'Absolutely whatever you want, you can find it in the Unreal Engine 4 today or you can find it out in the Unreal Engine community or you can build it yourself.' Epic is releasing the source code for the engine through GitHub.

In a lighter moment, Epic showcased a unique feature of its engine: The ability to build games within games with ease and near zero C++ knowledge. To do this, the company unveiled a game, built in two days by someone without C++ skills. Naturally, it was a Flappy Bird clone.

(Credit: Photo by Nick Statt/CNET)

'I doubt he was even sober for most of the time he was building it,' Sweeney joked of Flappy Chicken. The clone was constructed within the Unreal Engine 4, meaning one can manipulate its mechanics in real-time, either while playing or in simulation mode -- a pivotal feature of the engine from a development standpoint.

This story is developing.