I received notification today that the Unreal 4 engine is now completely free. No more monthly subscriber payments. So, if you ever wanted to give it a shot, now is the time.

Yes this has just blown my mind. As a subber for the last few months I let it run out because I lacked the assets needed and don't have the skills or money to buy them. This frees up $19 for a speed tree sub. This changes a lot

Unity has a big announcement tomorrow during the live stream. I wonder what it is gonna be? Imagine if unity pro adopted the same.

I didn't know about any big Unity announcements, but maybe it's just an announcement that 5.0 is being released. Although it would be awesome if they went to a free model as well.

Got the e-mail too.
A pro-rated refund for my last sub, and $30 to spend in their asset store.

The unity3d boards are getting lit-up right now...!

Yeah I just saw that 30$. That's great for the asset artist! They will be getting a nice bump in revenue I think as I will most likely get the real rocks v1 pack.

I'm gonna have to check out Unity 3d boards. Although I think UE is a better tool, if unity pro went free I think we would see triple the installs since it's being used more now anyway, and there are so many freebies out there to use.

UE 4 is surely going to draw some artist talent strictly since it's free. I suspect we are gonna see some crazy things get made in the next year on the rendering CG front.

Neat! Great thing for me to showcase some models in.

Yeah, great. have been subscriber since the first version.

However, now most of the companies who contract us for prototyping their internal pitches will say "Oh, do it in Unreal, it´s free!"

Unfortunately, this will affect Game Guru considerably. Most hobbyists tinker around and never release anything commercially and would rather spend nothing to do this. At this point Unreal Engine 4 is a lower point of entry and it really isn't that difficult to use. With blue prints and loads of tutorials they can pump out some demos and simple games fairly easily with great visuals (FPS's are very easy to create in it.)

For professional development (i.e. those who want to release games to sell) Unreal Engine is obviously the better choice. It has AAA graphic abilities, supports multiple platforms and is relatively easy to use. If you like Speed Tree technology that's built-in at no additional cost. The 5% royalty only comes into effect after the first $3,000 per quarter per title. Most indie devs don't make that much per title so they end up paying nothing to Epic.

At this point I feel bad for Game Guru.

Yes it does! But almost no indie's can reach that kind of quality.

Your point is valid otherwise.

People will use both, I do. Even if UE4 was free at the time when I bought GG, I would have still bought GG.

Anyway UE4 being free is great news

that's very nice. i'm using (free) UDK for trying around since last year. what is the exact difference between UDK and unreal 4?

Unity 5 personal.....free. I was right about the announcement......this is an epic time for indies!

Still happy I supported GG thought

Yes, indeed. I watched the early part of the stream and saw the announcement. Not quite as big a deal for me since I already get Unity Pro free with my Wii U developer license. But I'm really hoping now that Nintendo releases the Wii U version for Unity 5. That would be huge for me.

It is indeed such great news for Unity 5:

http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2015/03/unity_5_development_engine_launches_includes_wii_u_support

By the way the first game engine I ever used with Epic was ZZT back in 1995 for DOS! lol

Right, Unity 5 has Wii U support, but you still need a Nintendo Developer License and they need to release the Wii U version of Unity 5, which is a separate process. It'll happen, but who knows when.

The Unity 5 announcement is a great announcement, as well. Unreal Engine 4 has the potential for amazing visuals and has some really great tools but Unity runs better on lower end hardware (at least Unity 4 did) and it Unreal doesn't support Wii U.

Well, it's a great time to be an Indie.

Lee is currently at GDC promoting GameGuru, and I know in the past he has tried to distance the comparison of GG to Unity or Unreal. But realistically many will group the three products into the same category since they are all used to produce independent games. I'm not sure how the reaction will be at GDC but he gives the first public demo tomorrow, I think. He is at the Intel booth which is outside the main exhibit doors, so many will see GameGuru both before and after seeing the Unity, CryEngine and Unreal development kits.

Lowering GameGuru's cost to just $20 with unlimited updates, even cheaper during GDC, was likely a bid to attract users who may not be willing to spend the $75/mo. or $20/mo. on the full Unity/Unreal engines. I don't imagine Lee/TGC are very excited about Unreal and Unity's announcements as each now offer full-featured free versions to everyone alongside their own asset stores much like TGC. Hopefully GameGuru will still fill a niche market. I have yet to get into Unity or Unreal although I had a paid subscription to UDK last year, but making everything free has made me curious to say the least.

Now im hearing there's news related to "Source 2"?

Is this the year of game engines? I think so lol

Yep Source 2 is being released free as well!

I just tried out Unreal 4 for the first time and I love how you can easily just into an actually working FPS test project. I think I'm going to be jumping around between all engines this year and see which one works best with my envisioned projects. For name I'm sticking to Game Guru as I'm no the best scripter. I just lost my team and also my own brother is a scripter but is far too busy with other projects.

Oh How so?

Source 2. What engine is that? I'm not familiar with it.

I have picked up Unreal rather quickly compared to unity. But unity has all this outstanding assets, so it hard to not want to pick unity back up.

I believe if GameGuru would release more models already animated and scripted as well as have more assets I think GO will do rather well.

The feeling of having to achieve greatness from the seemingly unlimited tools the larger engines have inevitably will cause people to burnout faster. GameGuru has limitations, and that could work to its advantage.

Source 2 is the latest version of Valve's game engine. Source was used to develop games such as Half-Life 2 and Portal.