Epic Games announced today that the next instalment of the Unreal Tournament series is in development under the new Unreal 4 Engine. While this is great news for fans of the series, it’s even better news for everyone interested in the multiplayer arena shooter as it will be release at no cost. That’s right, Free!
Now to clarify, the game is not Free to Play as most would fall in this category, but rather following Team Fortress 2 outline, where Epic plans to regain it’s developmental costs with an in-game marketplace where modders can sell their creations to players, earning funds which are then split between the modder and Epic itself.
Epic has stated during it’s announcement that “the very first line of code, the very first art created and design decision made, development will happen in the open, as a collaboration between Epic, UT fans and UE4 developers.” This will involve frequent forum updates and ongoing discussion, as well as regular Twitch streams on where development for the game stands. The best thing for modders though is that all code created during the development of Unreal Tournament will be available to Unreal Engine 4 developers via GitHub.
Access to the Unreal 4 Engine now comes at a subscription cost of $19 a month plus 5% of gross revenue resulting from sales to users (if a game is created using the engine.)