With the official launch of Unreal Engine 4, Epic Games has mentioned on the UE blog that anyone who pays the subscription fee will get access to the newest iteration of the engine as well as the full majority of C++ source on GitHub. This is a dramatically different from how things have worked in the past, where the license to use the complete engine was given out to developers based on specific deals with Epic and where hobbyists and indie developers would only get access to a stripped-down version of the game engine called the Unreal Development Kit.

This move to a subscription model available for everyone is a bold and somewhat unprecedented move by Epic. Large-scale game engines aren't customarily available to the proletariat, which is part of the reason Unity has flourished in a market starved for AAA-quality engines. However, the $19/month subscription plan isn't the complete piece of the pie that Epic wants for giving people access to their engine, as the registration page explains that they'll require a 5% cut of the gross revenue for any game built using UE4. This may be a brave new world for Epic, but they're not letting go of lucrative licensing deals just yet. It'll be interesting to see how this pans out for indie developers whose use of small and obscure distribution channels may make it difficult for Epic to enforce their licensing fee, or the mere existence of a percentage cut may put off indie developers who don't face the same restrictions when using Unity.

On the open-source side of things, anyone who has a registered subscription and a GitHub account will be able to check out the engine's code on GitHub. However, Epic haven't been very clear about whether this will simply be a means for advanced developers to tweak the game engine to suit their own needs or if they will be open to code contributions from the public. This is not the first time a non-free game engine has provided the source code alongside the complete product as the source to Torque 3D was available for paying customers for a while before going completely open-source. The code for exporting games to consoles isn't available to everyone however, as they state on their FAQ page there are legal restrictions to providing console-specific code as open-source, and anyone interested in publishing games for Xbox One or PlayStation 4 need to sign a custom licensing deal with Epic.

Despite being open to everyone, the engine is still being provided with the caveat that it's for early adopters only, with the complete polished engine coming in another 6 months time. The move to a subscription model is surprising and puts them in direct competition with Unity, who recently announced Unity 5 which features advanced shaders, a much-needed GUI update and support for exporting to WebGL (meaning games can be played in the browser without the Unity plug-in). Nevertheless, the new Unreal Engine is available right now for daring souls who want access to the technology behind massive AAA-titles like Gears of War and Bulletstorm.

Update

Crytek have revealed that their CRYENGINE will also be available to indie developers using a subscription-based distribution model. It seems that this is the direction the industry is going, I just wonder how this will effect Unity.

*For paid members.