First Epic came out and announced they are dropping the monthly fee for access to
Unreal Engine 4. Free to download, all features, all platforms, full source code. Epic will take 5% of you sales past the first $3,000 per quarter. As an extra bonus, it includes the current community driven Unreal Tournament that you can play.
Unity followed up with the release of
Unity 5. Free to download, multiple platforms, all engine features available (this is different from Unity 4 where some features were missing in the free version). Still has a Pro version with some cloud and team-based extras. You will need to upgrade to Pro if you make more than $100,000.
Valve has now come out and said they will be releasing Source 2 for free for people to use. Though so far it is the most unknown with no features of the engine shown, updated tools, or anything. What we do know is that it will be free to use as long as you sell the games you make with it on Steam. Which takes a 30% cut. I suppose that would be true with the other two engines because who doesn't want to get their game on Steam, right?
So should be fun to see what people make with these. Source 2 will be interesting to learn more about because from what I've read the Source tools were pretty terrible to work with so unless that has changed dramatically I don't think too many companies will be that interested. Also no word on what platforms other than PC/Mac/Linux it'll support.
Personally I want to check out Unreal because the new UT sounds fun and also as far as editors go I really want to check out the Blueprints system they have.
