Oh man! This week has been chalked full of news for both gamers and game devs a like.

If you’re an experienced or small time dev, a curious student or a passionate gamer; then you’ll be excited to learn about a lot of the recent news that has been announced in the last few days. Three of the biggest games engines and the companies behind them are looking to change the games industry for the better.

Unreal Engine 4 [Download here]

So as most of you know Epic’s Unreal Engine 4 has been a huge game player in game development. It’s an extremely powerful, efficient tool for both experienced and inexperienced users. The engine launched early last year for everyone to use at a $20 a month subscription. But now Epic is looking to shake things up and completely release the engine for absolutely free.

Yep, that’s right. The entire engine, completely open source and able to modify: will be free for anyone to download starting right now. There is still a 5% royalty per quarter on revenue after $3,000 though which is still a pretty good deal. To top it off, if you were already a subscriber to the engine prior to this announcement you’ll find a $30 credit in your account to use on anything in the Marketplace.

Unity 5  [Download here]

Another big player in the game developer space has been Unity. Unity has improved vastly over the last couple of years with each iteration. It has incorporated a number of features and an attractive work-space for most indie and small developers. Its a great tool but started out lacking in a lot of areas that would be necessary for serious projects. The next version of the Unity engine, Unity 5, looks to add a lot features and tools that weren’t there. The updated Unity includes a range of changes; all which you can check out here. Unity 5 is compatible and build-able to 21 platforms (each still require dev licenses) including the Vita.

The engine is free for personal use but Unity has decided to stick to a traditional pricing model which is a little off putting since its running up against behemoth engines with far superior pricing. 

Oh sweet gabeN! Source 2!

GDC has been home to some extremely cool tech and gaming news but this year is really special. After seeing various leaks, toolkit implementations and Valve’s acknowledgment of its development last year; Valve finally announced Source engine 2! This news is coming hot off the heels of the announcment of Valve’s entry into the VR space with their VR headset Vive.

The Source engine has been one of the best games engines for many years. Its powered some of the worlds most innovative and ground breaking franchises such as  Half Life, Counter Strike, Left 4 Dead, Portal and more. The Source engine has powered just about every thing Valve and a handful of other companies have done for a little over a decade. The engine has held its ground both visually and mechanically over the last 11 years but Valve is looking towards the future hoping to innovate further and push a new engine to power what is hopefully to be the next decade of games.

Top: Left 4 Dead 2 (2009) running on the Source engine. 
Bottom: Alleged Valve internal document leak of a L4D 2 map remade from the ground up in Source 2.

While the original Source engine was great it was not an openly available tool for the majority of studios. It was an engine kept close to Valve and only licensed to certain companies. But Source 2 is looking to change that. Source 2 will also be completely free for everyone. Specifics haven’t been announced yet nor a release date. It’s unclear yet to as what Valve’s definition of free is will be and if that means a royalty like Unreal. But its good to know that Valve wont be keeping Source 2 locked away from the countless developers and content creators.

You can probably expect more information to be released in the coming months. Source 2 is going to be the flagship engine for Valve and the projects they have lined up for the years to come so that hopefully means the first Valve-Source 2 powered game (besides DOTA 2 implementation) will be announced later at E3.