Today Epic Games hosted the keynote of Unreal Fest in Seattle, providing plenty of interesting news about Unreal Engine, Epic Games Store, and more.
During the livestreamed event, which you can watch below, Epic started strong with the “Launch Everywhere with Epic” initiative, which will kick off on January 1, 2025.
Developers who launch their games made in Unreal Engine on Epic Games Store from 2025 onward will benefit from a reduced royalty rate from 5% to 3.5% on all stores and all store and platforms, as long as they release on EGS before or at the same time as the other platforms it exists on (PC, Android, Mac, and iOS in the future) and stores.
The royalty reduction will apply to all platforms and stores including consoles.
Interestingly, the simultaneous launch requirement is temporarily waived on iOS, as Epic understands that the “corer technology fee” imposed by Apple is prohibitive for many developers. When this changes, licensees will receive a minimum of 4 months’ notice before the change goes into effect.
Epic also celebrated Preview 1 of Unreal Engine 5.5, which is now available. The full release of the new version will come next month.
A relevant new experimental feature is MegaLights, which promises to enable developers to use “orders of magnitude” more movable and dynamic lights, all casting realistic area shadows and compatible with volumetric fog.
You can check out a demo below.
Another experimental feature is Nanite’s ability to render skeletal meshes much faster. Path Tracer is now production-ready and more robust and easier-to-use animation authoring tools have been implemented. These include a production-ready skeletal editor, enhanced reformers, TimeWarp curves and Animation Layers.
Virtual production tools now include production-ready SMPTE 2110 integration for in-camera VFX (ICVFX), multi-camera support, and inner frustum splitting.
Speaking of mobile development, the engine now supports mobile preview, while mobile performance and memory usage have been optimized.
Moving on to Fortnite, we hear that the battle royale game turned Metaverse now includes 134,000 islands, while creators have earned $479 million since March 2023.
A first-person camera mode device has been released as an experimental feature and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles content is now available to create dedicated islands.
If you want to read more, you can read the official blog post.
