Epic Games has just held its annual State of Unreal showcase at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2019 and the company has a few things to shout about. A couple of days ago the company awarded its final round of grants for its Unreal Dev Grants programme. Today, Epic Games has taken that idea to the next step, announcing Epic MegaGrants. a new $100,000,000 USD initiative.
Just as before, Epic MegaGrants aim to assist videogame developers, media and entertainment creators, enterprise professionals, students, educators, and tools developers who are working with Unreal Engine 4. Epic Games will award creators with grants that range from $5,000 all the way up to $500,000, plus they will continue to own their IP and will be free to publish however they wish.
“At Epic we succeed when developers succeed,” said Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games in a statement. “With Epic MegaGrants we’re reinvesting in all areas of the Unreal Engine development community and also committing to accelerate the open sourcing of content, tools, and knowledge.”
Grants will be awarded on a continuous rolling basis as funds allow, with no firm deadlines to submit. Simply head to the Epic MegaGrants website for additional details on eligibility and how to apply.
In addition to helping developers with financial grants, Epic Games has now launched Epic Online Services, a set of free tools and services. Designed to work with any engine – not just Unreal Engine 4 – Epic Online Services was originally built for Fortnite. It can offer developers easy access to key services such as game analytics and customer support tools all through a single SDK and developer portal.
“Building a game is only the beginning for developers. We know from experience that successfully managing and scaling your game requires a robust infrastructure, with numerous back-end services. With Fortnite we are now operating these services at an enormous scale, and we are glad to start opening them up to the game development community at large in order to make it easier for teams of all sizes to succeed,” Sweeney adds.
There’s going to be plenty more news coming from the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2019 this week, so keep reading VRFocus for the latest updates.