Since we launched back in March, many educators have been working with us to get Unreal Engine 4 into their classrooms. Additionally, over the last few months students in our community have been asking for a way to gain access to the tools without having to pay anything upfront. The steady increase in interest made us realize we need a much simpler way to partner with academia and so we’ve decided to go with the simplest solution of all – Unreal Engine 4 is now free for academic use, including personal copies for students enrolled in accredited video game development, computer science, art, architecture, simulation, and visualization programs!

All educators can now have unrestricted access to the engine simply by contacting us at unrealengine.com/education. Schools can integrate the same fully featured version of Unreal Engine 4 previously available only to developers, along with all future updates. Students will retain indefinite access to any versions of the engine they used during their coursework so they’ll always have the option to take their class projects and turn them into shipping projects any time in the future.

Game development continues to increase in complexity and as a newcomer to the process it can be quite challenging to learn the skills that will lead to a successful career. We believe Unreal Engine 4 can be a valuable learning tool for all types of aspirational developers, and now schools can freely integrate it into their courses to provide a modern toolset to help teach students the necessary skills. If you’re a programmer, what better way to learn C++ than with the entire Unreal Engine 4 source code at your disposal? For budding artists and game designers, Blueprint visual scripting makes it possible to build and ship entire projects without ever writing a single line of code.

Learning the fundamentals (and advanced techniques!) of game development with the same tools used by professional developers to ship successful games is one of the best ways to maximize your chances of starting your own development career. To help accelerate this we provide numerous free content samples, tons of video and written tutorials to explain all the major tools of Unreal Engine 4, and extensive documentation of all features.

We’re constantly evolving our learning resources and we’re excited to collaborate further with education professionals to build curriculum that gives students the best chances of achieving their development goals and land great jobs.

For more information please visit our education page at unrealengine.com/education and also check out the FAQ for more specific explanations.