Epic giving Unreal Engine 3 devs free Steam SDK update

Carrying on in the longstanding Epic Games tradition of offering up free upgrades to existing products, the developer, publisher and game engine creator announced this morning that it will be adding Steamworks support to Unreal Engine 3. "With Valve offering these services free of charge, the idea of providing the Steamworks SDK [software development kit] to all Unreal Engine licensees was a no-brainer," Epic VP Mark Rein notes in the announcement.

As it turns out, Valve offered up the development tools to UE3 developers (via Epic) without charging a single penny. That said, this isn't just a philanthropic gesture on Epic's part, but rather a strategy aimed at targeting the large stable of games powered by Unreal Engine. "Epic's technology is one of the most widely used engines in the industry and has powered many of the best games created in the past 10 years, on multiple platforms," Valve prez Gabe Newell proclaims.

That's really the crux of it -- bring in the Unreal Engine 3 users and they might stick around to purchase some other games on Steam. It's a bit of a sneaky trap (and a smart business move to boot), but it's one we wouldn't exactly be upset about falling for.

Reader Comments (20)

Wait. Does this incude Steamworks Support for the UDK? or is it just for paid licencees?

Fantastic. The more games that support steamworks the better.

I have no issue with it. I find it cool that I can buy a physical copy and if I ever lose it, be able to download the game from Steam whenever I wish.

If it means more Steam games on PC (and I guess Mac too, now), then I'm all for it.

So how about that Gears of War on steam, eh?

Microsoft is the publisher, they'll never release it on steam because it competes with Games for Windows Live.

And when CaramelZappa says 'competes with Games for Windows Live' he means 'completely and utterly destroys Games for Windows Live'

@Veko

Pretty much

@Brian

As an online/achievement platform, yes, some games on steam use GFWL. But as a distribution platform, they compete. Microsoft wants to use games like Gears to get people buying games from them, so they will buy more games on GFWL.

More consumer rights lost with steamworks.

Okay, I realize that lots of people don't like Steam because it has DRM... but I have to ask, WHY?

I mean, Steam's DRM is probably the least oppressive, most consumer-friendly form of DRM that's out there.

All you have to do, is connect to the internet once to be able to play your games. If there's no internet subsequent times, then you can still play your games in offline mode.

What's so bad about that exactly?

Yeah Steam's DRM really isn't that bad, since unfortunately, there really is no used games market for PC games in the first place. The only issue I have is when there is 3rd party DRM in addition to Steam DRM in some titles.

Steam Cloud changes that somewhat, you'll not be able to get to your saved games when the cloud is down (like it was recently for an evening while I was playing through AVP.

Additionally this is looking into the long future when steam may not be around anymore making those purchases worthless or subject to whatever new regulations the owning party chooses to add.

The End user agreement says nothing about having to release a patch to make games playable without steam and if valve were shutting down or selling steam I doubt it would be their dying act to release patches for the games especially considering they would probably need to get permission from all the developers distributing on the platform.

Any kind of DRM that makes it harder to put a disk in your machine, install, and play without having to connect to the internet is a destruction of your rights as a consumer which everyone can't wait to give up so they dont have to put on pants and go down to the shop.

Cloud, iirc, saves your games on the HD but just sends a copy to the cloud whenever you are online.

Don't blame Steam for the developers failure to implement a trusting algorithm. TF2 uses asynchronou Steam cloud support and does not require you to connect to anything. Think of it like a remote folder, like dropbox or an FTP. You can keep a local copy, and regularly synchronize that with the remote backup without demanding them to connect again.

It becomes a problem when developers put something they believe should be protected on the cloud. Like a profile for unlocked weapons. And then take an aggressive stance when they can't verify that your local files match results from a server.

Cool, will patches be applied to games released previously, such as Arkham Asylum?

Arkham Asylum uses Games for windows live, it already has achievements.

I meant for Steamworks support, like where I can tie the game to my Steam account, Cloud support, etc.

Please tell me that this architecture will have mac support built in to make it easier for more UE3 games to be multi-platform on Steam when it comes to Mac. And seriously where is UT3 for OSX, they said they were going to release a launcher to play it under OSX, but they have yet to do so. I've been waiting to replace my OSX copy of UT2004 for way too long now. But maybe I am just one of the rare gamers who owns a mac.

This is going to do nothing to get the actually Unreal Engine 3 to support Mac, sorry. Games that use Steam supporting Mac or not is still completely up to the game developer.

Your spin on the article in the last paragraph is completely off base. The reason Epic is making this announcement is to attract more developers. Everyone wants in on steam. Practically every developer that uses the Unreal Engine is putting their stuff on steam. It just makes sense to include it as a standard feature instead of just a free addon.

It has absolutely nothing to do with attracting "Unreal Engine 3 Users" to the steam platform. For starters there's not some sort of "Unreal Engine 3" demographic out there. Secondly if there was they'd already all be on board. When was the last time you saw an Unreal Engine 3 game that wasn't on steam?

Epic giving Unreal Engine 3 devs free Steam SDK update

Reader Comments (20)

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 6:36PM Muskie said

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 1:09PM CaramelZappa said

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 1:35PM RKN said

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 1:09PM Peter Moore said

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 1:23PM rullers said

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 1:43PM CaramelZappa said

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 2:05PM Veko said

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 2:57PM CaramelZappa said

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 1:24PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 1:37PM jhoff80 said

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 1:48PM RKN said

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 1:51PM Shagittarius said

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 1:58PM Nadril said

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 2:09PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 1:35PM RKN said

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 1:37PM Exo said

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 1:47PM RKN said

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 5:20PM shorties said

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 5:51PM KeenCommander said

Posted: Mar 11th 2010 6:08PM (Unverified) said

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