Epic’s Tim Sweeney Says That Unreal Engine 1 May One Day Go Open Source


Now here is something really interesting. When fans asked Epic Games on its forums whether the team would open source Unreal Engine 1 and 2, Tim Sweeney replied and claimed that they might – one day – open source the original Unreal Engine.

Sweeney was crystal clear that this won’t happen tomorrow, and it’s still not set on stone (though Epic would love to open source it to everyone).

Naturally – and as you may have guessed – open sourcing Unreal Engine 2 and 3 is out of the question because of ‘dependencies on a large number of external closed-source middleware packages with complex licensing requirements.

As Sweeney said:

“Open sourcing Unreal Engine 1 might be possible, but getting the source and dependencies into a releasable state would take a lot of cleanup effort that we just haven’t been able to find time for. I hope we can do it someday!”

That’s definitely great news for all indie devs, modellers and mappers.

Let’s hope that it won’t take a decade to open source UE1.

Enjoy and stay tuned for more!