Unreal Engine 5 is now available… for free and includes a sample game

11 April 2022 - 15:41 By Regardt van der Berg
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Unreal Engine 5 introduces a collection of groundbreaking features for rendering real-time worlds in incredible high-fidelity detail.
Unreal Engine 5 introduces a collection of groundbreaking features for rendering real-time worlds in incredible high-fidelity detail.
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In case you missed it, Epic Games’ State of Unreal just wrapped and the biggest news that dropped was the announcement of Unreal Engine 5. Up to now, we’ve only seen early access versions of the engine with demos like The Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience, Land of Nanite, and Valley of the Ancient but UE5 is finally available to all.

In the keynote presentation, Tim Sweeny, CEO at Epic Games announced the public availability of Unreal Engine 5.

You can watch the presentation below, read the official release here, or download Unreal Engine 5 to start tinkering yourself, it’s free. According to the download page, Unreal Engine is free to use for creating linear content like films, and for custom and internal projects. It’s also free in many cases for game development but a 5% royalty only kicks in if and when a title earns over $1 million USD.

Sound pretty reasonable considering what you’ll be able to do with this engine.

Watch the replay of our keynote presentation from the State of Unreal 2022 livestream.

Also available to users is a sample game, called Lyra Starter Game, that developers can tweak, break, or just dissect to better understand the new game engine.

The Lyra Starter Game is a sample gameplay project released with UE5, it will be a living project that will continue to be upgraded in future releases according to the Epic Games. While the feature set is just a core base, this game is intended to be a starting point for game developers to create new projects or as a hands-on learning resource.

This starter game will take over the role that ShooterGame served in UE4, but it is much more than a 1:1 replacement: it demonstrates scalability from mobile to high-end PC and cross-play multiplayer using Epic Online Services (EOS), and features a choice of two different game modes: Expanse (team deathmatch) and Convolution (control point).
The Lyra Starter Game also reveals the company’s new UE5 Mannequins, Manny and Quinn, as playable characters. These Mannequins share the same core skeleton hierarchy as the MetaHumans, with a compatible animation system.

You can even download the massive cityscape that was featured in the Matrix Awakens: An Unreal Engine 5 Experience, sadly, minus all the characters from the movie.

And if you are wondering what beast of a machine you’ll need to run Unreal Engine 5, here is the recommended system requirements
  • Windows 10 64-bit, quad-core Intel or AMD, 2.5 GHz or faster, 8 GB RAM
  • macOS Big Sur, quad-core Intel, 2.5 GHz or faster, 8 GB RAM
  • Linux Ubuntu 18.04, quad-core Intel or AMD, 2.5 GHz or faster, 32 GB RAM


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