Duration: 3:02

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Epic Games Senior Technical Artist Alan Willard gives Blair Herter an up-close look at how a game engine provides the framework and tool kit for creating a game, and shows how you can try your hand at using one with the Unreal Developer's Kit.

Unreal Engine (UE) is a 3D computer graphics game engine developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter game Unreal. Initially developed for PC first-person shooters, it has since been used in a variety of genres of games and has seen adoption by other industries, most notably the film and television industry. Unreal Engine is written in C++ and features a high degree of portability, supporting a wide range of desktop, mobile, console, and virtual reality platforms.

The latest generation, Unreal Engine 5, was launched in April 2022. Its source code is available on GitHub, and commercial use is granted based on a royalty model. Epic waives their royalties margin for games until developers have earned US$1 million in revenue and the fee is waived if developers publish on the Epic Games Store. Epic has included features from acquired companies like Quixel in the engine, which is seen as helped by Fortnite's revenue.

In 2014, Unreal Engine was named the world's "most successful videogame engine" by Guinness World Records.