Epic announces $5M funding initiative for Unreal Engine 4 developers

Epic Games has announced a new funding initiative called Unreal Dev Grants which sports $5 million in funds to be handed out to Unreal Engine 4 developers.

Grants ranging from $5,000 to $50,000 will be provided to developers to help studios put their projects in the hands of consumers.

"A little bit of funding for a project can make the difference between success and failure," Epic founder Tim Sweeney told Gamasutra. "These funds can be used by the developer however they want.

"There are a lot of funding sources in the game industry, but a lot of them have a lot of strings attached, so we wanted something very lightweight that helps developers, helps us, and helps the community."

A developer's project will need a working prototype running on UE4 shown in a video with a text description.

Nominated projects will be judged by a small group at Epic, which will decide which projects to issue a grant to.