Every year, Epic Games announces the Unreal Grants, a form of monetary assistance for developers using the Unreal Engine to grant life to their imaginations through their games. The Unreal Dev Grants Program, established in 2015 with a total capital of $5 million for promising developers working with Unreal Engine 4 – the awards ranging from $5000 to $50000 with no restrictions or obligations to Epic Games. This latest round of Unreal Dev Grants underscores the variety of applications for Unreal Engine, with software plugins, VR games, AI-driven educational platforms, and healthcare tools all receiving financial assistance.
“The Unreal Dev Grants program was designed to give studios and other developers a boost to bring their promising working prototypes to market, and to give back to the wider Unreal developer community as they use the engine in interesting ways,” said Chance Ivey, Partnership Manager at Epic Games. “This new round is our biggest yet, and we are blown away by the potential of projects like Kara Education, an AI-driven online educational platform for kids with hearing difficulties; VStore, a VR tool for quick and portable early dementia screenings; and Anima, a robust crowd simulation plugin for Unreal that can be leveraged by any game designer or VFX artist working with Unreal. Congratulations to all of these recipients on their exciting work; we can’t wait to see what’s next!”
A total of 37 teams and creators were earmarked for financial assistance with a total valuation of $1 million, supporting games, tools, broadcasts and beyond.