You can download it via Epic Game Store without joining the org. Github organization is for contribution from non-employees as well as source code for various projects (like engine demos).
Only for those still using Windows. The head of Epic has some bizarre complex against Linux, so they refuse to release binaries (or the Epic Game Store at all) for Linux. So the only way to install Unreal Engine is to link your Github account to their org, clone it, then build it from source. Which takes a few hours and something like 70gb of disk space while building.
Huh. And yet why is that sort of annoying forced registration not considered 'antisocial', but this accidental tagging is resulting in calls for the poster to be banned?
They sell it (access to the source for the engine) under a commercial license. They were going to have _some_ sort of registration system, so that they can make sure everyone who downloads it paid for it. They reused GitHub for both distribution and registration.
Access to the UE4 source code is free. They probably sell licenses that let you do more than the free license, but the Github thing is not used to gate purchases. I don't know why they do it like this to be honest, they could just put the free license in the repo, that's pretty common practice.
Because it's not a free license. Once you get a million dollars or so in revenue, they take a substantial cut.
The idea is that nobody is going to get a million dollars in revenue from a game without being visible enough that Epic's receivables department can bill you. So they can ignore the 99.99% who download it and never get a hit.
I'm amazed that 400,000 people have downloaded Unreal Engine, though. It's really complicated, hard to use, takes hours to compile, and is only worth the trouble if you're making an elaborate 3D game. Not that many people do that.
This is just arguing semantics. You don't have to pay anything for the initial download, so there is no legal reason for this. They could just public the repo and put their license (including the $1MM+ royalties) in a LICENSE file.
I suspect the "real" reason for the current rigamarole is to get your details for their marketing team.
Oh, interesting. I thought you could download binaries for free and source access cost extra. I’ve never used it, so I suppose whatever story I read about it was less clear than I thought.
