Epic Games announces $100,000,000 Epic MegaGrants program

Epic Games announced a whopping $100,000,000 Epic MegaGrants initiative during the "State of Unreal" GDC opening session on Wednesday.

The grant will commit $100,000,000 to assist game developers, students, educators, enterprise professionals, media and entertainment creators, and tool developers who do "outstanding work" with Unreal Engine or work on enhancing open-source options for the community to use.

The program is a significant step up from the Unreal Dev Grants program Epic previously hosted, which was launched in 2015. It awarded $5,000,000 to worthy participants, and the latest of those grants were just awarded recently.

The awards will range from $5,000 to $500,000 and will cover various creative and technical pursuits. All recipients will own their IPs and can choose to publish with who they wish. Submissions will be judged and grants sent out to those chosen to receive them on a rolling basis. As such, there are no hard deadlines for when you can submit a particular product.

“At Epic we succeed when developers succeed,” said Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games. “With Epic MegaGrants we’re reinvesting in all areas of the Unreal Engine development community and also committing to accelerate the open sourcing of content, tools, and knowledge.”

The submission categories for the Epic MegaGrants include the following:

Game Developers: UE4 dev teams of all sizes can apply for an Epic MegaGrant to help make their projects succeed. Developers can also apply for a grant to help transition existing or in-development games to UE4.
Media & Entertainment: Individuals or teams applying UE4 to film, television and other visual media, location-based entertainment, and live events are eligible to apply for an Epic MegaGrant.
Enterprise: Innovative teams and individuals leveraging UE4 in other non-gaming verticals, including architecture, automotive, manufacturing, simulation, product design, advertising and other areas, may apply for an Epic MegaGrant.
Education: Students and educators can earn funding for Unreal Engine research, curriculum, student projects and university programs. Grants will also be given to schools implementing Unreal Engine into classrooms and programs.
Tools and open-source development: Teams and individuals can submit an application for a new tool, plans to port existing tools to UE4, or for creating tools that integrate existing software with UE4. Applications can also be submitted for new open-source tools (including tools that provide interoperability) or any enhancement for existing open-source projects related to 3D graphics.

This is a huge step forward from the company in terms of its benevolence toward up-and-comers and it's great news for anyone looking to make strides in the industry.