Monthly digest for July 2024
Unreal Fest Seattle tickets are on sale. Plus: Unreal Fest Prague session recordings, EDC updates, and more.
Nick Pfisterer •
Greetings, everyone. Welcome to the monthly digest for July 2024. Despite a summer filled with big game announcements and releases, developer news has been comparatively light. In fact, I decided to roll June's news into this issue, as well. We're still waiting on news regarding the launch of FAB, but hopefully Epic is still on target for 2024. Without further ado, let's get to the news.
Unreal Fest 2024's world tour continues
Unreal Fest Prague wrapped in late June, and now Unreal Fest Seattle is on the horizon. In fact, early bird registration is available now at $499. On August 15, ticket prices will increase to $549. More details at the link above.
Oddly enough, we haven't heard any details regarding Unreal Fest Seoul or Shanghai, which are both scheduled to take place well before Seattle's event. Looking at the calendar, it appears they will both be relatively small scale events.
If you want to know when Epic announces updates for future events, such as registration and session details, be sure to follow our Dispatch feed.
Here's the current state of the Unreal Fest schedule at a glance:
Gold Coast: May 29-30Prague: June 18-20- Seoul: August 28-29
- Shanghai: September 5-6
- Seattle: September 30-October 3 (Get tickets)
- Tokyo: November 2
Game Animation Sample Project released
First announced at GDC, the Game Animation Sample Project is now available to download for free. It contains over 500 "AAA-quality" animations along with a fully functional character and animation Blueprint.
The sample project is designed to showcase Unreal's new Motion Matching animation system, and functions as a great starting point for developers who want to use it in their own projects. If you're interested in what's going on under the hood, I recommend reading the official announcement over on the Unreal Engine blog.
Download the project
Read the documentation
Quick links
- Unreal Engine 5.4.3 hotfix has been released. Link
- Session recordings from Unreal Fest Prague are now available on YouTube. Link
- The Epic Developer Community received a few updates for documentation, SEO, and search. Link
- A new video course on story development with virtual production in Unreal is now available on YouTube. Link
- Project Titan, the collaborative open-world game jam, has concluded. Link
- Epic is creating additional organizations on GitHub to accommodate the growth of the Unreal developer community. Link
- Submit your Epic Games Store discounts for the End of Summer sale by August 15. Link
- Submit your Epic Games Store discounts for the Epic Savings September/October sale by September 5. Link
What's on our radar
- Epic announced a new strategy for bringing their games to mobile stores. In addition to bringing the Epic Games Store to iOS and Android in the European Union later this year, Epic will now also bring their own games, including Fortnite, to other mobile stores that they believe give developers a fair deal. AltStore has already been announced, with more to come soon. Epic is also pulling their games from the Samsung Galaxy Store in protest of Samsung's decision to block side-loading by default on their phones.
- A faulty software update crashed millions of Windows PCs last month. I first caught wind of this from Troy Hunt's post on X the night it happened. In a nutshell: cybersecurity company CrowdStrike released a faulty update for their Falcon security software that caused millions of Windows PCs to BSOD on boot. The impact was felt worldwide, from airports and hospitals to governments and financial institutions. The Verge does a good job here of summarizing what happened, why, and how it can be avoided in the future.
In other news
- Shift Up Corporation's Action RPG Stellar Blade (made with Unreal Engine 4.26) sells 1 million units. Link
- Michel Losch's Rooftops & Alleys, a UE5-powered parkour game, broke 70,000 sales in its first month. Link
- Game Informer is shutting down after 33 years. Link
- Meet Cara – an artist-run, anti-AI social platform. Link
- US record labels sued AI music generators Suno and Udio for copyright infringement. Link