Good news for all you budding game developers out there. Epic Games has made its acclaimed development software, Unreal Engine 3, available to the public free of charge. Epic’s engine has been used to power some of this generation’s biggest titles including Gears of War, BioShock, and Batman: Arkham Asylum, Mass Effect and many more. The only difference between the free Unreal Development Kit (UDK) and the one that professional developers use is the lack of access to the Unreal Engine 3 C++ source code.

Now, as long as you use the engine for noncommercial or educational purposes, the UDK is free to use, and you will not be required to fork over cash for a licensing fee. However, if you intend to use the software to create any kind of game, movie, demo, whatever, and then sell that creation, then you’ll have to throw down cash to do so. You can find out more about all the legal issues that come from using the UDK in commercial projects over at the UDK’s official site.

Anyone thinking about trying their hand at creating something with the UDK? Any programmers out there care to explain what the exclusion of C++ source code access means in terms of what people will be capable of creating with the free UDK?