5% is a very good deal. I don't think Spirit has a problem with that. 

Considering the user base probably will consist of a fair share of 10 and 13 year olds, I would consider it defacto free for non-commercial usage.

It is unlikely they would be interested in harassing a 10 year old who made something and wanted to share.

How many initial mappers were under 15 when they made their first map? 

I'm not sure that you get to decide which definition of "free" other people are using. 

Glad they went free to use instead of the subscription model, one of my grievances was that $240 a year was a bit much if, for instance, someone just wanted to mod the next Unreal Tournament or any UE4 game... or people who just wanted to learn the engine but weren't in school.

Even back in the day, the $50 bux for Worldcraft or however much it was wasn't something I was able to pay as a kid just to learn how to map, so I stuck with shitty editors for so long. 

My first quake map was made with THRED which came with aftershock for quake. I made a WW1 style trench and it fucking blew chunks, it was so bad. I couldn't figure out how to make curved or slanted walls so I just abused the hell out of the cylinder brush. 

Remember that one? A map editor so awesome you couldn't map to a binary grid, only a decimal grid.

What's texture alignment, precious? 

$240 a year was a bit much if, for instance, someone just wanted to mod the next Unreal Tournament

Yeah, this bit sucked the hardest. I wouldn't be surprised if that was the main decisive factor at work here.

Also, I guess Unity is officially yesterday's news, now. 

Unity is announcing something today. Should be exciting! 

That's just low man.

No need to kick a dying dog. 

I'm serious! I have no idea what they're going to announce. They might surprise everyone. Going free? Becoming a publisher? Getting bought? Who knows!

I love GDC... 

...and GDC. 

And the Unity manual is offline today:

"All will be revealed..." 

I'm fed up of spending weeks writing a new system in Unity, only for the next update to have their own version built-in.

Happened with Navmesh, happened with the new GUI stuff. Happened with (some of) Mecanim.

I swear to god I am literally spending all my time writing code that gets obsoleted by the next engine update.

Should have gone with Unreal. 

Before everyone leaps on me with "so you'd prefer Unity didn't update their engine?", what I mean is I wish I'd gone with an engine that was pretty much complete for what I needed to do with it in the first place... 

I get your point. Writing stuff that gets replaced with built-in functionality that you didn't know was coming sucks. At least if you KNEW they were going to add FeatureX in the next version, you could skip writing that code and do something else instead. 

and typically even if they did tease/announce upcoming features, it's always too late. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8Ao5oyflik 

or your project appears to suffer from Daikatana syndrome. Because it's always changing it's never complete.
At some point you just have to stop and make your game. 

for what it's worth, i've never gone back and replaced a system I've written with a newer Unity built-in system, I just carry on using mine, which is very optimised for my specific needs, so it tends to be simpler and more efficient. 

Unity5 is free, but still closed source. 

The personal edition is also royalty-free, which UE4 can't boast of. Seems like a good enough reason to prefer it in certain cases. 

A lot of people find Unity easier to use. It's got a reputation for that. Also, lower system requirements and more platforms, as far as I remember anyway. 

I've downloaded the latest versions of both the engines, and I'll be playing with them a bit... I've had a little Unity project I've been halfassing here and there with for awhile, but I'm also keen on giving UE4 another shot and wouldn't mind moving to it. The subscription fee was a killer for me before because I only poked around here and there.

My impressions in the past were that Unity is much easier for small teams to just get something basic up and running, but you pay for it later in the optimization work, no source access, etc. On the other hand, UE4 is daunting at first, but better suited in the long term for bigger games, and plays nicer with larger teams.

...there's also Source2 announced, but I'd never touch a Valve engine ever. Too much duct tape. 

Good for everyone that could use an engine. May the one with the best tools/community/documentation win!

Don't really get people who complain about 5% if you're actually making money from your project, think it's a very good deal.

Paid for one month of UE last year just to have a look but couldn't justify paying for more without enough time to learn.

Pay no royalty for film projects, contracting and consulting projects such as architecture, simulation and visualization.

This is also very generous. 

https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?94470-HammUEr-a-Hammer-Worldcraft-map-importer-for-Unreal-Engine

Been watching this develop on Twitter, looks like they're finally hitting prime time. Convert HL2 and later map formats into UE4 - and they do specifically mention that using Jackhammer and Hammer you can get Quake maps. (Somewhere in the Twitter account you can see shots of e1m1 in UE4).