Epic to show new Unreal Engine 3 updates at GDC, raises UDK royalty-free threshold to $50K

Next week, Epic Games will once again premiere the latest build of Unreal Engine 3 at GDC, a showing-off that's become pretty much tradition for the North Carolina-based studio. In its announcement, Epic promises behind-closed-doors demonstrations of the new tech every half-hour during the conference for "licensees, partners, prospective customers and the media."

Additionally, Epic plans to hold free training sessions for Unreal Engine 3 licensees, covering topics such as "content creation best practices" and "rapid prototyping with Unreal Kismet." Making your Unreal characters look like they have cars strapped to their torsos apparently won't be covered.

In a separate announcement, Epic notified UDK licensees that the royalty-free threshhold has been raised tenfold from $5,000 to $50,000 -- meaning Unreal developers don't pay royalities to Epic on the first $50K in (wholesale) revenue generated from their UDK-built games. That's pretty epic.