Epic Games recently surprised game developers when it announced that it would be making Unreal Engine 4 completely free to use, and today at Game Developers Conference 2015, Epic founder and CEO Tim Sweeney explained the motivations behind the change and what he sees for the future of Unreal and the video game industry.

“We’ve eliminated all of the last barriers to entry for our engine,” Sweeney said during his keynote session at GDC 2015. In return, Epic takes 5 percent of the revenue on any games made with Unreal Engine that earn more than $3,000 per quarter.

Sweeney states that some developers have said that 5 percent sounds like a lot. “That is true, we are asking for a lot,” Sweeney admitted. “But in exchange we’re giving you absolutely everything: all of the source code, all of the tools, and absolutely every advantage and capability that we at Epic have ourselves when we go out to build our own games.”

Sweeney also talked about the next Unreal Tournament, which is one of Epic’s flagship game series. The next UT is being developed completely open to the community, with the game’s code and assets fully available for use by modders. Sweeney praised Valve Corporation’s Steam Workshop, which he says is “a wonderful move that’s really leading the industry forward.”

UT will emulate Steam Workshop’s community-driven marketplace, allowing modders to create and sell their work to other players.

Nvidia’s surprise: Titan X

During his keynote, Sweeney mentioned that one of the biggest challenges facing games today is the need for more powerful GPUs, after which Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang entered carrying something wrapped in a black coat.

Huang joked that if he announced Nvidia’s next-gen GPU at GDC, no one would come to Nvidia’s own GTC conference on March 17. After asking that the audience all promise to still attend GTC, Huang unveiled Nvidia’s new bleeding edge GPU, Titan X.

Huang boasted that the Titan X has a 12 gigabyte frame buffer, to which one audience member jokingly shouted, “You’re crazy!” Huang said, “That’s what it takes. You’ve got to be a little crazy in this business.” Titan X has 8 billion transistors and is, according to Huang, “The most advanced GPU the world’s ever seen.”

Tim Sweeney received the first Titan X, which Huang signed to say “To Tim, with love!”

Screenshot via Unreal Engine/YouTube