Crytek is planning a low-cost version of its Crysis 2-powering CryEngine, akin to Epic's Unreal Development Kit, company co-founder Avni Yerli has told Develop. While there are no concrete details for now, it's good to hear.

"We have a business model in mind for this--which I can't get into details of right now--but it will be extremely user-friendly," Yerli said. "The barriers for entry will be very low, and perhaps even for free. Of course this will be compared to UDK and Unity and so on, but we think this sort of competition is very good for the community." Read more »

With the announcement of iOS 4.0, Apple declared third-party development tools to be in violation of its terms of service. The move was largely believed to be aimed at Adobe, which had been developing a tool to convert Flash games and applications into iOS compatible programs. Other developers with tools like Unity were caught in the crossfire, despite having apps continually approved by Apple.

Now, Apple has changed its policy once again with iOS 4.1, allowing third-party tools to be used once again. "In particular, we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code," explains Apple. "This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need." Read more »