Epic Games has won its battle to be an iOS developer (though who knows how many more twists and turns there may be along the way), and it will now be hoping that its new Unreal Engine fee doesn’t lead to battles with its own developer clients …
Both Unity and Epic offer games engines, which aim to greatly simplify the work of creating both 2D and 3D game environments by taking care of a wide range of the graphics work. This includes creating realistic textures, shadows, and reflections. These engines also do a lot of the heavy lifting where animations are concerned, leaving developers more time to focus on the creative aspects of their work.
The level of realism achievable can be seen in the above image, which was rendered by the Virtual Photography Kit for Unreal Engine.
Unity ran into trouble last year when it announced changes to its pricing policy which some developers said would be disastrous for them. That led to a rapid rethink, with the CEO leaving the company.
Epic aimed to learn from its competitor’s mistakes when it too announced a new pricing model, for use of its Unreal Engine.
The headline news is that nothing changes for games developers. They will continue to pay a 5% royalty on games using the engine, but only on titles which exceed $1M in lifetime revenue.
However, the engine is also used by animators and others for things like films and theme park rides, and it is these users who will now pay a per-seat fee from next month. The Verge reports.
Fortnite developer Epic Games will charge non-game developers an annual subscription of $1,850 “per seat” to use its Unreal Engine as opposed to the royalty-based model it uses for game developers.
There are, however, plenty of exceptions, and the company will be hoping these will keep indies and smaller companies happy.
Epic is exempting companies that earn less than $1 million in annual gross revenue as well as students, educators, and “hobbyists.” Companies that make plug-ins for the Unreal Engine can continue to use it for free; in these cases, Epic will continue to get its cut via the revenue share model in its Unreal Engine Marketplace.
Developers can also continue to use older versions of the engine without charge, as the fee applies only to Unreal Engine 5.4 and up.
Photo by Anton Palmqvist on Unsplash
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