Just thought I’d share the change to the UE4 EULA. You now only have to pay 5% royalties AFTER the first $3,000 per product per quarter. This is a HUGE game changer in my opinion and a massive help to the indie community. What’s even better is the $3,000 is subtracted then calculated. So for example if you make $4,000 then your royalty is just $50, which is 5% of $1,000 as $3,000 is always subtracted.
Official answerhub Response regarding this from the CEO!:
Plus the per quarter deal which means you don’t have to pay the 5% royalties if you are making 3000$ (or less) per quarter. For instance if you make 2500$ 3 times a year you are exempt of royalties which as Tim Sweeney said it’s pretty good for low revenue developers.
Unity, what are you waiting for to strike back?
Its scary how good and surprisingly easy UE4 is. I’m thinking of waiting on using it for a bit though, until a bit more is released. Let the others do the hard work/path finding for me.
Incredible deal for indies. How did Epic become the most indie friendly pricing? The royalty for indies is way less than 5% when you factor in 12,000 of revs less per year / $3000 per quarter. Yes games are usually spikey so you will likely only pay royalties on big months. I wonder if this is per title or across all titles you have added up? Need to dig into the terms.
EDIT: Terms section 4 Royalty says “5% of all worldwide gross revenue actually attributable to each Product” so it appears that would apply per title which is great. Rare quarters are indie titles above $3k for many quarters in a row, but across many titles it would always hit.
I am finding UE4 to be very user friendly. Most of the things that we have to pay for as assets are already under the hood in UE4. I was missing Mecanim but after one day of playing with Persona I found it to be user friendly also. The materials and system just to die for! Blueprint (kinda like uscript) is amazing.
I still love Unity and practice it everyday but my game project is moving to UE4 because I can afford it.
In all fairness I use Zbrush and 3D-Coat depending what I plan to design. UE4 and Unity have that same relationship to me. Unity hurt my feelings about the price but I got over it and still hope to have a Unity Pro license someday but UE4 is here and slam dunking for me now with all the bells and whistles. Im not on the sideline or having to sit in the could only afford the free version section. LOL!
I’m not go pay 2x$75 a month for something I can’t own at the end. I’ll get Unity Pro when I can spare the $3000 since they won’t offer rent to own:-(
The Action RPG we are making will be made in UE4. We will use Unity Free for kids project for special needs children that can’t speak words.
Here is what I did on the first evening and was able to get persona working to add the shooting motion.
Its fantastic that there is a lot of competition compared to even 5 years ago. I think there will be even more in a few years. Its also good to see realistic pricing models for the everyday person too.
Epic just added Xbox One and PS4 Support as platform you can release to. There is no extra cost to be paid to Epic you or your studio has to have a license from MS or Sony and your good to go:-) Of course this does not apply to me yet. One day I dream:-)
They are clearly pushing out a boatload of training material as well… It’s sort of overwhelming how much they have published in such a short time. I’ve a 2d title that’s perfect for UT. But to be honest, I have an existing 3D top down game, that I’m going to redo in UE4 over the summer.
The training videos and the written lessons are great and they add more every week it seems. Often times when we get stuck the Epic developer that prepared the lesson jumps in the thread with help along with the other users. Over a 3 or 4 day period I watched a thread where a newbie was trying get edge grabbing working and he got it working with a little help here and there. I don’t know how they find the time but they are pumping out quality lessons on the regular and providing quick support.
OMG they did not even wait for the competition to respond. Only thing missing is comprehensive 2d support and I’m outta here! I can only say one thing to UT…
A very interesting choice for Epic. About 50% of all games on the app store make <3k in their lifetime. Probably most hobby/indie game make well under 3k a quarter. They are essentially making it free (except for subs), for probably what will be their largest chunk of users. Not just free, but also less time spent tracking and sending checks to Epic for $2 every quarter. (this is also probably a big reduction on their costs to manage all those small accounts). Good move on their part to build userbase. Sounds more like they are focusing on subs as a revenue source.
Looks like they must of done well out of the subs, the one thing I can’t believe is the rapid rate of change from Epic in all regards… It’s hard to hit a moving target especially if they have found sonic boots.
I want to know what Unity are going to do just out of curiosity.
I to think that UT needs to wake up and take notice and react. The UE4 Market place has high quality demos that cover almost every genre with more being added all the time. Blueprint templates are popping up on the forum from the community as well. So are plugins from UE4 and other companies. Add all that to the fact that while you are waiting for the next engine update you can download the source as is along the way and try somethings out before they are officially released. UE4 is using that for feedback from the community. Every thing is happening at a fast pace with no noticeable loss in quality.
If they say a new feature is two weeks away it seems to come on time or sooner. How long have we been waiting for the Unity New GUI that seems more like a unicorn now or urban legend?
I was learning on Torque 3D and witnessed how GarageGames did not react to Unity and got left in the dust.
Nobody is talking about Unity on the UE4 forums unless it goes like this “I came here from Unity and this great thanks blah blah thanks Blue prints rock thanks!!!” There are no this versus that engine threads over there at all. The engine works and everybody has everything which seems to be the making of a stronger community.
This probably reduces their financial/auditing workload by something like 95% while impacting their income very little at all. Without something like this imagine the amount of work they have to do as a result of games that are making bugger all income, and therefore aren’t realistically worth their time from a financial point of view?
Epic has some smart management, this essentially is getting almost as good as Unity Free with that thrown in.
They must of looked at the definition for income that is defined below the poverty level in the US. 12,000 after the App Store 30% and US taxes would be between $7K - $9K I believe. 2014 if you don’t make $11,670 in the US you are ‘officially’ poor (single person household). That’s before taxes. You’re never to poor to avoid taxes, although you can be too rich to pay taxes.
I’m surprised they didn’t increase it to $23K to avoid bad press for taking money out of the wallet of a family of 4 or heck, be really good with the press and potential adopters and make it $39,688 for a family of 8. Once you exceed that though you are becoming pretty adept at making games / apps and probably could make a lot more going to a publisher.
When you think of it that way, why doesn’t Apple and all the other app stores adopt a similar tact, outside of greed?
Considering it’s only a month ago since UE4 was released.