11–20 of 168 posts
the $19 paywall complicates all things. complicates distrbution. their github repo cannot be public. etc. If you going for indies, why not just go all in and make it free to start. The money they make is on the 5% not $19
The 5% is a bit misleading too because it's 5% of "sticker price" (what they call "gross revenue" which means purchase price not including sales tax). So for a $10 iTunes game they get $0.50 (5% of what Apple gets) and not $0.35 (5% of what you get). This is particularly bad for retail games where you're getting 30% or less of retail price (and that's hardly pure profit). Unity, in comparison, costs more per month (o…
As others have pointed out, that is a huge amount, that is probably 25 - 30% of your "profit". The accounting is pretty easy though. Units * SRP * 0.05 == royalty.
That said, it is a lot simpler than investing $25 - $30K up front while building the game, only to have it go poof because the market or your designer flaked out. Figure 3 year development at $20/month that is less than $1,000 at risk. This gets people using their engine early and often perhaps hoping they can negotiate a different royalty later on. It would also be interesting to see if it had a cap, like $1M or something.
Kudos to the Epic folks for coming up with a pretty creative strategy in todays market.
The 5% is a bit misleading too because it's 5% of "sticker price" (what they call "gross revenue" which means purchase price not including sales tax). So for a $10 iTunes game they get $0.50 (5% of what Apple gets) and not $0.35 (5% of what you get). This is particularly bad for retail games where you're getting 30% or less of retail price (and that's hardly pure profit). Unity, in comparison, costs more per month (o…
I believe they are willing to make exceptions for certain titles: https://www.unrealengine.com/custom-licensing
the $19 paywall complicates all things. complicates distrbution. their github repo cannot be public. etc. If you going for indies, why not just go all in and make it free to start. The money they make is on the 5% not $19
If I had to guess, it's designed as a threshold barrier so they don't have to deal with trying to track down thousands of "projects" where the developer is someone who had big plans to build a game but got bored a week in. At least now, presumably the $19 at least covers the operating costs of tracking all the people you might need to be collecting license revenue from.
What happens when one stops selling the game? Can one then say it is free? Would one still be required to pay them 19 USD per month, one cant actually take the software back, it is already out there using the engine and all.
"5% of gross revenue resulting from sales to users." As others have pointed out, that is a huge amount, that is probably 25 - 30% of your "profit". The accounting is pretty easy though. Units * SRP * 0.05 == royalty. That said, it is a lot simpler than investing $25 - $30K up front while building the game, only to have it go poof because the market or your designer flaked out. Figure 3 year development at $20/month t…