In recent days, Epic Games has been in the news due to a highly publicized wave of layoffs in which the company let go of up to 16% of its employees, significantly affecting the studio responsible for Fall Guys, Mediatonic. Now, just recently, the company has confirmed that it will increase the price for using Unreal Engine, although this change appears to have no effect on game development studios using this engine.
Epic Games’ CEO, Tim Sweeney, himself made the announcement during a presentation at Unreal Fest 2023 (via Game From Scratch). With this announcement, the executive confirmed that developers from the film, television, automotive, and other industries not related to game development will have to start paying a per-seat license fee, similar to what a user pays for using software like Photoshop, for example.
The price for using Unreal Engine is increasing, but not for video game developers
While this seems to be a quite substantial change in the company’s policy, it’s worth noting that video game developers will not be affected by this increase in the price of the graphic engine by the creators of Fortnite. The company will continue to collect royalties when titles generate more than 1 million dollars in revenue. Additionally, Sweeney also wanted to make it clear that educators and students will still be able to use the engine at no cost.
On the other hand, there are also certain exceptions for a certain part of the film industry, as independent filmmakers will have to surpass a minimum threshold of revenue to have to pay for the use of Unreal Engine. That threshold will also apply to other commercial productions that earn less than certain amounts. The details of this threshold have not been disclosed yet, so we’ll have to stay tuned to learn more about this.
This announcement comes days after all the turmoil surrounding the new pricing model introduced by Unity, although it did not succeed as developers protested vehemently against the decision. Now, Unity has opted for more conciliatory measures. In this context, Epic Games’ move doesn’t seem to be a drastic change, but it’s true that the Fortnite creators had already reached this point while being in the spotlight for their aforementioned wave of layoffs.
