Yesterday was quite something when Epic Games saw fit to reveal their latest engine, The Unreal Engine 5. They showed it off with a very impressive tech demo running on the PS5 (which you can read more about through here) and has excited many developers and those who are very much into the technical side of the industry. But tucked away in the announcement was a pretty big thing, especially for smaller companies, who will be using the Unreal Engine family.
As said on the official announcement, the first $1 million of game revenue will now be waived for those using the Unreal Engine. This doesn’t just apply to the upcoming UE5, but also to those downloading previous versions of the engine. These new terms are retroactive to the beginning of the year.
“Starting today, you can download and use Unreal Engine to build games for free as you always have, except now royalties are waived on your first $1 million in gross revenue. The new Unreal Engine license terms, which are retroactive to January 1, 2020, give game developers an unprecedented advantage over other engine license models.”
This should be pretty helpful, especially to smaller publishers and developers. For more full and broader details, you can go to the Unreal Engine’s FAQ pages, which you can find through here.