Epic will start charging non-game developers for Unreal Engine use

Epic Games will start charging for the use of Unreal Engine outside of video game development.

As shared in a video recording by Twitter user ImmatureGamerX, Epic CEO Tim Sweeney announced the pricing changes during the Unreal Fest 2023 conference.

At the moment Unreal Engine is free to use, with Epic charging a 5% royalty fee once a game earns more than $1 million.

However, Unreal Engine has a variety of non-gaming applications, such as manufacturing, and since many of these uses don’t result in video game royalties, Epic makes no money from these users.

As a result, Sweeney said that next year Unreal Engine will move to a ‘seat-based’ licensing model – in which companies pay a licence for each employee using it, similar to Adobe products – for any customers using the product for anything other than game development.

“We have an engine that’s completely free for anybody to use, but if you’re never shipping a product that’s royalty-bearing then you never pay any money at all,” Sweeney explained.

“And this doesn’t affect game developers, but one of the things we’re going to change next year is for industries other than game development, such as the automobile industry and so on, we’re going to move to a seat-based enterprise software licensing model for Unreal Engine.

“We don’t have terms to announce yet but I just wanted to get this out in front of everybody for transparency, we’re going to move to a model like that.

“It’s not going to be unusually expensive or unusually inexpensive, but if you’re going to be building a product outside the game industry and not paying a royalty on it then, you know, it’ll be a licensable piece of software like Maya or Photoshop or whatever.”

The terms won’t change for game developers, who will still be able to use Unreal Engine for free until they earn $1 million in royalties, at which point Epic will start taking a 5% cut.

This will be a relief for the development community, which was recently hit with Unity’s announcement that it would start charging developers every time a game that uses its engine is installed.

Despite a subsequent apology followed by an attempt to partially walk back these plans, much of the development community is still frustrated at the proposed changes to the terms of using Unity, with some saying it will affect their future projects.