Holy crap.

[theweaselking]

Epic releases source to Unreal 4, including all future updates, under free-ish license.

License is free for all purposes, except if you release a product and begin taking revenues over $3K. Then they want 5% of the over-3K revenue each quarter. So you only pay if you sell more than $3K/q

Comments

[pappy-legba.livejournal.com]

I'm starting the countdown to when the Unreal Engine is such an industry-spanning monster that it's accused of monopolistic practices. Whether those accusations turn out to be legitimate or not will be discussed at that time.

Unreal is doing everything they can to level the playing field in the games industry. Oh, and monetizing kickstarter for themselves. "5% of projects over 3K, or 2.5%** of the money being shovelled into Kickstarter."

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Most Kickstarters are for "money to make the game", not "sales of the game", but then there's that whole "reward: a full copy of the game" thing. I'd be interested in seeing how Epic interprets Kickstarter money.

[pappy-legba.livejournal.com]

Right. From Epic's perspective, the advantage of this model is that almost everyone can use it, and Epic can get a cut of any successful projects. Epic seems to be smart enough to realize that it's not in their best interest to put a 5% tax on projects that are often tentative and financially dubious to begin with. On top of that, such a model might effectively push out every kickstarter project and, depending on the terms of the licensing, every game that gets VC money.

[frith]

I wonder if this will help ManeFrame in any way. They are rebuilding the MLP: Fighting is Magic game with an Unreal engine. (Mane6 are building a quadruped not-pony Fighting is Magic game using the Skullgirls engine and art design from Lauren Faust.)

[drcuriosity]

That sounds surprisingly mostly reasonable.