Calling it the most popular engine in the gaming industry today is not an exaggeration. With its ability to facilitate almost all game and visual genres, Unreal Engine 5 comes as a powerful and flexible engine at the same time. Moreover, for game developers, it also has a fairly friendly payment system, where royalties are only calculated when the game has earned at least USD 1 million in revenue. The problem? The popularity of this engine is also starting to make it used by other creative media, including film and music, where Epic as the owner does not get any royalties from it. But that finally changed.
After being confirmed by Epic CEO Tim Sweeney in 2023, Epic Games finally set a new pricing system for the use of Unreal Engine 5 in non-gaming products, from films to manufacturing plants. For companies that achieve gross revenues of more than USD 1 million per year, they will be asked for a subscription fee of USD 1,850 per seat, aka per employee using Unreal Engine 5. The good news? Companies with gross revenues below that, teachers, students and hobbyists will still be able to enjoy Unreal Engine 5 for free.
Epic has finally set the price for Unreal Engine 5 for non-game developers.
Meanwhile, Epic also emphasized that there will be no policy changes for game developers whose royalty system will remain the same as before. What do you think about this strategy?