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Fortnite‘s developer, Epic Games, announced that it would offer a new subscription model for the use of Unreal Engine for non-game developers. Unlike the revenue sharing model it implements for game developers, it will charge an annual “per seat” subscription fee of $1,850. The company announced changes to the payment scheme last year. Now, he has announced the details of the plan that will come into effect with the release of Unreal Engine 5.4 at the end of April.
These changes will not affect game developers; they will continue to pay a 5 percent royalty on products with lifetime gross revenues exceeding $1 million for access to Epic’s tools. The new per-person subscription fee will apply to non-game developers who use the Unreal Engine to produce linear content such as theme park rides, in-car information systems, or movies and television shows that are not sold directly to customers.
New subscription system for Unreal Engine for non-game developers
This excludes all non-game developers who will be paying using the new pricing model for Unreal Engine. Epic exempts companies with less than $1 million in annual gross revenue, students, educators, and “hobbyists.” Companies that produce add-ons for Unreal Engine will be able to continue using the engine for free. In these cases, Epic will continue to receive its revenues through the revenue sharing model on the Unreal Engine Marketplace.
The $1,850 annual fee covers access to both Unreal Engine and Epic’s Twinmotion real-time visualization tool and RealityCapture photogrammetry software. Epic states that it plans to integrate these additional tools directly into Unreal Engine by the end of 2025, but the tools will also be available separately for Twinmotion for $445 per year and RealityCapture for $1,250.
Epic’s new pricing model comes just weeks after rival Unity withdrew its announcement of a controversial payment model. Like Unity’s withdrawn pricing model, Epic says the new pricing model will only apply to games made with Unreal Engine 5.4, the latest engine version. If a developer is using version 5.3 or earlier, price changes will not be applied until they upgrade.