# Unreal Engine is now free to developers until they have earned $1 million from a given product **URL:** \ **Category:** The Game Room\ **Created:** [May 14, 2020, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unreal-engine-is-now-free-to-developers-until-they-have-earned-1-million-from-a-given-product/853761 "2020-05-14T02:07:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2020, 2:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unreal-engine-is-now-free-to-developers-until-they-have-earned-1-million-from-a-given-product/853761/1 "2020-05-14T02:07:07Z")
Epic Games has announced that [Unreal Engine will have no license fees and no royalties](https://twitter.com/danacowley/status/1260631135220109319?s=20) until something made with their product earns $1 million (not sure how it plays out after that). Hate on Epic all you want…this is actually a really generous license agreement. It makes sense too. Get budding game developers to all jump on learning Unreal Engine and they will naturally want to use it down the line as they move into bigger and bigger jobs. And its not bad either. The [Unreal 5 demo running on a PS5](https://vimeo.com/417882964) was pretty mind blowing. Both for what the new engine can do and that it does it so well on a console (albeit a next gen console). I realize that one game engine is not right for all purposes. Still, maybe this will encourage other gem engine developers to follow suit. ---
**Author:** ![snfaulkner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snfaulkner/32/433_2.png) [@snfaulkner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snfaulkner)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2020, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unreal-engine-is-now-free-to-developers-until-they-have-earned-1-million-from-a-given-product/853761/2 "2020-05-14T02:22:22Z")
Unreal engine 4 was free as well. Though the royalty-free earning cap was a lot lower. From wiki > [@](#): > > March 2015, Epic released Unreal Engine 4, along with all future updates, for free for all users. In exchange, Epic established a selective royalty schedule, asking for 5% of revenue for products that make more than $3,000 per quarter. > **[Unreal Engine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Engine?wprov=sfla1)** > > Unreal Engine (UE) is a series of 3D computer graphics game engines developed by Epic Games, first showcased in the 1998 first-person shooter video game Unreal. Initially developed for PC first-person shooters, it has since been used in a variety of genres of games and has been adopted by other industries, most notably the film and television industry. Unreal Engine is written in C++ and features a high degree of portability, supporting a wide range of desktop, mobile, console, and virtual rea... ---
**Author:** ![nightshadea](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/7ba0ec/32.png) [@nightshadea](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nightshadea)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2020, 2:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unreal-engine-is-now-free-to-developers-until-they-have-earned-1-million-from-a-given-product/853761/3 "2020-05-14T02:32:02Z")
wow that’s cool but a few years too late for the people that made too human and the last Xmen game that is ok-ish (i own both and keeping them as collector’s items lol) although steams not gonna be happy because of all the crap that’s gonna be on it’s you can play the game tho its unfinished" page and you’d be surprised something like 40 percent of the games run on some variant of the unreal engine … ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2020, 1:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unreal-engine-is-now-free-to-developers-until-they-have-earned-1-million-from-a-given-product/853761/4 "2020-05-14T13:36:52Z")
40% of what games? I’d expect that with all the indie developers out there nowadays, that the majority of games are still sprite-based. In fact, on thinking about it, I think that 7 of the last 10 games I played regularly were sprite-based. ---
**Author:** ![Jasmine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jasmine/32/2964_2.png) [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2020, 1:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unreal-engine-is-now-free-to-developers-until-they-have-earned-1-million-from-a-given-product/853761/5 "2020-05-14T13:49:16Z")
Oh, wow, I remember playing the “Unreal” and “Unreal Tournament” computer games when I was a teenager! ---
**Author:** ![Telperion](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telperion/32/509_2.png) [@Telperion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telperion)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2020, 2:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unreal-engine-is-now-free-to-developers-until-they-have-earned-1-million-from-a-given-product/853761/6 "2020-05-14T14:12:41Z")
> [@nightshadea](#): > > and you’d be surprised something like 40 percent of the games run on some variant of the unreal engine … I think you mean Unity. It’s super dominant in the mobile and VR markets. ---
**Author:** ![Dark\_Sponge](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dark_sponge/32/121_2.png) [@Dark\_Sponge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dark_Sponge)\ **Post date:** [May 14, 2020, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unreal-engine-is-now-free-to-developers-until-they-have-earned-1-million-from-a-given-product/853761/7 "2020-05-14T15:38:46Z")
That’s both Epic and Unreal.