Starting today, Unreal Engine 4 will be available for everyone for a small monthly subscription and a portion of your revenue. Announced today at GDC by Epic co-founder Tim Sweeney, the new plan gives users the ability to deploy their game on up to four platforms: PC, Mac, iOS and Android. Devs will have to pay $19.99 per month for access to the engine/source plus five percent of any revenue made should they choose to commercially ship the game.
"When releasing a product using UE4, you're signing up to pay Epic 5% of gross product revenue from users, regardless of what company collects the revenue," Epic explains. "That means: If your game makes $10 on the App Store, Apple may pay you $7, but you'd pay Epic $0.50 (5% of $10)." During GDC, Sweeney noted that free-to-play games will not have to pay any royalties and that support platforms' source for past projects is provided with the plan.
"We find this future very exciting," Sweeney said. "It’s no longer dominated by giant publishers and marketing campaigns, but by a simple and honest proposition: Gamers pay for great games, and anybody who can valuably contribute to building those games can succeed, from indie developers, to large triple-A teams, and to individual programmers and content creators, too."
Epic notes that you can cancel your subscription at any time and keep using the engine, but you won't receive the monthly updates. As this is the very first release, Epic is aiming for early adopters looking to embark on this new journey. If you're interested, you can sign up here.
