If you make a game and have it publish for free and allow users....CLICK HERE PLEASE!

If you make a game and have it publish for free and allow users to host dedicated servers and they start asking for donations. Are donations for dedicated servers count as 5% for Epic? Because That’s going to be hell. For example: You’re allowed to make a dedicated server any profit made either by donations or cash items you need to submit a .05% fee to EpicGames. sarcasm And then people will start giving Epic money. sarcasm

I’m sorry if this looks like a troll thread I’m just being curious here. Because I been through this not as a developer as a host of Minecraft, where I sold land properties for people to freely mine in zones they own for $1 a month.

EDIT: Sorry I meant to say outside transaction not donation, but you guys get the picture, because people do this all the time when hosting a dedicated server and need donation to run it.

First of all, the following is purely speculation and as such, I would advise you to contact Epic directly, to discuss this further at royalty@unrealengine.

Now, from my understanding, royalties are only paid out upon the basis of ‘profit’. As such, I would not expect a donation to maintain a server being counted. The consumer isn’t receiving anything - such as a copy of the game, as it’s already ‘free’.

There’s a reason why, when running a Kickstarter (for example purposes here), that profits must be paid based upon those backers receiving a copy of the game with their pledge. That’s because they’ll be receiving a copy of the game itself upon release and as such, that is counted as a sale.

However, if they are not getting a copy of the game with their pledge, but instead are receiving some other form of merchandise (such as a t-shirt, a poster or so forth), then no royalties are to be paid. As, there was no ‘sale’ in that instance.

I would expect that a donation to ensure the upkeep of a server or other such service would be similarly so.

If, however, you’re selling in-game goods to players. Then that’d be counted as revenue and as such, royalties will need to be paid.

Anyhow, as I mentioned, I’m not completely sure on this one. So take that with a grain of salt! :wink:

Oh Gosh! Thank you for your support I’m going to archive this post it helped me relax on the royalty fees. I’m going back to learning Blueprint thanks again.

In case that you get the answer in your answerhub post I will post the link to it in here :wink: https://answers.unrealengine/questions/75068/users-who-have-my-game-using-it-to-host-dedicated.html

Oh thanks for making this topic JeDeergab.

I do have a question about developing a video game and releasing it for FREE.

If anyone here knows who TotemArts is they are the guys who developed Renegade-X running on Unreal Development Kit (UDK) and it is completely FREE I don’t think there are donations either.

So I ask this if I or any one else develops a video game will Epic Games let us release that video game for FREE as long as we don’t release Unreal Engine 4’s source code, stuff like that?

It’s still legally revenue from your game if it’s MMO cash shops or whatever. If you are wanting to get around paying the 5% royalties, it’s going to be too obvious, so you can just pay them, but it doesn’t apply anyway if you aren’t earning much:

https://www.unrealengine/eula

The whole thing is designed to work for you financially, much better than paying in one go which would cripple the smaller game dev companies and one-man teams. This way many more people can afford UE4, or that’s the idea at least.

Releasing a game for free- I’m pretty sure that’s okay. The main thing about the EULA is that Epic doesn’t want their game engine being abused. People making free games with it is more good advertisement for them, which they’d be happy to get.

@Archibold I am not trying to get around that 5 % royalty this is regarding about users not including the teams (or owner) users who legitimately bought or right to own for free. There are indie game developers that will release games for free, free-to-play with cash items, or monthly subscriptions my question is relating to dedicated server. If you still don’t get it take Unreal Tournament 2004 as example, people buy UT2004, they rent server, and ask for donations and I was wonder if donation count as 5% royalty fee.

-EDIT: I un-deleted my question too embarrassed because I have a topic to call it so hopefully l I could get some answers to lighten me up a bit.

-EDIT: @Ballowers100 Thanks man this thing has been bothering when I started working on my UE4. I just bought it today and I really would like to one day to launch my game for free and let others host their own dedicated server.

I am not looking to abuse the system it’s the users who play your game. Games like multiplayer with dedicated or official server and I vote dedicated because I’m not paying for an official unless I get that $100,000 or $1,000,000 then I’ll put an official server. Please don’t think most UE4 developers as abusers we are not like that some just want to learn, create, and make some money to pay for college debts or other loans.

I respect EpicGames, honestly! I even bought UE4 I’m going to un-subscribe because I can’t afford it and I’m fine with 4.3 and no updates or source and no I won’t share any of them off-course I did archive all of them including all the older version.

I know what you mean. It would be great if all this was free to make games in. But to answer your question, the answer is still no, you can’t run a server and take donations without paying some to Epic Games, or they could sue you or have the server taken down, because they will find a way to make it legally presented that you are making money from their game engine. In this example, I don’t think 5% is much, but this is still an issue for other software/games. Many people will still host game servers illegally anyway, and I understand it’s not my place to say what is or isn’t fair or correct outside of random legal definitions someone else decided, because I wouldn’t charge people to use my games or technologies in these situations if I was doing okay for money. I would want my games to be free and on whatever or other system can support games so we don’t play laggy games, but this stuff has never happened and we have to deal with a lot of silly and pointless decisions, which I am not happy with, for example: every game like in the Gears of War series, or every online game really, is just left to whoever can buy the servers to keep the game running in the years after they’ve been launched, and you end up with slow laggy games that no player servers can support the games in, and you have the host disconnect problem because people ragequit because of console-hosted game sessions and it’s all unnecessary because you could just use player-owned servers to host the games.

You are asking about the EULA, and I can only tell you what the EULA means you cannot do without potentially being sued. I am not on anyone’s side, I am just making it clear that the understanding is that you cannot legally take donations without paying the 5% royalty from players who are playing your hosted games. If you sell your game through Kickstarter or Steam or any online game store, that’s tied to royalty fees according to the EULA, but any other game money is also treated the same way, so donations are included. You can sell your game and host free servers but that’s costly and it’s what game companies cannot do over several years once the games come out. As an individual developer there is no way that you can get money without creating the game first, that is the point of the EULA: stop people doing things without hard work. There is no easy way out, that’s what they are planning with this, like every other thing in society, you must have a job to have the money to make games, that’s what it comes down to. It sucks, it really does, and I want to help change that. But in this case you could just pay the 5%, 5% off every cash shop item on a game isn’t so bad. So then you are looking at the rest of the costs of making a game, there are huge costs, and it’s very difficult to do it right. But if you focus on copying an existing MMO- well, someone will do this with UE4.

Actually I think your wrong. But I would wait for an answer from someone EPIC. However, in the EULA or FAQ (I don’t remember at the moment) they mention it on a crowdfudig example:
Let’s say there are 3 donating optios:
5$ - Just a “thank you”
10$ - T-Shirt
25$ - T-Shirt + Game EarlyAccess
If someone doantes the 5$ they get no product made with ue4, so you **don’t **pay 5% of this.
If someone donates the 10$ they get no product made with ue4, so you **don’t **pay 5% of this.
If someone donates the 25$ they get two products, one made with ue4 and one not. The T-Shirt costs 10$, so epic get’s 5% * (25$-10$) = 5% * 15$

So, if the users get absolutely nothing for their donation, not even a server “donator” title, then I suppose you don’t have to pay the 5% of this.

That I do understand and yes I will keep that in mind when developing.

This puzzled me allot and I’m slowly changing my mind to market my game for $9.99 which is the price most indie dev. sell their games for anyway. This doesn’t mean the question is resolve I will keep this thread archive and use it as a reference whenever I feel I need to publish my game in the future still Epic really need to bring this into the subject. Because there will be people going to be using UE4 for just that free and let others running their own dedicated server

If it’s associated with the game (e.g. ingame purchase) then legally there is a way to still think of it as something that is done in exchange for the game, so legally it still counts. There is a way around it though: distribute the game for free, and then outside the game the players can buy other “games” by the game developer which are crappy games, which is done on purpose just to avoid the legal issues with paying for the first game, and the money still goes to him/her and Epic Games can do nothing about this, if you do it right. It’s been done, and it’s explained somewhere in this video: ?v=HYgPI0qkdU4

It still might be better to release it for free and give 5% from the cash shop or something, but there are added costs for microtransactions so… I personally would see if I could just distribute the game myself to remove the $3 per purchase from Steam (see this https://www.unrealengine/register)

Hey guys, I’m no expert on legal matters, but I just wanted to chime in.

Source: https://www.unrealengine/eula

If you’re not making more than $3,000 per three months, it won’t be an issue either way. I hope this helps!

That doesn’t help at all, Sorry man. Some dedicated servers hosted by users can earn twice that revenue a month and its not impossible to achieve. The reason why I’m posting this is because:

  • What if the user bought the game and decided to host his/her dedicated server and created his/her donation merchandise / services (e.g. Minecraft and Arma)? What if the game is free?

I am not looking for a way to get around the 05% royalty I’m thinking this through because this can happen. Also I just want to add in Minecraft there are servers that offer services like land permit for a $1, building permit for $1, and most of them do include subscription base model like $28 or annual $336. Now imagine there’s about 24 paying members playing on that dedicated server for a year lets just say the popularity increase to having 100 paying members for $28 from its 100 non paying members.

Yeah I been re-thinking that I should at least sell my game for $9.99 only if my game gets GREENLIGHT on STEAM if not then Amazon, Origin, or whatever distributor would accept my game. I have plenty to list and places to sell my game and for the indie game dev. don’t forget about Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, and Google to generate viewers on the web. That’s my only advice to the indie community.

I’m a bit confused here - how would someone buying your game and running a dedicated server translate to you having to pay 5% on donations they receive?

Yeah I don’t think JeDeergab is getting the difference. Here’s an attempt to explain it easily with examples:
You are Person A, and you make a game that you release for free.
Person B downloads your game, and creates a dedicated server which they ask for donations.
Persons C-Z donate money to person B’s server.
No money ever changes hands between person B (who downloaded your game and hosts the dedicated server), and person A (you who made the game, and gave it away for free.)

Your gross profits are 0$, so not only is 5% of 0 still 0, but it’s below 3000$ a quarter so it wouldn’t matter anyway.

If however you charge 10$ for your game, in the same scenario as above.
Person A releases game for 10$
Person B pays 10$ for game and hosts their own dedicated server for.
Persons C-Z pay 10$ for the game and donate to person B for his dedicated server.

Person A would have received 250$ (25x10 for persons b-z). No other money changes hands to person A.
If those 25 people were your only sales in a 3 month period, you would owe 0$ because 250$ is less than 3,000$ in a 3 month period (a quarter.)

If you sold your 10$ game to 50,000 people in a month your gross profits would be 500k, that’s over 3k in a 3 month period (a quarter) so you would owe royalties on that amount, in this case you’d owe 25,000$ (5% of your gross revenue of 500,000$.) However if in this same period of time, 1,000 of those 50,000 people hosted dedicated servers, and each of those servers received donations of 100,000$ a month, it would not affect YOUR gross profits unless your company takes a cut of the donation.

If the money never changes hands to you (your company, you yourself, whatever - into your hands) then it isn’t part of your gross revenue, you aren’t making that money so you don’t owe any royalties on it.