How so?
From the Unreal Engine FAQ:
“UE4 is free to use, with a 5% royalty on gross product revenue after the first $3,000 per game per calendar quarter from commercial products.”
From the Unity FAQ:
“Unity does not charge on a per title basis and you do not pay royalties or pay revenue share, even for games and applications made with Unity 5 Personal Edition.”
“May not be licensed or used by a commercial entity with annual gross revenues (based on prior fiscal year) in excess of US$100,000, or by an educational, academic, non-profit or government entity with a total annual budget for the entire entity (based on prior fiscal year) in excess of US$100,000.”
So, Epic will charge you sooner, they’ll charge you more, and the situation becomes worse if you have multiple games. If you make $100K for a single game annually, you’ll pay Epic $4.4K ($100K gross revenue - $12K exclusions = $88K * 5% = $4.4K), whereas you’ll pay Unity $2.7K (if you are deploying to Android and iOS). If you have two games earning $100K each annually ($200K total), you’ll pay Epic $8.8K, but you’re still only paying Unity $2.7K (once again, assuming deployment to Android and iOS). Now, I think that 5% revenue share is still a fantastic deal, so I’m certainly not criticising Epic in that regard, I’m merely bringing it up as someone above mentioned that Unity “milks” its customers.
Thank you for pointing that out. However, that is only applicable to companies, and not individuals (which I would argue is the target market for Unity).
From the Unity software license agreement:
*"Unity Personal (including the iOS and Android platform deployment options) may not be used by:
… an individual (not acting on behalf of a Legal Entity) or a Sole Proprietor that has reached annual gross revenues in excess of US$100,000 from its use of the Unity Software during the most recently completed fiscal year, which does not include any income earned by that individual which is unrelated to its use of the Unity Software."*
How does this differ from the Unreal Engine marketplace? If you don’t know how to do something, you either figure it out on your own, or you pay someone else who has already figured it out. It’s not like Unreal Engine is feature complete either (where is the real-time global illumination solution? [excluding third party implementations like Nvidia VXGI]). If you think that all of the Unreal Engine content is immune to becoming dysfunctional after updates, you’re dreaming (take a look at some C++ samples that aren’t from the current version and you’ll see what I mean).
Now, I’m not trying to be a Unity cheerleader, as I know that it is lacking in certain areas, but some of the criticism is unjustified and hypocritical (much like CryEngine/Lumberyard being criticised for lack of documentation/training in another thread, when this is the Unreal Engine’s biggest let-down).