Actually it’s until your company has $100K in revenue in the last fiscal year, whether that revenue is made from Unity or not. UE4 will only cost money on revenue from your UE4 game, if there is any, with a minimum of $12K annually ($3K per 3 months).
So if your game makes less than $12K a year, UE4 is free. If you make between $12K and $50K it’s as expensive as Unity. If you make more than that, Unity will be cheaper.
Hey folks,
Some of the original feedback in this thread was regarding challenges with Packaging. Just a reminder that you can post questions and issues you may be having to the UE4 Answerhub in the Packaging & Deployment section (or run a search there for similar and resolved issues). Epic can’t guarantee support, but we do try to help resolve these sort of challenges.
Cheers
Second option is the correct one.
Imagine unreal 4 blueprints didnt have “Get World Location” and someone implemented it for 20 USD. You don’t know how to do it so you would have to buy it.
Oh and not only just buy it, and you are also at the mercy of the author when it comes to updating it to newer Unity patches/versions etc.
The later one is what I heard most from the unity devs.
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).
EpicGames charges 5% on top of game sales;
Unity charges you $4.500 per seat or else you have to eat that “Personal Edition” bullsht which will hurt sales directly.
Once you have a minimal team of 10 developers working on your game + $5.000 you’ll have to invest in Asset Store to try and ‘make Unity finally work’ for your game project (since you won’t have the time to develop the missing tools yourself), the bill is around $50.000 upfront for a small team of 10 developers, not included actual art/code development costs.
So yeah, I think is pretty funny when ppl try to use the 5% in exchange for unlimited seats as comparison.
But I’ve learned from Unity community that for many people anything is reasonable as soon as the C# god is supported because no way in hell they’d learn anything beyond C#. Fine, it’s their monies not mine.
Noone said Unreal is feature complete. A “real-time global illumination solution” could surely something one could buy because that’s a big work. What I have -heard- (emphasis on heard, I never worked on unity) that even a small thing is something you need to buy that you would think it supposed to be there and easy to access. People complain there is no particle system or material editor etc. True? I don’t know. Just my 2 cents.
Imagine having no blueprint in Unreal. One could create a plugin that makes code usable as nodes (Rama already does that with hundreds of stuff, to a computer-system degree where you can reach out to your video card information). But it’s there. Blueprints let people who does not know C++ create games to a massive degree, which includes myself. Could Unity provide such a step? Well, why not? You ask “where is the real-time global illumination solution?”, I ask where is my little support for just doing small stuff?
Ofcourse Unreal lacks many stuff. Noone denying it. But you are FORCED to update your stuff in marketplace if you want it to stay there when it comes to Unreal. If it was the same with Unity, I don’t think people would mention such a problem. Even if you don’t know how to update it, they say they provide support about it personally.
I might be living in a dreamy denial, though if Unity has these problems which would be a nightmare for me, I rather stay in my dream 
Totally agree! I just dabbled in Unity a while ago and honestly one of my biggest gripes with it is the fact that you have to pay upfront for sooo many of their plugins. I was actually tempted to switch over to Unity because the 2d stuff here doesn’t look as fleshed out, but then the community doesn’t even seem willing to share their software/tips willingly. Grrrh
True for me too, they have helped me on answerhub. It might just take a while for them to get through all the questions.
In terms of bugs, I think having 6 preview releases for 4.11 is pretty darn awesome! Look at how many bugs were squished in 6. 4.11 is shaping up to be their best release in terms of features and bugs killed.
teak
@Ben… I have no issue with paying Epic 5% if I ever release a game. I want them to get some cash so they can continue to make a great engine…!
teak
So you could try to use OGRE! Why Not Blender, Chrome, Anvil or Gamebryo?
The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence.
To be fair, Unity is better than UE4 (performance wise) for Gear VR.
The grass is always greener where you fertilize more. I think with Microsoft’s acquisition of Xamarin announced today, Unity might have gotten a little hit of sunshine and manure. But Epic has a way of surprising.
Yay! Competition.
what? really??
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!lol