Hi, I’ve just upgraded my machine with a CRAPTON of horsepower, and I would really like to get into UE4, coming from Unity. There’s something I’d like to know beforehand, since it might be a dealbreaker for me.
The 5% royalties is fine with me, but I get this feeling I’m gonna have to do a lot of accounting, tracking and calculating so that I can send Epic their cut. I’d be fine if they wanted a cut on a yearly basis but every quarter is a bit of a hassle. It’s not like I mind sharing with Epic but I get this feeling it won’t be automated. Anyway, my question is:
Is Epic considering entering some type of partnership with the major distributor platforms in order to automate the process?
Let’s say a game is released on Steam or Google Store, now the way I see it the developer would have to calculate 5% of the gross revenue of the product and wire it to Epic, would be quite the hassle after you get 5-6 games out there. I really hope it’s possible just to tell the distributor “This is an Unreal Engine 4 game, just send 5% of everything to Epic”, not bothering with accounting and just sending them their cut.
If it helps, the 5% will only be due on earnings over $3000 per game per calendar quarter. This means that if you have five older games all earning less than this, and one new game earning more, you would only have to calculate the 5% for your new game. Per the partnership, I haven’t heard anything, but the Epic reps can best answer that one.
Oh I see so it’s above 3k and these 3k are reset every quarter? Well that makes things a bit easier. I’d still love it if Epic just went and partnered Valve so that their distribution platform automatically deduces the 5%. I mean valve are awesome guys they’ve shown a ton of support for indie devs and I think they woulnd’t mind integrating such a feature for a dev.
not much but I have 2 other people with my and all 3 of us will be making small games till we get the hang of UE4, so that’s at least 3 games per person. i don’t really expect any of them to be approved on steam or make more than 3k, but it’s clear that the games can pile up. Are you sure it’s 5% of the profit and not the gross?
You are wrong, I just did some research and here’s what it says in epic’s faq:
If I release a commercial product, what royalties are due to Epic, and when?
Generally, you are obligated to pay to Epic 5% of all gross revenue after the first $3,000 per game per calendar quarter for your product, regardless of what company collects the revenue. For example, if your product earns $10 from sales on the App Store, the royalty due is $0.50 (5% of $10), even though you would receive roughly $7 from Apple after they deduct their distribution fee of roughly $3 (30% of $10).
Even so, I’m not concerned about this, I’m more bother with having to calculate all that stuff for every game.
Excel is your friend … quite a remarkable tool actually … you can always use the free version called OpenOffice. 8-p
Seriously though … just put columns on the top for the game … rows represent the quarter … enter your total gross and use a formula to calculate it. It should not take you more than a few minutes each quarter. Most places you sell from will give you sales figures … you could literally just plug that in.
I honestly don’t see it as a problem … and when you hit it big you can always hire someone to do it for you. 8-}
Yeah I spose you’re right. I got UE4 yesterday and am ploughing through the tutorials and I have to say I’m freaking impressed. It’s well worth the money. I hope it has something similar to a prefab where you can edit just that and have all the objects in the scene reflect the change, but I’ve yet to go through the blueprints and i suspect that’s what they are. Anyway I’ve never calculated share rates so I really have no idea how it works, I guess I’ll find out when I make a game in Unreal.
As a side note, does UE4 automatically add the UE4 logo and Epic and all that disclaimer/copyright and whatnot stuff on startup when a user executes the game? Cuz if I remember correctly it’s required and doing it manually can yield an unknown copyright law problem. I hate copyright.
if your going to sell your game to people then I would say you will need to set up some type of company e.g PTY,LTD, or you might find it hard to sell your game to places like steam with out a proper setup(if someone could share there experience with that I would like to know), and if your going to make profit on your game you will need to set up what ever your equivalent of a A.C.N (Australian Company Number) or A.B.N or ells your going to have your tax Man after you if he finds out. you will need to know your tax rate. your expanses, e.g outgoing, incomings. you need to know all theses things if you want to make money.
all the statements are true above but they all sound like your getting ripped off, it’s not what places like epic and steam or whoever are taking out, it is how much profit margin you want to make on the game, you should be factoring in Epics 5% into the price of your game. you should estimate how much your game is going to cost to make, estimate what profit margin you would like, 10%, 30%, 70% if you want it’s up to you. there are also other factors as well, I don’t know about other places but in Australia you can use it as a deduction much like you clam your wages. you can clam the $19 per month, it’s all about how much you want to put in your pocket.
I would also say that it is up to you to make shore you pay your bills to Epic, it’s not up to epic to chase money from 3rd party’s.
hell if you make it big and start giving millions dollar to Epic they will probably give you a job.
Blueprints are basically super-charged prefabs (do I detect a Torque 3Der among us?). My latest project is a procedural based arena where I have used Blueprints that handle taking damage, being destroyed and all the other good stuff.
I’ve used Toruqe3D and then went to Unity…but UE4 just blows my mind with how RIDICULOUSLY AWESOME IT IS. Seriously Epic fully deserve their name in my mind. Honestly I don’t make games to make money, I mean sure, it is a business but this is the mentality that drove our current industry into the flood of DLC’s that it is today. It’s up to us to take a stand against it, kudos to CD Project RED for standing firm with this policy. Fun before cash. Yes devs need to eat, but currently the industry is ripping off gamers EA and Ubisoft being the prime examples.
Epic has gained a lot of respect from me by making UT4 a free game, and their engine just reinforced that.
Anyway I was just worried that I’d end up being bogged down accounting rather than making games, but I guess I’ll find out after I make one As for Unity vs UE4…I think the winner is clear.
One last question though, it’s very off-topic but hey, might as well ask: I only know C#, I’m in the process of learning Blueprints which seems like a visual representation of C#. How hard would the transition between BP to C++ with C# background would be?
Blueprints are actually visual representation of C++ classes used in the game. C# is quite far off from C++ and you might struggle making the transition. However once you understand Blueprints it is fairly easy to take that Blueprint and convert it to C++.
You won’t become a super-dooper-uber-C++ guru … but you will become well versed in C++ in Unreal Engine and will be able to handle most tasks.
In the case that your game makes it to market, you’d have to do a lot of accounting anyway in order to please the dreadful taxman. I really advise keeping on top of all of this stuff 'cos it will bite you in the bollox otherwise.
I honestly have no clue how tax works, I was under the impression that steam and google automatically tax your stuff. It’s not like I’m in a rush anyway, I first have to make a game, I’m only 2 days into UE4 so I’d say it’ll be a while until I have something worth publishing. At any rate, thank you all for all the good info, I’m seriously loving UE4 so I’ll be sticking around
I’m not sure about the tax laws of other countries but in the UK if you are self employed you will need to fill out a tax return (self assessment) form for income tax, this is different to the VAT that is added at point of sale. But yeah, don’t worry about this stuff until you are ready to market. I’m happy you are enjoying UE4 and getting involved with the community
If you release through Steam and don’t do the paper work then you would be on the hook for 5% to Epic whatever cut Steam tasks plus a 30% tax withhold.
If you are planing to set yourself up as a freelancer a good place to start is your own bank as they can provide you with the basics and the services by setting up a business account but i your game goes Angry Birds then the first people you should be hiring are lawyers and accountants.
