Sharing Editor with Team...

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

I have done some searching and checked for answers to this … but I wasn’t able to find an answer so I am posing my question here.

I understand the UE4 EULA, specifically this clause:

That is perfect … I am not planning on sharing the source code or the code for the tools with anyone who is not a subscriber. But my question is this, I have a team of Scripters and Content Creators who don’t want to have access to the source code or build their own game but would like to create content for the game using the editors.

Is there an editor version that I can compile for them that will allow me to do this for my team?
Or do they have to get a subscription?

Basically the Scripters want to do some basic scripting of levels and stuff like that and the content creators want to actually create all the pickups, loot drops, creatures, etc. Is there any choice here for me or do they have to have a subscription?

Thanks for your time and my apologies for the long post. 8-{

2

I’ve been wondering this as well. I’am glad I am not the only one. I realize the subscription service is mostly for smaller , but even with only a handful of people, having every team member require an individual license would put a huge strain on my group working in their free time.

I’ve considered the notion that the license we agreed to was for the entire team or studio. but I suspect that would only apply if your team/studio signed the license - not the individual.

I just want my few partners to be able to build blueprints and modify levels mostly. I hope sincerely we can (either now or in the future) have team members sign an agreement under the subscriber. The subscriber would be able to add/remove the people under them (such as people leaving the team). We do something similar for many of the online systems in the medical field. The office manager has an administrator account that manages the employee’s logins and the employees still have to sign essentially a eula/tou.

3

I guess another question would be:

Could I purchase additional subscription plans for myself and then only share the editor of my game with an individual who signed an agreement with me. These people are physically present with me in my office and they would only have access to the editor for this specific project and no access to the source code.

4

Every member has to buy his own engine -> “The license is per seat, and the tools/code can’t be shared amongst team members or other non-licensees.” :wink:

https://answers.unrealengine/questions/14058/can-multiple-users-use-ue4.html

5

The sub is $20 a month- if someone isn’t worth spending $20 on they aren’t worth your time.

That’s an incredibly small cost of doing business.

6

Just remember that not everyone lives in the US or a Europe … South Africa is R11.41 to $1 … which may not sound like much to some, but for team members who are not using Unreal full time and are helping me on a project … it is not something they can really afford.

Yes … and I am willing to spend the $20 on behalf of someone … but these people are not full time developers and will not use the full feature suite of Unreal Engine. So I will purchase the license on their behalf and only give them access to the specific editor for the game (without the Marketplace or Github access). Would this still be permissible.

7

get it for a single month then cancel, you can still all work on it … you just wont get all the regular updates.

8

Each person has to have a license, I would think you can buy it for them, but you can’t give them a build of the engine that hasn’t been paid for.

9

@Ghiest: Yes I understand that. That is not actually what I am concerned about.

@: Well this is exactly what I am trying to get clarity on.

This is the scenario. I buy two extra subscriptions using the email address artist@gobbogames.co and scripter@gobbogames.co … I then do a Build of the Developer Editor that does not have the Marketplace enabled or Github access and allocate the artist@gobbogames.co and scripter@gobbogames.co to the Artist and Scripter in question. At the end of the project I remove their copies.

Would this sufficiently cover the project and them for the license restrictions or is this a big No-No.

Basically I have team members on board only for a particular project that they are interested in. Initially I wanted to add a subscription of Unreal Engine to the team member for the duration of the project as part of their payment … but they weren’t interested. It seems pointless to do a subscription that is eventually not going to be used and I would have to go through the whole process again every time new members go on board. I would rather have a central pool of licenses that I could use for the project.

I guess I just answered my own question … Epic would probably not be able to check on these licenses allocated to someone and would have to rely on my word … this could pose a potential problem for them. I guess I will allocate the individuals a Gobbo Games email address, register a subscription in their name, activate it for one month, and then re-activate it when I upgrade the engine build. I will maintain the e-mail address so I will be able to activate and de-activate the subscription as and when it is needed.

Okay … there you go … problem solved. 8-}

10

Yeah, that would work.

A lot of this goes on the honor system, like for royalties, they don’t always know what games get released or how much they make, they can force legal action to find out but that’s not likely to happen so they trust that people report things honestly.

11

Interesting, but I would assume that not very many people cheat it (or if they do, not by much), as there’s no way for it to really be worth the risk - either your game generates relatively low income and cheating the payment isn’t worth it, or your game makes noticeable income and thus would be worth it for Epic to pursue legal action, in which case you risk losing that good income. Not to mention how bad you would look if word got out lol.

Also, I wonder if digital distributers (especially a well known one like steam) would be able to automatically generate and send epic a monthly sales report they could compare against the royalty received (probably automatically compared). If not, we might have just stumbled on a million dollar idea lol

12

With something like Steam I would guess it’s easy for Epic to get sales data, but I doubt they do that automatically.