Some payment/license questions

Development Platform & Builds
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1

Hello, I have some questions. Thanks.

  1. Compared to Unity, Unreal has a different Material/Shader system.
    Is it allowed to use for example shaders from the official Unreal
    Learning projects in commercial assets?
    With an example: as far as I know I can (and I have to) make the same
    shader, using the same nodes for the same purpose (but with my own
    texture input), but it is far easier and faster to reuse them from a
    Learning example as the result is (and should be) completely the same.

  2. Selling Unreal assets on my personal (or later our company) website;
    I plan to make a website for the actual content with supporting other
    engines, but I also would like to give the opportunity for the
    customers to buy Unreal 4 content directly from me.

What is the royalty on these items? (These are not games).

2

Yes, you can use example shaders from Learning tab content in commercial UE projects.

It sounds like you’re asking about royalties on a non-Epic UE4 marketplace. Royalties are owed on a Product under the EULA (outside of the royalty exceptions), and a Product is defined as a product that combines any of the Licensed Technology (Engine Code and Assets) with other software or content, regardless of how much or little of the Licensed Technology is used.

Assets, as an example, includes Learning tab content. So, if you include Learning tab content in an asset that you sell, it’s considered a Product so royalties are owed on the gross sale price (assuming you’re the one that made it).

3

Thanks.

‘Yes, you can use example shaders from Learning tab content in commercial UE projects.’

What could be a ‘commercial UE project’?

An asset created by me on the Unreal Marketplace, what uses copied shaders from the Library with my textures?

‘It sounds like you’re asking about royalties on a non-Epic UE4 marketplace. Royalties are owed on a Product under the EULA (outside of the royalty exceptions), and a Product is defined as a product that combines any of the Licensed Technology (Engine Code and Assets) with other software or content, regardless of how much or little of the Licensed Technology is used.’

You seem right about this, sorry for the confusion. I don’t plan selling games, I plan selling UE content; both on UE Marketplace and my own website.

‘Assets, as an example, includes Learning tab content. So, if you include Learning tab content in an asset that you sell, it’s considered a Product so royalties are owed on the gross sale price (assuming you’re the one that made it).’

It sounds confusing to me. Lets speak - as an example - about a very basic material shader, consists of an Albedo, a Normal and a Gloss map. I can make it myself and I can copy the node setup from a learning example,too. The result will be the same (technically cannot be different), no one could decide if I built this shader myself or I copied it directly.
Is there any difference on my payment for Epic?

Another thing:
Let’s say I make a vegetation pack for UE and I sell it on my website in UE format, too (with proper materials, etc.)
Do I owe anything for Epic in this case?
If yes, will it be calculated per pack (project) basis (as it would work on per game basis)?
Thanks

4
  • Regarding commercial UE projects, I just mean you can use Learning tab content in your commercial project. Note that some content is marked as UE Only, in which case it can’t be used in other engines.
  • If you take shader content from the Learning tab and put it in commercial UE content, it is considered a Product and royalties are owed (unless a exclusion applies). Note that one of the exclusions is on products/content sold on the UE Marketplace, meaning if it’s sold there, no royalties apply.
  • If you make your own shaders, then it’s not a Product under the EULA. And if it’s not a Product, no royalties are owed.
  • Regarding the vegetation pack on your site, it depends on whether the pack contains any of the Licensed Technologies (i.e., Engine Code or Assets). If yes, then yes to royalties, if no, then no to royalties.
  • If royalties are owed, they are owed on a per-sale basis (calculated on a quarterly basis). Note that no royalties are owed on a Product per quarter until at least $3,000 in gross revenue is received on that Product in that quarter.
5

Thanks. I don’t like this limited comment system, I had to broke my reply into parts:)

Overall I have the feeling that we have to go more into details, so I try to be more specific. I think every developer needs some clarification here, especially compared to the Unity Asset Store workflow and licensing (the adaptation seems not to be easy as I read the forums).

1.‘Regarding commercial UE projects, I just mean you can use Learning tab content in your commercial project. Note that some content is marked as UE Only, in which case it can’t be used in other engines.’

Please define what we call ‘project’ in Epic technical/business terms.
We talked about ‘Projects’, ‘Products’, ‘Assets’, etc. We need some clarification on this.
So the definitions:

  • Project:
  • Product:
  • Asset:
6

2. ‘If you take shader content from the Learning tab and put it in commercial UE content, it is considered a Product and royalties are owed (unless a exclusion applies). Note that one of the exclusions is on products/content sold on the UE Marketplace, meaning if it’s sold there, no royalties apply.’

For me it seems quite non-logical approach.
As a developer who is coming from Unity where there is a completely different approach for using shading/materials (almost all generic workflow -specific materials and shaders are integrated even into ‘empty’ projects). So using them and selling them is obvious and free from any charge.

So I find it very illogical to charge the developers for a shader what takes a few minutes to make (following tutorials or by theirselves) and it is impossible to say if they were ‘reused’ or written by themselves or a tutorial.

I’m not sure it is clear what I try to say. There should be some kind of specification for every item ships freely with UE4 and its tutorials if it could be reused or not; maybe with some kind of selection by types, etc.

For example:

  • models, meshes, textures: not allowed to reuse (pretty logical)
  • shaders/materials: should be allowed to reuse (as no Unreal scene will work without shaders).
  • scripts/image effects/particles: allowed to reuse
    (for example in Unity we have FPS camera prefabs or Post-Processing Effects and they are necessary for the customers to use packs out of the box without tweaking (and it is definitely what Epic needs, too).
7

3. ‘If you make your own shaders, then it’s not a Product under the EULA. And if it’s not a Product, no royalties are owed.’

No one can decide if I made a Specular/Gloss shader or it is copied from a tutorial UE project. So it makes the whole thing useless from the perspective of Epic, while - if I have to make all the shaders in the node editor - it will require extra time and it will results higher prices for my models in the UE Marketplace than in the Unity Asset Store. Please discuss it with the Staff; I see no point in this.

8

4.‘Regarding the vegetation pack on your site, it depends on whether the pack contains any of the Licensed Technologies (i.e., Engine Code or Assets). If yes, then yes to royalties, if no, then no to royalties.’

Here is where we obviously need some definitions.
Let me show how it works with Unity content!

A. I make vegetation models in a 3rd party app (+ textures, etc.).
B. I import it to Unity, add the proper built-in shaders.
C. I add a First Person Shooter Controller, Image Effects (like Bloom), particles, etc. as these ‘preset’ ‘assets’ are parts of the Unity (except the one which requires Unity Pro what I have)

D/1. I can upload it to the Unity Asset Store, pay 30% for Unity from my sales (I pay for being in the shop, for reaching the potential customers, for the background services like stoage for my assets, etc.) .
D/2. I upload it to my website, pay nothing for Unity from my sales.

So how does it look like in the case of UE4?
Please correct the lines where I’m wrong:

A. I make vegetation models in a 3rd party app (+ textures, etc.).

B. I import it to Unreal, add the proper shaders (with playing with the nodes or copying?).

C. I add a First Person Shooter Controller, PostProcessing, Particles from an Epic-made tutorial or built-in assets, just with tweaking with values if necessary.

D/1. I can upload it to the Marketplace, pay 30% for Epic from my sales (I pay for being in the shop, for reaching the potential customers, for the background services like stoage for my assets, etc.) .
D/2. I upload it to my website, pay nothing for Epic from my sales.

9

The word project doesn’t have a legal definition with Unreal; it’s just used in lower-case form interchangeably with product or game.

Product is defined in the EULA as “any product developed under this Agreement that combines any Licensed Technology with any other software or content, regardless of how much or little of the Licensed Technology is used.”

Assets is defined in the EULA as “any artwork or other content that Epic makes available to you for use with the Engine Code, other than any Unreal Tournament Content.”

Both of those contain other defined (capitalized) terms, which are defined in the EULA.

10

‘Product is defined in the EULA as "any product developed under this Agreement that combines any Licensed Technology with any other software or content, regardless of how much or little of the Licensed Technology is used.’

For me it sounds that there is no way to create any ‘stuff’ for UE what is not a ‘Product’. If I import a simple box from 3ds Max, the importer will use Unreal Technology (and the lightmapper, the LOD system, whatever).

And if I’m right, it practically means that as a Product, we have to pay for Epic after the sales, except if it has been sold on the UE Marketplace.

If I’m not right, then we will need a specific declaration what makes an UE package to a ‘Product’.

But overall, I think it is not straithforwarding; UE 4 has the chance to become the most popular engine on the world (over Unity), but developers need more freedom to help you in it.

11

Thanks, I hope you will change the legal terms.

12

You are free to use all of the content that comes with UE4, including models, meshes, textures, shaders, and materials. But it does make your product a Product.

I guess the question is whether, in the definition of Product, “regardless of how much or little of the Licensed Technology is used” really means it’s a Product when there is only a small amount of the Licensed Technology is used. The answer is yes; it is still a Product.

That said - your feedback is received and we will consider it as we look to revise our legal terms in the future.

13

I understand your point, although in the opposite extreme, I suppose someone could try to use the entire Unreal Engine as a template for making their own engine and make the same arguments.

But, we’ll consider your feedback as we look to revise legal terms in the future.

Also remember that no royalties are due on sales that take place in the UE Marketplace, so in that sense it doesn’t matter whether a product is a Product under the EULA.

14

‘I understand your point, although in the opposite extreme, I suppose someone could try to use the entire Unreal Engine as a template for making their own engine and make the same arguments.’

Well, it is definitely not the same (and I think it is an extremely bad example).
When I sell a Unity package with Unity prebuilt shaders, prebuilt FPS controllers, etc. I’m definitelly not selling Unity engine itself.

I can make Assets for Unreal without using any Unreal technology; it is called FBX export. Unfortunately no one will buy it as customers like out of the box solutions. As a former archviz visualiser I spent a few thousand USDs for 3d models with specific shaders like VRay or on Unity assets.
The key was all the time the chance to save time. No customer wants to spend time with tweaking because of license limitations; if I could help the process and you, I can write a list what I think should be taken out from under the license ‘restrictions’ and send it for you.

15

I was thinking about this.
Simple there is no reason to deny the usage of the parts (for example shaders) I mentioned.

Reasons:

  1. If anyone wants to use a package we created, the customer still will need UE4 (or later versions) to use with, so it means that customer would have full access to these items anyway (so the restriction just makes his/her life harder and also denies Epic to become more widespread against it competitors).

  2. As I plan to release cross-platform assets, I’m not sure that it is a good strategy to price UE4 versions of my packages higher, because of some royalty issues.

Maybe there should be an ‘Unreal Content Creator’ pricing with 30 USD per month, but honestly I think that momently Epic needs quality asset developers more than anything else (the MP is quite small yet). Partially that is why I was a little bit surprised reading the marketplace terms, compared to Unity (45 day until payout, tax witholding, etc.).
Developers need motivation:)

16

Thanks for all your questions and interest. Sorry for a bit of delay but we’ve been busy with GDC as I’m sure you’ve seen. At any rate, we think it might be best to have an offline conversation about the specifics of what you are proposing to do. Could you send a message to daniel.vogel at epicgames.com your those details?

17

Thanks,

I will do that this week!