For those purchasing a commercial license for Unreal Engine 5, I was wondering if the license terms specify which versions of UE5 are covered. Specifically:
I’ve tried searching online but haven’t been able to find a clear answer that applies to this specific scenario. Any clarification would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you!
Unreal Engine does not have a “commercial” license, you pay 5% to Epic games after your game has made over 1000000$ in revenue. all commercial use is allowed, just download the engine and make a game. so if you make 1000100$ with your game, you will pay 5$ to epic games.
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/license
for fab:
Fab has only commercial license alltought it is named “personal”, difference is that if your company has made under 100k$ in the past 12months, you buy “personal” license.
if your company has made over 100k$ in the past 12months, you buy the “professional” license.
on fab personal and professional both are for commercial use, they are just named on a stupid way that causes confusion.
and if you bought “personal” and after few months your company makes a huge profit that is over 100k$, you dont need to buy a new license, the license is chosen based on the time of purchase.
FAB licenses covers all versions from UE4 to UE5. they also cover other engines like Unity now that MarketPlace was moved to FAB.
It seems like there’s 2 options for the licence though, one is Royalty-based but the other is Per-Seat, not sure if the Per-seat one is different in regards to what you replied, my organization probably has a “per-seat” licence, not sure if it’s any different. I’m not able to check myself as I’m not high up enough to see but I just wanted to ask to know if there’s a restriction in using a specific version of UE5.
Bit of a bummer that there’s no clear answer online
the per seat is for example: animation and movie studios that make over 1000000$.
the royalty one is for example: game studios that make over 1000000$.
you are in a big company if it makes over a million bucks profit, congratulations.
indie developers almost never break that 1million barrier.
also you dont have to pay the royalty at all if you sell your game on epics own game store, even if you make over a million in profit.
no there is no limit or restrictions for the current engine versions.
just to make it more clear:
if you work in an animation studio that makes over a million in profit, your company probably has per-seat license.
if you are creating a game on a company that makes over a million in profit, your company must have a royalty based license, in this case it cant have seat based license.
I understand now, I struggled a bit to understand the phrasing chosen for the 2 categories descriptions 
.
If you don’t mind me asking, are you getting this information from somewhere or is it just a case of “it’s not state in the licence page, so it must be this”? Just curious to know if I could’ve found the answer with a little more googling
i might have 5 posts on this user, but i have used Unreal Engine since Unreal Engine 4 back at 2014, UE4 was around 20$ per month back then and it changed to free in 2015.
here is some reference too if you need:
No. Unreal Engine 5 remains free to download, and comes fully loaded and production-ready out of the box,
with every feature and full source code access included.
As was the case for UE4, under the terms of the standard EULA, UE5 is free to use for learning, and for developing
internal projects; it also enables you to distribute many commercial projects without paying any fees to Epic Games,
including custom projects delivered to clients, linear content (such as films and television shows) and any product
that earns no revenue or whose revenue falls below the royalty threshold.
A 5% royalty is due only if you are distributing an off-the-shelf product that incorporates Unreal Engine code
(such as a game) and the lifetime gross revenue from that product exceeds $1 million USD; in this case, the first
$1 million remains royalty-exempt.
"
source (old post from 2015, when they announced everything will be free):
https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/blog/ue4-is-free
"
-If You Love Something, Set It Free
Unreal Engine 4 is now available to everyone for free, and all future updates will be free!
"
source
Licensing for non-game indie film makers after 2024 - #3 by srs2112
when the unity disaster happened, Tim sweeney also mentioned on twitter post that
the old license term are never going to be changed for future unreal engine versions.
as in it will stay free if the current license said it is free.
Tim Sweeney is the founder and CEO of Epic Games, and the creator of Unreal Engine.
Tim Sweeney, CEO of Epic Games, made statements during the controversy surrounding Unity’s licensing
changes earlier in 2024 to reassure Unreal Engine users. He affirmed that the Unreal Engine license
terms would not retroactively change and that existing agreements would remain honored for future
versions of the engine. This was highlighted as a contrast to Unity’s backlash-inducing retroactive
modifications of its pricing model.
I hope this helps 
I find these kind of statements funny, but they are true:
This is the mentalitet that Epic has. If you read the FAQ frequently asked questions, it basically says you can copy modify sell delete make your own engine using the unreal code… or do what ever you want with UnrealEngine sourcecode, only thing you need to remember is that after you have made a million bucks profit, you start to pay Epic 5% from the profits after the first million.
And note that the million is per project, it is not the total of all projects.
a project that makes only 900k$ is royalty free, if your other game makes 1.1million then that game is royalty 5%.
Thank you so much for taking the time to provide me with a thorough answer. I’m glad there are no version restrictions with Commercial/enterprise use of Unreal Engine.
Wish there was an upvote button in this forum so I could give your post some feedback.
