I’ve never made a game before but had a cool idea for one and started learning Unreal to make it happen. Now that I’m pretty far into the project and the game is looking good, I started thinking about what restrictions there are on publishing it (or just putting it somewhere to be downloaded). I thought that it was simple and you could put it on Steam and they would take some amount of profits (but I intended to have it free-to-play) but now people are telling me different things. Some people say that some profits go to Epic Games and you have to pay them $3,000 quarterly and some people are saying you can just put it on Steam for free. What legal things do I have to worry about when trying to package and deploy a game, even when it’s free-to-play?
Steam has 100USD price to put up a game, free or not, I believe. You only have to pay Epic if you go over 100 000 USD in revenue per year. I haven’t encountered any other restrictions when putting my game on steam.
I hate to be the guy firing links at you - but it can get a complex thing and epic has written dozent of articles about it: Frequently Asked Questions - Unreal EngineEULA - Unreal Engine - there is also custom (studio) licensing and a dedicated mailadress for licensing questions. But in short, yes steam one time 100$ (per game) for building your store + a big number % of your revenue, some percent (look at the links, I think 3% or so) of your revenue after a decent revenue goes to epic (royalty) regardless where you release your game (!!), there is itch.io which is good, you can also publish to epic store of course or other indie stores. So in really short - if your game is free2play and doesn’t generate revenue (which I doubt) its only the fee from the store like steam 100$ one time. I’m not a epic staff, so don’t blame me if my information is wrong you can retag your question there is a dedicated category for licensing, there is the chance quite good a staff will have a look…
if you make money with it, yes you do. Here is what also stands in the links: …“you’ll need to track gross revenue and pay a 5% royalty on that amount after the first $3,000 per game per calendar quarter”. Revenue is not only paying a price to buy a game that means also inApp purchases and so on
What I was planning on doing was never making money. I own a decently sized clan (fshgaming.net quick plug) where we have a ton of unique stuff (in-clan competition between ‘houses,’ etc.). One of these is a virtual currency called “tanzanite coins” that are only earned through competitions, rank-ups, and other activities and have no interaction with real money (they cannot be bought and cannot be spent on things that could be bought with real money). My plan was to have members be allowed to use tanzanite coins to buy exclusive content in my game.
If I never involve real money, do I make any payments to Epic Games?
Here is what also stands in the links: …“you’ll need to track gross revenue and pay a 5% royalty on that amount after the first $3,000 per game per calendar quarter”.
Huh, this is a significantly smaller “free zone” compared to the $100000 per year ($25000 per quarter) mentioned in the answer above. Where did that come from? Did Epic change their rules recently (because that “you’ll need to start worrying about licensing fees only after your game will begin earning gazillions of dollars” aspect is what made me considering my future game to be released commercially at all)?
Yep…that is what the FAQ sais…I so also remember much Higher Budget…I guess some time ago around 4.14 Things have Changed. Until then you also had Lot of more Support Here and in the Forum. Atm it feels Like only Community driven. If you want Epic staffs you need to Pay Enterprise Support and get UDN access…Like in real life-things are getting only more expensive
you can retag your question there is a dedicated category for licensing, there is the chance quite good a staff will have a look…