Great news for indie developers today, especially those developing UDK games. Epic has just updated the licencing terms so a royalty rate of 25% of sales is not payable until your game has earned more than US$50,000. This is a 10x jump from the previous amount of US$5,000 "We're really excited about folks making some amazing things with UDK and we realize that a lot of you are just started in the business so not having to pay royalties on your first $50,000 should help you get a financial footing toward building a quality game development business." said Epic VP and co-founder Mark Rein.
Here is an explanation from the licencing terms:
A team creates a game with UDK that they intend to sell. After six months of development, they release the game through digital distribution and they earn $60,000 in the first calendar quarter after release. Their use of UDK during development requires no fee. Upon release they would pay US $99 for a Royalty Bearing license. After earning $60,000, they would be required to pay Epic $2,500 ($0 on the first $50,000 in revenue, and $2,500 on the next $10,000 in revenue). On subsequent revenue, they are required to pay the 25% royalty.
Top work on lifting the bar once again Epic!
Yet another reason to choose the UDK for your project. We did for the new Chivalry game and have never looked back.
the win ^
That is pretty sweet. Would be indie paradise If steam did some friendly move like this.
I agree that's quite a generous move on Epic's part but not sure I understand what you mean in regards to Steam doing something similar? Steam being a digital distribution application (obviously quite a bit more) and not a game development kit. Do you mean Valve's Source Engine?
The source engine is supposedly one of the easiest and mod-friendly engines. Sure, they wont let you profit from their engine but if you make something good enough they'll promote you and perhaps strike you a deal if its 'good enough'.
Its a friendly alternative to be honest.
it's also archaic
with a UI of a dinosaur era
I somewhat agree... it's horrible to use really... and the result is rather low quality...
Gabe stated recently though, that valve is going to improve the tools.
(Even they thought, that using the tools in their current state is a masochist´s wet day dream.)
Source has licensed it's Engine out to quite a few people, not to mention Source is a cheap license I've heard, compared to something like the UE3 Engine(Full license),
But yeah, Epic is well, being Epic!
Valve already offers Steamworks free to developers, so they have done something similar.
Damn, this is pretty amazing.
And again epic owns unity
Hm thats dangerously good. This means that you have guaranteed 50k revenue if afcourse you think that your game will sell that much. Thats really really good. I am glad that i am deep in production with Unity so it doesnt make sense for me to switch otherwise i would be already going back to UDK:D.
Same, Unity is at £50000 aswell I think...
awesome:D
Wow. That's quite a generous give! Shame... I don't like using UDK....
Epic certainly live up to their name :)
Their support to the indie games development and general games development community are fantastic.
It'd be great to see support like this from other games development studios like Crytek for example.
Sydan Unity is not at 50k. It is 1.5k.
And Otreum Crytek promised that they will release Cryengine 3 under indie licence too.
Unity has no royalties at all. Only limitation is that you have to switch to the pro licence once you make 100K + a year.
Answers.unity3d.com
UDK just keeps getting better by the minute.
If I ever come up with a concept for a game that will use 3D graphics, UDK will be my first choice to see how I can make it work. Thanks Epic!
Nice, another reason why I started with UDK and will stay with UDK!
Keep it up Epic, it is these things that make me excited to be a developer in this day and age!
Epic win!
I went to the UDK in last years December and haven't looked back, and this is yet another reason to keep with UDK. Epic' is doing a great thing with this. While I don't know how reasonable the rates are or aren't, to me, these royalties and that kind of income looks very reasonable.
<3 UDK
Awesome, and it's sounds like Epic will still get quite a bit out of it.
UDK Is great for an RTS base building game, my team is using it.
hourray for Mark Rein.
Hmm ...
Unreal 1 & Missionpacks (awsome work for the time)
ut2 & 3 good rendering etc.
...
always the best looking water !
but a bit to overdosed on colors ...
Over the Years some Up´s and Down´s ;)
but the Udk is a Bright Burning Star for all Moders (...) !
Great Work !!!
Now thats one hell of a deal!
Awesome - if we could only find some UDK savvy programmers in Melbourne.
Winning.