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by PlattypusRex 649 days ago
Yes, royalties apply after $1 million, hence, not free. Plenty of small/medium studios use Unreal.

Free for educational purposes means it is not free, since the royalties still apply if the game is released.

Last time I checked, free means free.
2 comments
fragmede 649 days ago
free means whatever the reader wants it to mean, including free as in beer, free as in speech, or free as in puppies. In this case, free until you have $1,000,000 in revenue is free enough outside of pedantic online arguments about the definition of free. If you made a million dollars from something, having to pay the thing that helped you get to that place doesn't seem unreasonable, but maybe I'd I had a million dollars I'd feel differently.
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PlattypusRex 649 days ago
It's pedantic to say it isn't free when...it isn't? Plenty of smaller games make over $1 million. It's news to me that the concept of free is whatever the reader wants it to be. Free as in beer or free as in freedom, Unreal is neither.
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pizza234 647 days ago
Freedom in licensing definitely requires context and specification; an absolute view of freedom has little practical use. Game engines released, for example, under a GPL license may align with an absolute view of freedom, but they are useless for the vast majority of commercial games.
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mirekrusin 649 days ago
What needs to be below 1m? Revenue of the whole shop? Or just that game? If you have two games how is it calculated? Can you create legal entity per app to manage limit? Is it annual revenue? Can you set publishing legal entity in front that takes most revenue as publishing cost and pays peanuts to dev shop legal entity that holds license?
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jncfhnb 649 days ago
Per game, lifetime revenue.
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mirekrusin 648 days ago
Thank you. But that’s very blurry, no? Is my Mario 2 new game? Mario 3D? What about Mario vs Donkey Kong? Smash Bros with Mario? If all are new games what about Mario v1.3? etc. Wonder how they formalised it with legal language.
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jncfhnb 648 days ago
No that’s not very blurry at all. Mario 2 is clearly a different game than Mario 1.

Epic is not claiming any rights on your IP.

Mario v1.3 typically means Mario 1 with some patches unless you’re kingdom hearts, so yes that is still the same game. I believe dlc is bundled into the parent game.

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jncfhnb 649 days ago
$1M per product. So if you’re talking about releasing engine mods for free, there is no cost.
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