Unreal Engine Subscription Pricing Announced... But DONT PANIC!

hello ladies and gentlemen it's Mike here at game from scratch and Unreal Engine is moving to a new subscription-based pricing system but don't panic trust me don't worry most of you are not going to be impacted by this at all some of you are actually going to benefit from this as we will see in just a moment but yeah there is a new pricing structure coming for Unreal Engine but mostly outside of the world of games now this actually isn't really that new uh I covered this back in October uh back when they actually were announcing the layoffs just after Unity did its whole runtime fee I think that Tim tweeny felt missing out so he announced that there's going to be a subscription model coming soon but this was mostly for people that were um you know in Film Production or Arch Fizz or using it for uh heads up displays that kind of stuff and this is basically just the formalization of that process and the cool thing is we now have clarification so if you're a student or an indie filmmaker or you're at a small Studio it's not going to impact you because there is a pricing limit so let's go through the announcement from epic games here so they're updating the Unreal Engine the twin motion and the real reality capturing price uh in late April so we also learned here that uh Unreal Engine 5.4 is coming in late April so spoiler alert there uh so we are introducing a new seat-based Unreal subscription when release Unreal Engine 5.4 new pricing of $1,850 per seat will apply to companies generating over 1 million USD in annual revenue uh who are not creating games very important caveat there if you are a game creator nothing is changing there's still going to have $1 million threshold and then after that you will have a um a revenue share like they have right now the big difference is there's a lot of people out there that weren't shipping a product that would literally never pay anything even if they made millions and millions potentially like if you use this to create a film like the Mandalorian it could be possible that you wouldn't have to pay a Cent and that did seem a little unreasonable uh so last year at unreal Fest in New Orleans they announced kind of leaked in a way uh that in 2024 they would begin offering an Unreal Engine seat based enterprise software pricing model for Industries other than game development to fund future development efforts we will be rolling out this new non-gaming pricing model with Unreal Engine 5.4 in late April sharing more information now so you can be ready for what's coming so this will remain free for students Educators hobbyists and companies that generate less than 1 million in uh gross revenue by the way that is 1 million USD regardless to where you make your money or what kind of money you make uh we are not changing our licensing model for game developers who will continue to pay a 5% royalty on products that exceed 1 million in lifetime gross revenue uh the first 1 million that a game generates is exempt from royalties and revenue earned through the epic game store is exempt from overall royalty calculations just as it is today so what is changing for non-game Industries we will introduce a new seat-based Unreal subscription as part of our Eola update with the release of Unreal Engine 5.4 now one thing about epic games that uh another company could definitely learn from that since this is an EA update if you stick with Unreal Engine 5.3 none of this applies to you so this is only going to be from new versions going for forward uh so the annual cost per seat is going to be $1,850 uh there could be some Regional pricing at select countries uh so if you're in a place where you know 1,850 is just completely unreasonable there might be a cheaper pricing regionally uh you'll only need to pay for seats if you meet all of the following criteria you're a company that generates over 1 million in annual gross revenue you do not create games uh you do not create applications that are licensed to third party end users that rely on Unreal Engine code at runtime this last caveat here is for if you're like an Unreal Engine mark Marketplace seller for example you could make over a million dollars but since you're selling into the Unreal Engine ecosystem this is not going to apply to you now it's kind of funny though I do immediately see a loophole here and uh I I think that they should be aware of this um if you create games and other products you're exempt here so you could actually ship a game and then use it for Arch viz purposes or making a film or whatever and technically this gets you out of it of course the devil is always in the details let's see what the Eola finally says but yeah if if you create games but make over a million dollars but your primary product isn't necessarily games uh right now you've got a loophole uh so you'll be able to use seat-based subscription to create linear content for example film and television shows Arch viz uh graphics for broadcast and Live Events products that incorp Unreal Engine code at runtime that are not licensed to third parties for example product configurators used internally or externally immersive experiences that are not sold directly to individuals such as theme park rods interactive architectural walkthroughs and so on if you're developing a non-game application that is licensed to third party end users and relies on Unreal Engine code at runtime you will need to pay royalties just like game developers do you will pay a 5% royalty on products that exceed 1 million in lifetime gross revenue again non-game application uh if you're currently using Unreal engion 5.3 or any prior version prior changes will not apply until you upgrade to 5.4 so again they are honoring their Eola here uh if you're interested in what's in 5.4 I'll cover that in another video so let's just ignore that for now uh you'll be able to purchase seats on a fixed user basis and and users with admin rights will be able to manually transfer seats to other users in your organizations as needed so what's included in the Unreal Engine subscription seats well this is where we're actually kind of getting a bit of a perk we'll get back to that in a minute uh but this is unreal engine 5.4 along with the two other engine compatible creative tools twin motion and reality capture uh they will also offer a 30-day free trial that covers all three products uh we're bringing these tools together as part of the subscription to help teams across Industries build efficient high quality 3D experiences and our goal is to fully integrate twin motion and reality capture Unreal Engine by the end of 2025 so that's another little bit of an announcement here expect that uh twin motion is going to stop being its own product will be fully integrated into Unreal Engine going forward I'll cover what twin motion is in just a sec don't worry about that and didle for reality capture that's very interesting so reality capture is going to be built into Unreal Engine by the end of 2025 um twin motion gives you lighter weight easy to use visualization capabilities make it possible for more team members such as designers to be part of the same production Pipeline and workflow as Unreal Engine users meaning you can get more out of your team working to together on the same project regardless of their skill sets reality capture is the leading desktop photo gretry solution it gives you the ability to create oneof a kind assets by transforming high res camera images even ones taken with smartphones and or laser scans due to high fidelity 3D models for use in Unreal Engine and twin motion projects and other things by the way uh I actually have checked out a number of these photogrammetry Solutions and reality capture was actually my favorite uh Community Based support and learning materials will remain open and free to use for everyone just as they are today um epic support through the developer network will not be included with the unreal subscription for Studios or companies purchasing more than 10 uh unreal subscription seats epic direct support will be available to purchased for an additional $1,500 per seat annually uh so this is kind of really kind of interesting this is the part where um non I say game developers that aren't paying any money are going to get a free perk out of this so twin motion and reality capture will still be available to purchase individually as part of this update we're also changing the pricing model for individual purchases of these applications so individual tun motion seats will will be priced at $445 per year twin motion seats will include access to Twin motion Cloud as well as all updates released during the subscription period blah blah blah blah blah this is the key part reality capture individual seats will be $1,250 per year starting with reality capture 1.4 they will no longer offer the pay per input and that sucks because you basically be able to send in an image and just pay per usage that is going away in the future so that is definitely a negative so existing customers with unused PPI credits will be able to utilize them but you won't be able to buy more credits going forward forward however and this is the good news for everybody that's making less than $1 million just like Unreal Engine both twin motion and reality capture will now be free to use if you are a student educator hobbyist as well as if your company earns less than 1 million in annual gross revenue so with starting with April you're going to be able to use reality capture for photogrametry completely free if you make less than $1 million like I said this isn't all bad news there's actually some upside for uh game developers here and then why did they do it mostly because they want to make money from these people and make Unreal Engine sustainable and I I'm behind this one 100% this is one of those things basically their old pricing model had a loophole in it that allowed multi-million or billion dollar companies potentially pay absolutely nothing to use their product now there's some clarification down here uh so seat management you can assign it to contractors the answer is yes um licensing deals can you purchase unal engine without those other two and the answer is basically no what happens if you don't renew your subscription uh you will lose access to any tools projects you've created but you keep using Unreal engent twin motion reality capture now the cool thing here is if your annual gross revenue drops below the 1 million threshold you can actually stop paying and then be in the free tier so that's actually kind of cool uh so you can stick with Unreal Engine 5.3 if you wish to do so if you develop plugins do you need to purchase a seat no you do not uh 1 million threshold applied to company revenue or or company Revenue so product revenue is for royalties company revenue is for the you know do you have to pay or not so the per seat Li is based off of the company's gross revenue um it's always calculated in USD and so on so that is the announcement so Unreal Engine are moving to a per seat license for non-gaming users the big news here for game developers if you make less than $1 million reality capture is going to now be free which is really cool I I actually really like reality capture if you've never checked it out I would highly recommend doing so speaking of which the two applications we are talking about here one is reality capture they bought this about four or five years back uh it enables you to scan the real world and make it into a 3D model uh the nice thing about reality capture is it actually uh pairs really well with nanite meshes so you can create these super dense meshes with textures and all that stuff and then just let unreal engent detail deal with the lods and the complexity and such of it uh so using uh photogrametry in games is becoming much more feasible than it ever was the other product in talking we've been talking about here is Twin motion uh this has been available for ages and ages and ages uh it's kind of built on top of Unreal Engine it's for doing architectural visualization so if you made uh a CAD program drawn right here and you want to show it to your clients and make it more realistic or whatever You' use twin motion for that there's a huge library of like 3D models in it as well uh which you should actually have access to now uh as part of the merger there uh but yeah that is the twin motion aspect of it and that is the announcements ladies and gentlemen that uh uh Unreal Engine is going to be $1,850 per seat if you make over a million dollars a year and you working in a non-gaming capacity if you are working in a gaming capacity it looks like twin motion and reality capture are going to to be free uh for companies that make less than $1 million which is really cool even if you work in games uh and then the other aspect that guesss the kind of negative is reality capture payer use uh functionality is going away uh but I think for the most people that would be in the payer use would also be in the making less than $1 million part so it's going away to be the replace for three but if you're in that company that makes more than $1 million a year uh that uses an under paper use basis that's definitely the negative news here so let me know what you think of the new per seat licensing at Unreal Engine uh again nothing really new here we knew about this going all the way back to October 2023 they've just basically codified it and every question or fear that most people had there especially around like Indie filmmakers seems to have been addressed by this so I don't see any unfairness in this new pricing uh also you can stay with 5.3 uh in perpetuity if you wish so uh all the hold I'm fine with this if this gets them more money from people that aren't currently paying I I'm down with that so let me know what you think comments down below I will talk to you all later goodbye

Channel: Gamefromscratch

Views: 23,550

Keywords: Unreal, Unreal Engine, Epic Games, Unreal Subscription, Unreal Engine Subscription, Unreal Per Seat, Unreal Engine 5.4, Unreal Engine 5.4 License, UE 5.4, UE 5, Reality Capture, RealityCapture, Capturing Reality, TwinMotion, Twin Motion, gamedev, game development, gamefromscratch

Id: bbIRcQMx-Wo

Length: 11min 27sec (687 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 12 2024