Unreal vs Unity - Which Costs More Now?
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- Опубликовано: 31 июл 2024
- Now that Unity have finalized the new "Unity Runtime Fee", the cost comparison between Unreal Engine and Unity game engine are completely different.
In this video we run down 5 different scenarios, to figure out which engine costs more. It may surprise you to find out which developers will be hardest hit by the Unity runtime price changes.
Links
gamefromscratch.com/unreal-vs...
About The Unity Price Change Saga(in order):
gamefromscratch.com/unity-ann...
gamefromscratch.com/developer...
gamefromscratch.com/unity-pri...
gamefromscratch.com/unity-dev...
gamefromscratch.com/unity-ann...
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GFS Patreon : / gamefromscratch
GameDev News : gamefromscratch.com
GameDev Tutorials : devga.me
Discord : / discord
Twitter : / gamefromscratch
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Наука
Links
gamefromscratch.com/unreal-vs-unity-which-costs-more/
About The Unity Price Change Saga(in order):
gamefromscratch.com/unity-announce-new-pricing-and-plan-changes/
gamefromscratch.com/developers-react-to-unity-pricing-change/
gamefromscratch.com/unity-price-change-fallout-keeps-getting-worse/
gamefromscratch.com/unity-developers-fight-back/
gamefromscratch.com/unity-announce-massive-pricing-changes/
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*GFS Patreon* : www.patreon.com/gamefromscratch
*GameDev News* : gamefromscratch.com
*GameDev Tutorials* : devga.me
*Discord* : discord.com/invite/R7tUVbD
*Twitter* : twitter.com/gamefromscratch
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I legit laughted when you said "yes i know Godot is free, i'll mention it now so i won't see it a thousand times in the comments"
Services in Unreal engine, free multiplayer chat etc... In this case, aren't your costs wrong? As far as I know, it is necessary to work with other companies for services in Unity. These fees also rise to high figures when the quality of service is taken into consideration. But UE also has certain quality and is free for all platforms. like windows linux mac android...
jajajajja Godot..... me parto de risa..... ahora mirando las ganancias, si se pone el creador de C++ a cobrar a todos , las compañias se arruinan.
Run Time Fee is worthless when you're just paying more hidden Royalties labeled as RTFs for Unity.
It's a bad deal compared to Unreal who doesn't triple dip. Even if Unity Pro is gutted right now but it can return.
(Also... 10 employees under American Minimum Wage of $15 to $20 dollars an hour, is beyond $200k per year alone. The employee wages can be even higher than this by $50+ per hour. Unity's new Contract Expense is not worth the cost.)
when i read the pricing update page, unity states the splash screen removal would be for the new unity versions of 2023 lts and later. the personal/student games made in the current lts engines are still shackled to a splash screen right now afaik
Note that Unity can (and probably will) increase the prices once they see that they can apparently get away with their bs.
not this shit again
Note that Unreal also can increase prices and done that in past. Thats how comapny work.
@@danielmazi1090 Also note that Unreal didn't try fucking with their TOS TWICE! They don't have a history of fucking over their devs.
@@danielmazi1090unreal is not crazy or desperate to fuck their terms of service
I'm a student in this industry and I'll be avoiding Unity as much as I can now because of this. (Previously Unity was the most appealing engine and my university even has a partnership with them)
Unity's problem is not a price problem now. Games take years to develop. Trust is essential. Firing top management would be a first step.
Correct.
It's not just that. Unity a piece of shit software held together by duct tape and bubblegum, with lots of features deprecated, missing or half-assed in. It's saving grace is Monogame, really, and if you're willing to give up the editor, you can have that for free. It doesn't really compare to Unreal, which may have it's issues, but is still largely bleeding-edge software that's always consistently improving. Unreal may cost more, but it also delivers more to the developer.
And who suppose to do that? :D You think they would fire themselves? XD
@@tlilmiztlithe board? Does unity have a board besides the wood one that exists in CEOs brain?
@@du0lol Isn't Monogame 2D only?
Unreal cost more money
while Unity cost more trust.
doesn't matter, this is a money comparison.
what trust?
if they went along with their sheme I would have sued em.
EU>USA
As someone already said, what trust? I don't understand why some people think big corporations are their friends. They are not. Never have been, and never will be. Money is the number one thing that matters, and if some multi billion dollar corporation says they're on your side, they're lying and you're stupid if you believe them. People who play the trust card are either just jumping on the bandwagon or they're looking for excuses.
@@kaanozkuscu5079 yeah go
u d be broke
someone would sue them
but not u or me
@@69MrMaster69The issue is the provider of your game engine is your business partner if you are a professional dev, I would never trust unity as a business partner
The fact Riccitiello is still there is a massive liability. So, Unity is more costly.
Even if JR gets ousted or leaves, you still have the company culture that would happily have someone like JR as their CEO.
In a sense, you are correct.
He's just part of the problem, this must've been shat on the table in cooperation with the company board.
The Hammer, The Board. Throw them out.
in a community where logic and math should regin. this is a pretty dumb comment. could unity change their rev share to 100% ya sure. would anyone use it at 100%? no. would unity go out of business? yes. ok. so that should be pretty easy to understand. will unity push and try to increase the rev share in time? yes, so will unreal and every other engine. that's how the world works. will it ever get to a point that is soooo unrealistic and so unfair, that its not profitable to use unity? no. because unity depends on people using unity to survive. its a symbolic relationship. they will always push to get more, but they will also, always push for the devs to be more profitable in comparison to other engines. Riccitiello doesn't change that. welcome to reality.
In scenario 4 and 5, you are overestimating Unreal cost by 50K$ because of the first 1M$ revenue rule. Does not make much of a difference for scenario 5 and does not affect the conclusion but it is still a significant amount in the case of scenario 4.
I mean, thats a whole developer per year
You are 100% correct, my mistake, fixed in linked article, thanks.
The examples are full of errors. The biggest error is example #3 its 2.5% x 500k since the first million dont count like unreal, and you dont need to pay pro license the full time if its your first game. So in the end could cost you the same as unreal for 1 year of pro license + 500k engagemetn
@@Marc-gj9vx also theyve said whichever is lower and he is only calculating runtime fees not the alternative percentage. The video sounds smart but it feels like it is full of holes.
@@ThatPianoNoob specially when they are not considering custom licensing.
Epic doesn't reduce the store costs from 12% down to 7% if you use the Unreal engine. It just waives the 5% revenue fee on top of that, so that their cut is "only" 12% total, not 17% (12% from store 5% from engine)
That's the same thing!
@@veganjackbauer2154 The 1 million free lunch only applies to the 5%, which is waved. This means no 1 million free, so the result is different.
@@veganjackbauer2154 only if you want to redefine what it means to waive a fee so that they can "waive" the 5% by subtracting it from 12% and then add it back again to get 12%.
Sure, as long as you get the point that they don't only charge you 7% TOTAL. If you use UE and sell in their store they charge you 12%, not 12+5 = 17%.
@@zeroone8800 true forgot about that! So what would be similar is if store costs become 7% when u start paying the fee. Basically u always pay 12%
Ehen releasing on multiple platforms including epic, do they still take the lowered cut from the epic fee?
If you’re anywhere near scenario 4 and 5 you’d be crazy not to negotiate a custom license.
If ur game makes billions, why would they negotiate? Nothing in their terms talks about it, and u already agreed to the standard license. Maybe they would negotiate, but would they just agree to lose hundreds of millions?
@@veganjackbauer2154I expect the triple AAA studios & publishers typically negotiate near the start of the project when they can easily pivot to another engine.
@@stanleyelliott6891 I know but i'm talking indie where u have to start with Standard license, because they wouldn't agree to a custom license
You missed something with Unity here.
The developers have the option of paying either 2.5 % of revenue OR the "initial engagement fee" whichever is lower.
I do believe the runtime calculator that gave me the runtime fee numbers takes that into account, so it's baked in.
@@gamefromscratch In scenario 3, runtime cost is $3125/mo for a total of $37,500. 2.5% of the 500k above 1M is only $12,500 . That lowers unity's cost to 1/3 of your projections
@@gamefromscratch it appears that the calculator did not take the $1M of exemption into account. It did account for the revenue option, but just did $1.5M x 2.5%.
@@EternalFragmentyes you are correct. The 3rd scenario would only be about 50k$
Ah, if you try the calculator you'll see where the problem is. It only calculates from the point AFTER you exceed the $1m and 1 mil users thresholds.
So the video shouldn't have multiplied the calculator value by 12, but by the number of months after the threshold was exceeded.
Most RUclipsrs are missing the fact that Unity's revenue requirement (200k or 1m) is not lifetime earnings. It's only over the previous 12 months. That makes a huge difference (i.e. it's not easy or even likely to meet the requirement)
not to mention that he missed the most important and biggest case scenario: small indie studios generating revenues in the 200k-500k span. In that case the Pro licenses make Unity almost unsustainable if you are just above the 200k threshold. Everyone is ignoring it, even if this is the way Unity is actually going to earn the most.
@franklioty if someone is making 201K every 12 months (and also having over 200k lifetime installs), they can afford Pro. It's only $2K, and a studio making only 201k per year likely only has 1 or 2 seats. They can afford $4k per year. (But if they were pro the limits are $1m/1m, so the point is moot. Those two scenarios are mutually exclusive)
@@franklioty Not sure what do you mean. The moment when you pass 100k of revenue (200k in new rules) it's mandatory to switch to pro license and so the installation fee don't apply until 1m$
@@jeffmccloud9051-2 seats is a low estimate, probably around 3-5. Another very unclear point is what types of income are included and if they are gross or net. It's "studio revenues" in the fee estimator but in the explanation page it talks also about "funding" (?). Are they gross or net? Because it changes a lot.
Gross case, 3 seats studio, 2y development, publisher deal 50/50, 200k revenue: it's ~50k for the studio, paying 12k of Pro licenses, which is 24% of 50k.
Net case, same scenario: 12k of Pro licenses is 6% of 200k revenue.
In both cases, Unreal Engine costs 0% of your incomes, assuming you are making >200k revenue in the last 12 months and never exceeding 1M lifetime revenue.
Again, this is the main scenario for all the small indie studios around the world.
@@SylvanFeanturi but you have to pay the Pro licenses, 1.9k per seat, while UE is free. If you do your maths, you'll see that those costs are going to be way higher (in percentage) than the runtime fee capped at 2.5%. I made some examples above.
I think the runtime fee has been rolled out lower just to get us used to it. It will go up in a few years. If you're starting a new title, you have to consider what Unity just did and that the runtime fee is still in there in one form or another. It may be a better idea just to go with a different game engine company that you can trust. As long as they have a runtime fee in any of their plans, it reveals their character and future plans.
if they continue with the language of "whichever is lower" then I would presume the 2.5% to go up before the $0.15 "per engagement" the "per engagement" is more so that they get to say "it isn't a royalty, we didn't call it a royalty, you called it a royalty"
for larger studios the difference between 2.5% and 5% is 25K on the million, or ~12.5 per-seat-per-year licenses, so your project better expect to make more then a million for each 12 devs you have on the project, or else you are better off just getting the 5%
For me, it's more about Unity leadership demonstrating that they will not hesitate to bastardize countless studios, devs, and all of game development as an art form the moment they think they can get away with it. At this point, Unity could pay me to use them and I wouldn't. They will eat the industry alive the second no one is watching.
Really informative video - thanks for digging through all this!
Unity - Prancing model changes almost every year, can make you broke and shutter your trust.
Unreal - 5% fee hasn't changed in a decade and EULA can be trusted. + Source available.
Godot - it’s free and open source meaning it can never betray you, but you have to deal with its limits
@@whyisyes3957 If you think open source prevent people from being greedy bastards and total twats, take a closer look at Rust Foundation :D
Do you have a link to your games on Steam?
A really important point imo is that unity Dev will be more front loaded in terms of cost. Unreal not having a fee for the editor itself can be a massive thing when a delay slips in
For scenario #5, almost no AAA company would use the normal licensing fee. They negotiate a 5 million license fee for a single project which is the enterprise license which was 5 million per project in 2020 (average)
The video is just very bad, idk
thats interesting thanks... so in 2020 by average if you expect that you would have to pay more then 5 million in license fees to Unreal (for example 6,7 million etc.) its better to go for the enterprise license and get "only" 5 million fee... So 5 million was the "breaking point" in 2020...
My company pays waaay less than 5 millions per game but we pay upfront.
There is also the possibility to pay a relatively small upfront cost in exchange for a cap on the royalties.
What if it's an indie dev that starts small and grows later to make a billions? They don't agree to a custom license for an indie, so u have to start with the standard license and then u may be stuck with it, and pay 5% on billions. Why would they then negotiate to lose hundreds of millions?
@@cedric7751 Do u know if u can change to a custom license later down the line, after u already agreed to the standard license? Let's say ur game ends up making billions.
The thresholds need to be subtracted before plugging them into the price calculator. Scenario 3 is $25K too high because the calculator is showing the royalty being paid on the full $1.5M instead of only $500K. In scenario 4, no royalty would apply at all, because 1M units were sold, and the threshold is 1M units.
Incidentally, I think developers should consider a "scenario 1.5" most significant: revenue between $200K and $1M. For that entire range, Unity Pro seat fee applies, while Unreal is completely free. In addition, that $200K threshold is based on total studio revenue, so even if no individual game exceeds $200K, but you either release two games within 12 months or you have a back catalog that pushes you over $200K, then Pro is still required.
Other than the weird corner case, like scenario 3, where the revenue per initial engagement is small and the revenue per developer is small (I'm assuming in that scenario that the studio must be outside the US/Western Europe or else the project would have lost a ton of money), Unity will be cheaper than Unreal once you start owning Unreal money. Unfortunately, the most common case is scenario 1, followed by scenario 1.5. It is only a tiny portion of games where Unity is cheaper, because it is only for a tiny portion of games where Unreal costs anything at all.
@@HajimeSaito_ the royalty doesn't apply at all until you both exceed $1M of revenue and 1M units sold. Even though the revenue threshold had been reached, because none of the sales occurred after reaching the sales threshold, no royalty is owed.
I agree with your second point.
THIS.
There is another scenario that you forgot ... unity's fee is based on the last 12 month. Unreal is life time revenue. So if you ear about 800k$ in the first year and 700k$ in the second year. you owe 25k$ to Unreal. But you only pay the Pro license you are keeping up for maintenance of the game. Even when you have a more normal start where you earn a lot in the first year and then drastically reduce the income after you will stop paying fees after you fall below the 1mil in 12 month. It gives you more on the long tail of the game. The question is if you need to keep the Pro license when youa re under 200k income in 12 month. and how many Pro licenses you need to keep up for maintenance.
Just wanted to say I really appreciate your YT/discord/website content. You're an essential part of my game dev journey that I would recommend to anyone. Because of your content I don't have to check Humble Bundle and asset stores for deals daily and I'm always up to speed on game dev current events. Thank you sir
Awesome, so happy to be useful. And thank you so very much for the support, it's greatly appreciated!
Would scenario #2, #3 really have to include 2 full years of Pro license? They could wait to upgrade until they see the revenue pass $200k.
Example #3 is also completely wrong. You dont pay for the first million$ with unity so the runtime fee would be 2.5% x 500k = 12500, not the 37500 he put
This is actually true in all of his scenarios that require a Unity Pro or higher license. Therefore, all of his Unity costs are actually a bit higher than they should be, except for Scenario #1.
@@jdunlap1974
I´m not certain you should calculate it that way, I dont think Unity would Allow you to Constantly Switch Licenses. So, if you already have something Released you would still have the Pro License.
Also, what I´m wondering is how the License works after Release. I mean you would still pay the Normal License Fees after Release, because of the Expected Support for Patches and stuff.
@@LanToasterYou're supposed to upgrade the license yourself when you hit 200k or you'll get a message from Unity. Doesn't really matter which license was used for release build.
@@fearmear
Yea, but this wasnt what I wrote. If you have hit the 200K, you are not going back. So Future Projects, aswell as Continued Support for the Project will use the Pro License from Start.
Unreal Engine just makes it easier, and that’s important. Unity are making it harder than it should be.
Youll spend 10 min understanding unreal pricing and 2h understanding unity pricing ok.
Meanwhile you'll spend 1000 hours making a game in unreal that could take 500h to make in Unity.
While I´m no Dev, I agree with you there. Unreals Default License is so simple, without much Ifs.
And what I think would sell me the Most as Small/Indi Dev starting out, is that there is from the Engine alone no Financial Risk.
You Grab Unreal, and dont have to pay anything, and just give them their 5% Cut in the End. Your game bombs, at least you didnt have to pay a few Thousand for License.
With Unreal you can just say "Oh Timmy wants his 5% on whatever I get after I make 1 million for myself? Ok fine" and with Unity you have to start running scenarios and doing math to see if it's worth it. I don't get it, why do they have to make it so complicated to target specific developers as if that will save them from losing hundreds of millions every quarter, they trying to save the company by messing with the costs just made everything worse
@@karlwest437 many indie devs claim they spent twice as long in Unreal
though i'm sure they're using it wrong
@@karlwest437 It should be around 25% longer(based on personal experiences).
Well, another thing to consider is that with Unity you begin paying before your game gets released. If you've got a tight budget (most small studios?) or you are located in a country with a lower purchasing power parity (Asia, south America, etc) that can also be really detrimental
@zeon137 How is that? You do not need to pay for Pro until you cross the $200K threshold. That cannot happen until release. Yes, some studios/devs do pay prior BY CHOICE, but it is not required. In the past, many did it to remove the splash screen, but that will no longer be required.
@@jdunlap1974 I don't know if they've changed stuff, but afaik you still need Pro for stuff like Unity collaborate (now plastic scm?), deploying to consoles for testing, or even if you're working on your second game and you reached the threshold with the first one.
@zeon137 Okay, I can give you the Collaborate point as I do not believe that they have said that that will change. There are other options available, though those often do not work well with the Unity ecosystem. However, if you have to pay it because a previous game was successful, that is a cost associated with the first game and should not be attributed to or conflated with the costs of development for the second. But, fair point about Collaborate.
Looking at the terms, you can use Personal until you reach 200k and then you have to upgrade.
So for a first game, it's a free start.
Second game, you have to upgrade to Pro, assuming the first game made 200k+ in 1 year
And yea, you can't test consoles, hence why games are designed for both PC and Console in mind and after they do good on PC are ported to Console also, in the case of a first game.
Tho there are plenty of games made for Consoles and then ported to PC.....
You don't cause you are not required to buy Unity Pro license until after 200k. So if it's your first game then those calculations are not really correct. If it's the second game the studio is doing and let's say they made over 200k, only then they'll be required to pay the license.
Unreal pricing is just way more easy to understand. It also brings some security, because if your games flops, you don't need to pay anything, while Unity still charges you for seats. Epic Games also offers much support for devs
How can you talk about unity pricing when it changes every day :D
In 2019, Unity lost the trust of our company. We are glad that we are not using Unity engine. There are no guarantees in the future.
What are you using as of now?
@@CrazyOrdinal Godot and are struggling to release their game. just an assumption
@@MuhammadHosny0 Not like it isn’t the same with every engine, the last 10% is the hardest.
@@MuhammadHosny0 I don't think so. If we're talking about 2019 then probably they moved to Unreal or developed their own engine
@@MuhammadHosny0oo you achieved something grate in life judging someone what they use or not, if you still trust unity no one can save you.
Scenario 2# for unity is one pro per seat for the entire year, and that's only after you made more than 200k which doesn't happen before you released the game. Which should be 12k not 24k.
Also their one mil revenue is the revenue you had in the past 12 months, it's not a lifetime stack.
It happens after $200K of revenue OR funding. A studio with 6 developers is going to need way more than $200K of funding per year. At that size, you aren't going to be paying people entirely in equity.
Agree with the second point. It means that your long-tail is basically free in Unity. Whereas Unreal's tail only becomes free once the revenue goes below $10K/quarter.
@@zirconiumdiamond1416 "Include all revenue generated from retail sales, in-app purchases, subscription fees, web payments, offline payments and ads-based revenue from the last 12 months." That is from Unity's runtime-fee-estimator from their site. In other words money that is generated on their engine alone and not stuff not based on their engine/runtime or whatever. I have a hard time seeing unity taking away from your money destined to fund the game before it even gets released. The whole fee is based on the actual game not the idea of your game...that should be 100% yours since you can even decide to switch engine midway.
After reaching the threshould you have to pay pro license for how long?
very nice rundown. Thanks.
Unless I read it wrong, but aren't Unity Pro and Unity Enterprise developers being given the option of avoiding the Runtime Fee in favor of a 2.5% revenue share? The runtime fee is self reported and optional now?
The video and the comments were super interesting. Thanks for putting that up.
with UE one thing that is amazing, developers have thousands of free assets, plus quixel megascans. Also UE make your life easier on many things... they do not even count on that million the 12% devs give from the sells when they publish their games to Epic Game Store... The resources to the UE development do not come from the developers, but from other sources, like their games and epic game store, in contrast with Unity... Give a chance to Unreal Engine, it is easy, and not need for C++, Blueprints are amazing...
Scenario #3
The devs can opt in to 2.5% of the revenue putting them at like 40k
there are prob also the Iron Source deals going out to cut that new fee all together if u use their services
So overall unity just started making double of it's revenue from the licensing
If they were making 500m/year, now they will make close to 800-900m/year
Unity just got more expensive, but it's still cheaper then Unreal overall.
Keep in mind they just doubled the threshold for the “free” tier. For solo and Indy developers, that could be a $2k/seat savings over the current rule.
Is Scenario #2 and #3 the Unity annual fee $2,040 x 2 x 6 but not x12? but the final figure $24,480 is correct
The issue is Unity cannot be trusted, Unreal can, the fact that Unreal's pricing is simple, upfront, honest and straightforward has it's own weight and 5% of half a billion is not that bad, you made half a billion in revenue, 25 mil is nothing to you at that point
Trusted to do or not do what?
@@Aeroximanot to spontaneously bring in new ridiculous fees
@@sunbleachedangel”ridiculous fees” which, even with Mike erroneously applying those fees on the first 1M revenue, are generally significantly lower than Unreal’s? If Unity’s ≤ 2.5% is “ridiculous,” what is Unreal’s 5%?
@@sunbleachedangelTheir fees even few days ago was per install with source data provided by "trust me bro" (or worse, provided by malware bundled with the runtime). They invented a new term, install-bombing. Something that didn't exist before, because nobody was **** enough.
That wasn't some opinion, but official fee structure.
Sure, not ridiculous at all. Come back when Epic does something like that
I wouldn’t bet on trusting Unreal forever neither … don’t forget Tencent currently owns 48.4% of Epic Games, while the USA-China geopolitical tension is higher than ever.
In scenarios 3 and 4, the wrong values were entered into the calculator.
In scenario 3, you only have to enter the profit you make after the limits have been reached.
this means that you do not have to enter 1 500 000$, but a maximum of 500 000$, which reduces the monthly costs from 3 125$ to a maximum of 1 050$.
In scenario 4 it is the same but with shipped units. Here, only those over 1M are to be entered, i.e. 0 units and thus there is no runtime fee.
Lol that unity pricing isn't in a legal document at all. Meaning they can rug pull at any time. So done with them.
good luck
Wasn't the recent change that the runtime fee would basically be capped at 2.5% of revenue? Sounds like that would prevent the example you gave at the end of things getting more expensive than Unreal.
I know they framed it weirdly, but sounded like that's effectively what it means.
Yes
Thnx for this video!!!
It seems Unity wants to charge the average successful developer enough to keep them from growing beyond being an average successful developer.
Seems Unreal is doing the same, maybe someone who is concerned with that should just go with Godot.
@@altongames1787Gadot is meh tho
@@altongames1787 Literally how did we not watch the same video?
@@tylerdurden6917 That is very true, I currently use Unity as I feel the changes would never affect me as a hobbyist/indie dev. 99% of devs aren't going to make $200,000 in 1 year, just not realistic way to view things.
@@cburn-YTNot sure what you mean, but yes, Unreal is more expensive in most cases, so if you agree with the weird original comment, it's only more true for Unreal. And yes, Godot is free so you'd have less worry on that than either, but I also vastly prefer either of the others over Godot. My 2nd choice backup option would be Flax.
Unless you're referring to how in the start of the video he mentioned it being free already to not get the comments and then got the comments anyways. That's a thing.
what happens if a game launches on gamepass? no one has been able to answer me
Wait why in the 2nd and third scenarios where is the 12 coming from? Shouldn’t that be a 2?
for #4 and #5 in the unity section if its per moth shouldn't it be 9000$x36 and 110833$x48?
Wrong on the epic games store part.
If your game is based in unreal engine they waive the ENGINE royalty fee, not the store revenue split. The store split remains 88/12, but they waive the 5% royalty on the engine meaning if you have above 1million in sales on epic games store you will not have to pay the 5% engine royalty fee (the 12% from store ramains). This also has exceptions, for example in-app purchases and purchases made using a third-party payment processor are NOT exempt (so the 5% engine royalty is only waived for when someone buys your game from the epic games store using the listed payment processors)
The custom specifically says for game development, so the enterprise isn’t a typo when it says custom also.
Umm... Does unreal still require payment for the first 1*10⁶ or not? In your calculations you first didn't count that in, then you did (though admittedly 49 and 499 aren't as "clean" numbers, so there's that)
No, the royalty starts after the first 1m
They don't take anything from the first million dollars. If you make 1 million and one dollars, you'll have to pay 5% of that one extra dollar
Question:
I've thought Unity let you choose, in their new rules, between 2,5% revenue share and the runtime fee?
Did I miss something?
You didn't. This video does not do a great job at relieving the confusion.
So does the revenue share only take effect for the first 12 months? Because in your scenario’s of more than 1 year you only calculated 12 months of revenue share for Unity. While your point doesn’t change your numbers would
Honestly for the revenue share, I left those numbers 100% up to Unitys calculator.
engagements are like for youtube(one user account watch the video, that is one engagement, no matter how many times they replay it), the general mass of individual users to engage with your product. so if I buy a game on stream, epic or an app store, it counts as one engagement (where in the first download of a free game counts as a purchases on most services.), if I then have 20 phones/pcs and install the game on all of them as long as one account is used for purchases that is one engagement.
You don't have to pay for the licenses for 2 years of dev, you only have to maintain liscencse once your game has exceeded 200k in sales so the entire dev period would cost nothing since you have no revenue from the game, the exception is if your company already had made 200k previously from a different project, under that assumption you would actually owe unity for the 500k you made after the game released + the liscense after you've gone above the 200k threshold which would work out to around 12k, and since there aren't 1 million lifetime instals you wouldn't owe anything above that.
The runtime fee also does not apply to sales before 1 Million so scenario 3 would also be equivalent to unreal's cost since you would be paying the same engine fee of 12k for 1 year of liscence, with an additional 2.5% royalty of 500k which is only 12k which adds up to be 25k.
Unity is actually cheaper in every scenario.
Wait, am I missing something? For scenerio 3 wouldn't it be _significantly_ less since that's going to more then 2.5% of the developer's revenue meaning they just pay the 2.5% revenue share?
Oh no, you still pay seat licensing regardless.
@@gamefromscratch yeah
but u did ur math wrong
wtf is with that scenario
where did 12 come from
and it didnt say 2 years did it
so its the fee for 2 years, and 10m installs annually, wont that be 20m
the way u did ur math is stupid and confusing
what time frame is it
@@gamefromscratch I think I figured out where my confusion was and why this math feels off. If I'm not mistaken, the Runtime fee is the _FUTURE_ cost that you'll be paying whereas you're applying it to the entire revenue. Like with how you're only applying Unreal's 5% to the 500k after the first million, the runtime fee needs to only be applied after the threshold is reached.
The easiest way to calculate this would be to calculate the year _AFTER_ the fee kicks in for both. i.e. assuming the second year saw the same figures, Unreal would be 5% of the full 1.5 million, or $75000, and your number for Unity would then be accurate, $61780.
8:00 Thanks for doing the calculations.. but even in scenario 3, you'd still be invoiced max 2.5% of your revenue, right? That would put you at 24480 + 12500 = 36980, right?
"That revenue fee is 200k in the last 12 months". Correct. but you start your pricing calculations from the first day of development? despite pointing out its not even on the table until already past launch and in profit? Also is the presumption that all members of all teams work directly in the engine? There are no artists? sound designers? concept artists? project managers? team leads? marketing?
You assume the Unity developers are paying for pro the full time they are developing the game. Wouldn't they mostly use the free version till just few months before launch or even way after launch? They wouldn't need the pro license till they reach $200k and then you only need 1 pro license?
This would require me to make assumptions about the developer. If they had shipped a prior title for example, they would not be eligible for personal licensing. So I went with the simple math scenario in this case. You are correct though, that scenario also exists.
Very interesting! I love the fact that for the upcoming, "nothing-to-their-name" developer, both engines are free. I am truly grateful that the people behind each engine have made this happen! However, for me personally, I like the mentality of Unreals payment system. Given the facts presented (very well by the way!) it's clear that in many/most scenarios, Unreal will cost more in royalties. Nevertheless, just as some have said here, it seems more honest, I mean if I completely or partially (within a team) made a game that, by some supernatural turn of luck or skill, grossed a revenue of say 100m (after the 1m mark ofc so I guess the game revenue would actually be 101m 😂), why wouldn't I gladly pay the mere 5m that Unreal is asking for? If I really needed to pinch some pennies, then perhaps Unity would be best, price wise, but I would much rather work with an engine where I can focus on the game and not the various price variables. Plus it feels like both Unreal and the developer are growing together, as opposed to the Unity-developer relationship which seems to me to be a relationship of squeezing as much money from the other as possible. (Thanks again Mike for another great video! If I do make that 100m, do expect a generous donation that would reflect gratitude, rather than subscriber or likes count 😂)
also unreal in their EULA let’s you keep the eula of the last version you downloaded and can keep using that version even if a new EULA comes out….so no fear of retroactive changes…..which unity tried to do twice
@@jonathandpg6115 cool!! I didn't know that! Another point in Unreals favor 😂
@@jonathandpg6115Unity did screw up, but it is currently the same way in that regard to Unreal. The only issue on that would be if they tried to go back on it.
Well, they kinda have to, otherwise no one would use them
"I like the mentality, its much clearer that I have to pay more"
"I would be happy to pay 2x-100x more, Im rich after all."
"I would rather focus on the game than figure out the best way to pinch pennies, even though there's an option to ignore the penny pinching and still pay less."
These are all cringe fanboy statements. No need to grasp at straws in a desperate attempt to maintain that Unity's pricing is still bad. Its been fixed. That being said, its OK to just say you are willing to pay more for a company you feel will support you in the long run.
Isn't it "revenue AND funding limit of $200, 000"?
So for scenario 3, does funding to pay for the 6 developers count too?
Also, how does unity compare in the 200k-1m range?
In the 200k-1m range with Unity you'd only pay for Pro licenses, so $2040 * developer count * years, so more expensive than Unreal's $0
just as a side note when you are earning x amount with unreal in the proposed $50m + category you can go into custom licence with unreal which will also provide engine support and training where the terms are more negotiable!
I think for scenario #3 its also important to mention that you don't "HAVE" to upgrade to pro until you hit 200K revenue. So if its a new developer that hasn't ever reached 200K before you can skimp on the licensing fee until you hit the numbers. This is exceedingly friendly to new devs. That said Unreal it likely much easier to plan for and work around.
That's only if you also are spending less than $200k/year though - if you're paying 6 developers (or 5 I guess if you aren't including yourself) more than $200k/year in total then you still need the pro license. The threshold for the pro license applies to whichever is higher of spending or revenue.
@@asdfqwerty14587 what? The thresholds are only based on revenue, not spending.
Hello, thanks for this wonderful content. I want to buy a PC to develop 3D open world games using the Unreal Engine. Can you give me suitable specifications for this purpose?
When pricing is close, the only thing that maters is which one are you and your team more fluent in. Heck even if pricing difference was larger, it's pointless if you can't fuly utilize the cheaper option, A due to inexperience with it or B due to one being superior in certain conditions
Hey, love your channel, and how you are covering the Unity situation! So Unity also charges for that first million of revenue that a game makes, unlike Unreal? If so, Unreal is cheaper in scenario #3, but only until revenue exceeds 1 million. If the game makes lets say another 1,5 million in year 2, Unreal would get 75K of that instead of the initial 25K.
There is a typo in scenario 2 and 3 (but the total is still correct). Your wrote 2040 * 12 * 6 instead of 2040 * 2 * 6
I’m a bit confused about scenario #3
First of all, the 2040 * 12 * 6 = $24480 part is really confusing. I suppose you meant 2040 * 2 * 6 which would be correct but with the 12 it made me think this is a monthly fee for a minute.
But ignoring that, this assumes that the 2.5% rev share is on the entire revenue unlike the revenue above the 1M threshold with Unreal although this actually isn't obvious to me to be to case from reading the open letter. Has there been any information about this somewhere? Because if you calculate it like 24480 + 500k * 2.5% you come out at 36980 and as you go up unity becomes more favorable at around 2M$ of revenue. Also, I think it might be worth taking into consideration that you’re only subject to the runtime fee if you’re making 1M in the trailing 12 months so if your game is slower to generate revenue, let’s say 900k a year, you only pay the seat price. I understand this is just a quick comparison of a few likely scenarios but I feel like the mobile case is a bit more delicate and deserves more detail than it got here. Nice vid though.
What about the option for 2.5% revenue split with unity vs runtime fee? In some of these options, that may change the numbers.
In scenario 3, runtime cost is $3125/mo for a total of $37,500. 2.5% of the 500k above 1M is only $12,500 . That lowers unity's cost to 1/3 of your projections
I used their calculator for resolving it. I *assume* the 2.5 vs reported calculations are built into it, but I could be wrong.
@@gamefromscratch Just because you used the calculator doesn't mean you used it correctly. The error is your calculations are counting the full 1.5M. The calculator explicitly asks if you have a trailing 12 months of of 1M. Then you can calculate your future costs. That would mean, you need to calculate the expected monthly revenue of that 500K remaining *after* the 1M of trailing revenue you already accounted for in the first question.
Free games have huge engagement and those numbers because of streamers and also if you are a company of 200 developers, those companies negotiate deals with Epic and its not just flat 5% for them, we trully dont know the numbers, nor should they matter. Learning a game engine is a hard thing and you need to be absolutely sure there is a future for you even if your game doens't get a single download.
What you get for the money should be taken into account. Even with the standard Unreal license you get access to the source code while in unity its now a contact us which means that license price probably went up say to $4000. In scenario 5 a studio that big is going to want to have the source code and the support so they will have an enterprise license and if it remains at $3000 (doubtful) it's a wash with Unreal. Even though I doubt a studio that size would even use Unity over use of their own engine, this way they don't have to fork out that amount of money to anyone. Especially when they are probably also paying Adobe and Autodesk for tools too.
So this doesn't include the unity rev share cap of 2.5%?
It’s about features, support, innovation, stability.
Unreal make games… they get it, they live it.
If you get to the point where your selling so many copies of your game you are worried about the %.. you will likely benefit from all the extras you get from unreal.
Hmm doesn't the new pricing state it will only charge up to 2.5% for earnings beyond the 1st million within a 12-month period? So, if earn 1.1 mill, only applicable to pay fee for 0.1 without counting the 1.0 mill, right?
All runtime fee amounts came from Unity's calculator, which I assume is the authoritative formula right now (or I sure hope it is)
@@gamefromscratchthe calculator asks if the threshold has been reached. For the first $1M, the answer to that question is no and the calculator shows $0. For, say, scenario 3, it would only be for the last $500k where the answer would be yes, and therefore the calculator would compute a fee. So, $500K needs to be plugged into the calculator, not $1.5M.
This needs to be shared w Unity and then we can test their "receptiveness" to see if they can keep this in mind for that middle tier.
Is the cost of Unreal, in scenario 2, should be $75k=5%*$1.5M instead of $25k?
The Issue lies in the uncertainty of future changes. There's always a chance they update new rules which could potentially wreak havoc on your work further down the road.
Imagine you've invested time and effort in developing a game or and successfully published it on popular platforms like the App Store or Google Play. But what if, at a later point, unity decides to introduce new regulations that could significantly disrupt your work? The inability to revert/backtrack makes me choose godot/unreal or anyother game engine.
In this situations, It's clear that changes are needed at the leadership level, starting with the CEO.
Usually it's the opposite, but this time you're greatly overestimating how much influence corporations have over you. Unity doesn't own you, even if you were using their product. In fact the opposite is more true. I'm not sure what you mean by "significantly disrupt your work." But if you start using someones product, and you agree to specific terms, there's absolutely no way in hell they can legally just make you pay more without your consent, or anything like that for example.
People are freaking out over nothing, and it's clearly because people (once again) got reminded of the cold hard fact that corporations are not your friends. Any agreement you make with corporations like Unity, Unreal, or whatever, is based on law and legislation, not trust.
I think in scenario #3 you are using the runtime fee when the 2.5% fee would be lower. And apparently the lower fee is applicable. Still a loss for Unity over Unreal but the major problem with this is confusion and you are just adding to it.
All runtime fee calculations came from dumping the raw numbers into Unity's calculator. I am *assuming* it makes these calculations for you. If not, its a pretty useless calculator.
I have no idea about their calculator. Why would you trust that and not calculate it yourself?
@@JSR80Because the whole point of releasing the calculator was to clear up confusion as people were making their own and coming to different conclusions from what they intended.
revenue and profit... kind of confused, which contains the "cost"? or which is the net-income after publisher and platform's cost
Always revenue. Neither engine looks at profit at all; it is way too complicated to calculate.
@@zirconiumdiamond1416 More important than being difficult to calculate, it's extremely easy to abuse. A company could for instance have another company that takes 100% of the leftover revenue after accounting for other stuff, and because that other company isn't technically the one that's making the game the game maker has "0 profits" because the profit is just being shuffled around to someone/something that isn't part of the terms. Pretty much no contract that's anything like this would ever use profits instead of revenue for those kinds of reasons.
Your video is misleading such that it made scenario 3 look like it was a worse deal for unity because of the high engagements compared to the revenue. In such cases the engagements don't matter at all and unity only takes the 2.5%. The only reason it seems cheaper for unreal is because the revenue is so close to that 1million. As time went on unity would be much much cheaper even if the application got 100 million installs.
It seems you can activate 2 machines with a single license in Unity pro. And this thing how many sets you have doesn't make much sense, since they can't obligate you to use have more than one pro license if you are small.
I'm kind of glad we put the pitchforks down for Unity, even though it was fun while it lasted. It honestly foreshadowed the good factors of the new Unity updates, like the increase in revenue for Free or Personal, or like this Video shows how in most cases, you will be profiting much more than what you will be paying back to Unity over something like Unreal (which realistically has pretty fair pricing across the board)
UE is free to use for noninteractive products. The enterprise license is only needed if you want support.
Yes, I've recently checked the EULA because I had this doubt
Another thing is that during the development studios don't have to use unity pro license, they can use personal license and develop their game first and after publishing the game and making +200$K then they have to upgrade their license to Unity Pro, in that case they don't need to pay for Unity Pro for lets say 2/3 Years.
You have to pay once you reach $200K of funding. Once the studio is big enough that the work is being done by more than just the owners, it will probably cross that threshold.
Defold with no fees seems appealing to me.
I think for the Enterprise custom licensing is for larger enterprises - it HAS to be different because, my guess, it will follow different rules. The rightmost custom licensing is still for gaming market. The reason is that, I guess, for large companies that might need large number of seat, this is a way of Epic saying - yeah, you can ask for discount. In this space, as another video on this topic said, the discount can be generous because it's a matter of software license : 2000,3000 units? almost no extra cost for single sale. If you are big enough, some software company can give 50% off even.
Anyway, I understand why you are making this video. But unless you know the custom licensing - which also can be hard because it might differ from company to company, and considering the fact that Tim Sweeney is a game programmer himself for the longest of time, and own more than half of the share, which any decision can be up to him, we might not get the full picture.
When you reached the $25M cost of royalties, I think you are reaching too far considering custom license is, as per stated, for MULTI MILLION SALES. Any of your math above 2 million sales is a suspect already, sadly.
I know you want views, and noticed your disclaimer. But it is disingenuous.
@gamesfromscratch Your spreadsheet is wrong. In examples #4 and #5, you didn't subtract the first $1 million before calculating 5%. And of course this ignores a custom Epic license, which you would surely get if you released a game capable of bringing in millions of dollars.
Should it not be 24 months instead of 12 in scenario #2 (2 years)?
The math is right (the total), the presentation is bad. It should be 2,040 x 2 x 6, not 12.
@@gamefromscratch Ah, ok. Makes sense!
Even if using Unreal works out more expensive, now or later, using it will not cost you your soul
If only there’s such thing as a soul.
The morale of the tale, like every good game, is you have choices, and choices matter, keep your options open.
I want to do a project with mainly animations. Low poly, for PC, tablets and phones. Godot should suffice. I would have stuck to Unity but high volume sales appears to be at a distinct disadvantage.
Why is unity pro $2040 x 12 x 6 seats? Where does the 12 come from? the $2040 is annual so it would be $2040 x 2 x 6 seats for two years
It's not, it's 2040x2x6, just a label error in the slide, math behind it and the ultimate result are right.
Your calculations are totally off if you account for the 2.5% revenue share option of Unity instead of install fees… in all cases it will be cheeper then Unreal by a long shot…
Unreal with its 5% after 1 million is really targeted towards BIG developers which would usually mean big companies, it would be insanely rare for an Indie team to hit those numbers, Unity focusing on its smaller studio's and teams seams utterly backwards to me
not to mention developing with Unreal is free you wouldn't have to be concerned about forking over X amount of dollars for every seat, and if your game is a flop you're out of cash where unreal just doesn't do that, what I've gathered from this is Unreal is a WAY more friendlier option to indie teams than unity which is ironic with the stigma that both engines have
So Unity is not good for making (highly successful) Hypercasual Mobile Games anymore. We can see it in those figures.
Thank You for Enlightening us in this matter 💯👏🏻
Great video
Hello Mike,
As I understand the Runtime fee structure is you only pick one (either the 2.5% or the engagement)! also, the total money you owe to unity will never exceed 2.4%.
Ahh, I see the 2.5% revenue share is automatically included in the calculator. The new pricing for Unity is not clear in some areas and still needs another post to clarify a few items. Marc says developers can choose to be billed for 2.5 percent revenue share or the runtime fees if they meet the thresholds... then follows it up immediately that developers will be always be billed for the lower of the two. 👀
So does this mean as a developer I need to self report both? Do I choose according to my own calculations or will Unity come back and say "hey accord to are magic numbers this option is cheaper"? It sounds like there is still a black box involved to keep an eye on the number of "engagements". I kinda wish they had come out and at least said that as well if it's going to be there tracking that data or estimating it.
My understanding is that developers only have report one of the two, if they wish. However, if you report both, Unity will bill you the lower fee. The developer doesn't have to worry about reporting both and getting charged more than if they only reported one.
There is no black box on initial engagements. The developer reports that number based on figures available in the storefronts. They will be coming out later with instructions on where to find the appropriate figures for all the major storefronts. Though for paid games it is easy: initial engagements is sales. All the complexity comes in with F2P games, and trying to be fair between making sure the non-paying players are counted, but anyone reinstalling the game or deciding to create a new character doesn't count.
Your caluclation are a bit off:
1. 2040 x 12 x 6 doesnt make any sence as a formular, if you take 6 devs for 2 years it is either 2040 x 6 x 2 or 2040 x 12. At last the result is correct (scenario 3 didnt mention anything about 2 years so the result is maybe wrong there too)
2. Scenario 3 is completly off, it lacks time data for the revenue and if you just putt that 500k a year in the calculator it will be capped at 2.5 % for each month
fixed scenario 3:
6 devs developed over 2 years $1.5 revenue annunal, 10M engagements annunal
licence : 2040 x 6 x 2 = 24480
runtime fee :
1.5M - 1M = 500k (first M is free)
500k / 12 = ~41666 (unity calculator is monthly)
10M / 12 = ~840k (calculator just goes in 10k steps so i rounded it up, the calculator is here also monthly)
With this numbers the fee calculator gives me 1042$ each month because of the 2,5% cap so
Fee : 1024 x 12 = 12504 $
Unity Total: 24480 + 12504 = 36984$
Unity is indeed more expansive in this scenario but by far not this extreme
Thank you for this comment. I thought I was going insane when I saw no one mentioning the math being so wrong in the video. Also do you know how he got the number for Unity Run Time fee for scenario 4 and 5 cuz that stumped me.
@@MrH2O1998 Scenario 4 and 5 looked about right, (i didnt get too indepth with scenario 5 so i wont bet on it). If i calculate annunal, since again some time data is missing.
New Unity pricing has 2.5 % royalty option, or they removed that ?
Not that I ever developed a game so some useless thoughts.
Not trusting Unity is part of the cost for me.
Unreal Engine has the Custom License that seems targeted at those later scenarios.
So can always make the calculation a bit more complicated I guess :)
The trust issue seems to be much more common among people who don't develop games. Makes sense though.
@@69MrMaster69 a bit maybe. Bit of course i am also not invested in their ecosystem. Someone who used them for ages of course have some friction just leaving 😀
Scenario 3 is wrong. $1m revenue is based on rolling 12 months so if they’re averaging $750k per year then they’d pay nothing in runtime fees
You should have highlighted - money paid before or after release.
Just for comparison how much worse the original plans were:
In the 6 dev, $1.5M, 10M yearly downloads scenario, the runtime fee was capped to 2.5% of 1.5 million, so $37,500
The "per install" fees would be (assuming Unity Pro):
833.333 installs/month:
15,000$ for the fist 100,000
3,000$ for the next 400,000
1,000$ for the remaining 333,333
so $19,000/month, or $228,000 per year; that's 15.2% of the revenue
helpful example calculations thanks
Your pricing is wrong at 7:50 because you also don't pay on the first million $ for unity. The cap at 2.5% would make it 500k x 2.5% = 12500 + the pro seat = 37k, not 61k
Another thing to mention is that if its your first game you dont need that pro license for the development time, you only need to get it after you start selling.
Now we will just have to do a comparison between which game engine company is more trustworthy.
Unity after few years:
We will now take 7%
When you get up to #4 and #5 you will get discount with Unreal making the difference smaller. I would be surprised if the big AAA companies pay more than 2% since they can make their own engines if the cost is to high for Unreal.
Same thing could be said for Unity.
I have never seen a public statement from Unity about this but Epic says this often.
@@bard-anilsen it's called an enterprise license