Things are pretty crazy for Epic Games right now. It just launched the fifth season of Fortnite with millions of players enjoying its new and forthcoming events. And now it’s doing something remarkable to help out the creators over at the Unreal Engine marketplace.
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The company took to its official Unreal Engine blog page today to announce a change-up in its revenue payout for use of said engine with an 88%/12% split for creators. That means developers will actually receive more money from the stuff they create with a healthy increase from the usual 70% they receive.
To remind people, Epic Games explained, “The Unreal Engine Marketplace is a store targeting the Unreal Engine community, and enabling game developers to purchase digital content sold by 3D modelers, digital artists, sound designers, programmers and animators, and use those assets in their own projects. Many successful UE4-powered games, such as ARK: Survival Evolved and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds made use of Marketplace content in their development.” (Love the fact they had to reiterate that PUBG uses the engine, heh.)
Epic Games is able to do this based on its immense increase in business. “Thanks to both the Marketplace’s growth and the success of Fortnite, Epic now conducts a huge volume of digital commerce,” said Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic. “The resulting economies of scale enable us to pass the savings along to the Unreal Engine Marketplace community, while also making a healthy profit for Epic.”
The 88/12 spit applies to all Unreal Engine Marketplace items. What’s more, it will also go retroactive, back to the last four years of whatever’s been created for said marketplace. That’s remarkable.
A few creators have spoken up about the deal, showing nothing but support for it. “This is unreal. It’s a really wonderful day for all people using the Unreal Engine Marketplace. Now all involved artists, modelers, animators, programmers and other Unreal developers will be a bit happier, find it easier to live and invest more in their own dream projects and make more high-quality assets and plugins for others,” said Dmitry Smirnov, VEA Games.
“I remember the moment when Unreal Engine became free,” he said. “It was a great event for the whole community of game developers and all the people who love games. And this moment is comparable and somewhat surpasses it. Epic Games is a company that every year surprises and creates an environment for people where it is pleasant to create and work.”
“Epic has proven time and time again that they do what they can to do right by the sellers on the platform,” said Michael Allar, director of Gamemakin LLC. “This is something that many sellers lose sight of, regardless of engine or platform, when working with marketplaces day to day.”
As for the growth of the Unreal Engine system, Epic Games noted the following about it:
- As of July 2018, more than 6.3 million users have chosen Unreal Engine 4, an increase of more than 1 million users since March.
- In the first half of 2018, the Unreal Engine Marketplace experienced 30% growth in active sellers. There are now over 1,500 creators offering more than 5,000 curated products on the Marketplace.
- There have been nearly 8 million downloads from the Marketplace since the store’s launch in 2014.
- There have been more than 1 million downloads of the free Paragon assets to date, representing $300 billion in total value to the development community.
We congratulate Epic Games on the move and wish the creators in the Unreal Engine Marketplace the very best when it comes to putting together assets and making some great money from it. If you want to read more about it, head to this link!
