Unreal Engine 4 available for $19 per month, 5% royalty fee on published games

Epic has announced Unreal Engine 4 will be made available for a $19 per month subscription and a 5% royalty fee on all published games. The new model also grants access "to everything".

Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic Games, shared his thoughts on why this is "important not only for Epic Games but the entire games industry."

"We’re working to build a company that succeeds when UE4 developers succeed," he said. "Anyone can ship a commercial product with UE4 by paying 5% of gross revenue resulting from sales to users. If your game makes $1,000,000, then we make $50,000. We realize that’s a lot to ask, and that it would be a crazy proposition unless UE4 enables you to build way better games way more productively than otherwise.

"Epic’s goal is to put the engine within reach of everyone interested in building games and 3D content, from indies to large triple-A development teams, and Minecraft creators as well. For $19/month you can have access to everything, including the Unreal Editor in ready-to-run form, and the engine’s complete C++ source code hosted on GitHub for collaborative development."

Sweeny discusses URE4 in the video below, and a new features video is also available.

Epic's VP Mark Rein stated that while the company would like to support the business model on consoles, requirements from Sony and Microsoft prevent the subscription option at this time.

"We'd love to. For now you need to be authorized by Microsoft and/or Sony first," he said on Twitter. "I need to stress that UE4 already runs amazingly on Xbox One and PS4. Lots of devs are already making UE4 games on those platforms."