Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

Very misleading article title.<p>The licensing changes target big commercial usages outside of game development. (With revenue thresholds, similar to how it already works right now for game development.)<p>For example, up until now Unreal has seen use in vfx for movie and tv production. The licensing model for Unreal was primarily oriented for game development, which meant that this wasn&#x27;t generating any revenue for Epic unless that company opted into the optional support plan.<p>Unlike the crazy situation with Unity, these changes are being announced in advance without affecting usage of previous versions of Unreal.<p>(Not saying I like or care for subscriptions for software. But context helps understand what&#x27;s going on here.)<p>I&#x27;m surprised they didn&#x27;t make this change sooner.

Honestly it makes sense. I was always a little confused that non-gamedevs had to pay 0. Of course that could&#x27;ve also just been the plan to get VFX and other industries onto Unreal Engine so Epic Games could start charging them later.<p>I&#x27;m also confused how Epic Games has become unprofitable suddenly. I think I read somewhere it was in the last 10 weeks but I could be wrong about that.

Burying this six paragraphs deep seems a little douchey:<p><i>Sweeney has now clarified that there will be minimum revenue thresholds for commercial projects that have to pay for a subscription and that student and educator use of Unreal Engine will remain free.</i>

The headline may be better less clickbaity by clarifying &quot;not free anymore for vfx or movie users&quot;.

Hmmmm just given the recent Unity news, maybe this headline is a bit misleading as it seems to be focused on VFX users, and not game developers? Maybe &quot;Unreal... be free for animators&quot;?

Why should VFX people not have to pay when gamedevs did? There&#x27;s no winning with people - ads bad, paying bad.

This would probably drive all the hobbyist to learn something open source like Godot, wouldn&#x27;t it?<p>This would mean Godot would be the thing worth investing for.

Seems like every company these days are trying to figure out how to increase the rents that they collect. No actual value add, just trying to optimize to make that top line number go up. It feels very end-of-business-cycle.

Unreal Engine was never &quot;free for all&quot;...

&gt;That means that while the developers of big-selling games pay royalties, those who use Unreal Engine for film making and other uses pay nothing.<p>Understandable but could introduce a revenue limit too.

What non-zero interest rates does to a company.

Recent and related:<p><i>Unreal Engine Pricing Changes</i> - <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=37774917">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=37774917</a> - Oct 2023 (51 comments)

[dupe]

&gt; Speaking at Unreal Fest 2023, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said Unreal Engine would become “a licensable piece of software like Maya or Photoshop” with a subscription-based pricing model.<p>SAAS is rent-seeking at its worst. It’s predatory, anti-consumer and downright annoying. I hope this backfires on Epic.