Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
Fortnite developer Epic Games will charge non-game developers an annual subscription of $1,850 “per seat” to use its Unreal Engine as opposed to the royalty-based model it uses for game developers. The company announced the changes to its payment scheme last year, and now, it’s providing details on the plan, which will come into effect with the release of Unreal Engine version 5.4 in late April.
The changes don’t apply to game developers, who will continue to pay for access to Epic’s tools via a 5 percent royalty on products that earn over $1 million in lifetime gross revenue. Instead, the new per-seat (effectively per-user) subscription fee will apply to non-game developers such as those who use the Unreal Engine to make linear content…