Personally, if you're at the point where you'd be excited to work full time for half of minimum wage, you shouldn't also be trying to run a money-making business at the same time. but here, it's also below the taxation threshold so the government won't bother even taxing you because you're too poor to survive already. $15kpa for a full time job is about $7.50 to $8.60 per hour, which is so low as to be highly illegal where I live We're talking before tax here too. I would be like a little kid at Christmas to make $15k per year back when I started game development! I do agree without a doubt that Unreal will cost a lot more with larger revenues, but I don't see this as an issue with any beginner game developers releasing indie games.īig brand studios usually have different packages in place besides what we see as a flat 5% due to predicted revenue, and a successful track record of sales that guarantees Epic Games a big commission if they close a deal for that studio to use their engine. Unity has come along way and is still making ground, but it's not on par with Unreal yet in its entirety. I also don't consider Unreal and Unity in the same class of engines in terms of out of the box features. If you're considering a much bigger sales count of $30,000,000.00 USD, yes Unreal will cost you way more at $1,499,400.00 USD per year, but I doubt the OP will be bringing in those numbers, and my comment is geared towards beginners trying to sell their games, I doubt even sales of 3000 units for any unknown studio without a decent marketing budget and strategy in place would happen. Unreal would be your best choice in this scenario for a one or very small studio. Or with Unity Plus per seat each year is $395.00 USD, or Pro at $1500 USD per seat each year. Assuming a high 3000 unit sales per year at $4.99 is $3742.50 USD per quarter equaling $148.50 USD per year less the $3000.

I personally look at this in terms of hobbyist sales. The price is cheaper when considering unit sales of average indie games. Also for a AAA game with a $10M budget, they'd probably end up paying at least $700k in licensing, which is crazy, so they'd definitely negotiate for a better deal than that. If you're planning on making a game that pays you a normal salary (not a hobby / free time game), this actually works out to cost you about double what a Unity pro subscription for each of your team members would.

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