Clarification on 25% royalties

[chrisk]

It say 25% on REVENUE over the first $5000.
Does this mean that if you have profit margin of 25%, you are paying all money you earned to Epic Games?
Furthermore, if your profit margin is less than 25%, you loose money by selling more game, because you owe 25% of your revenue no matter what profit you have. Is this correct?

I thought 25% is out of your profits, not revenues. These two are very different and out-of-revenue doesn't make sense. Even if it's out-of-profits, it seems little too hefty. Anyone agrees?

[ffejnosliw]

I don't think it sounds hefty when you take into account what they are giving you for almost nothing up front. It should be out of revenue as they have no control over what you say your profit is. And, since this is technically a cost of making your game/doing business, it should be factored into your profit-margin estimations and thus shouldn't be an issue. So, I guess what I am saying is: No, I do not agree.

[micahpharoh]

First of all, how else are they going to make money? Secondly, I believe that it's like this

let's say you make $6000. You keep $5000 for yourself, and 75% of whatever's over the $5000. So in this case, you'd make $5750 and pay $250. That's not too bad. If you make $10,000 then you'd pay $2500, leaving you $7500.

I believe that's how it goes, anyways.

[Angel_Mapper]

Jebus, where's the other 75% going if you're failing to make a profit?

[Masakari]

I think what he meant was:

If you publish your game on Steam (for example), and Valve takes a (for example, it's not real) 75% cut (say 7500), leaving you with only 25% (2500), that would be the amount you would have to pay Epic, leaving you without money.

But that's not what it says, imo, it says Epic will get 25% (2500/4=625) of that post-Valve 25% cut.

Although it's a relevant question. Rumoured Steam % is usually 30%, leaving 70% to the developer, and it's different if Epic gets 25% of the total gross (30% Valve + 25% Epic + 45% you) vs Epic getting 1/4 of the 70% (which would be roughly 17,5% of the total gross)

[Angel_Mapper]

I understand that but if 75% of your revenue is going somewhere else you're doing something wrong heheh.

[ambershee]

Edit: Masakari, I was under the impression the first was correct; you don't take percentage cuts consecutively, you take them all at the same time - otherwise you'd end up with people carefully shifting the respective order in which they give royalties. You sell a game for $10, Epic gets $2.50. If you digital distro takes 40%, they get $4. You then get $3.50, assuming no tax.


Jebus, where's the other 75% going if you're failing to make a profit?

40-50% on publishing and 15-25% on sales tax.

[darthviper107]

I think it's reasonable

To be realistic, it's unlikely anyone's going to make much money off something they made with this. The only way this would be too much money is if you made something millions of dollars on the game--basically if their royalties would exceed the amount that it would normally cost to license the game. But most people won't even get close to that so it's not a worry.

[Makaze]

I would think it would have to be developer revenue. If you publish something through a traditional advance/royalty publisher then you have virtually no control over the pricing or distribution channels. There have been epic lawsuits over developers trying to get into publishers books to determine how many games were actually sold and for what price to determine royalties owed. So it's not entirely reasonable to expect a developer to even know how much the gross sales were to pay Epic royalties on them.

[Lost Haven]

Not , really . If that game is just that good , I would think you would make a lot of money. It just have to be really good , triple a standard . Which is not easy to make , all it takes is a good game everyone would like . asume how many members steam have a lot , there is a lot of clientele out there waiting for good games , it comes down to do you have what it takes to produce a master piece .

[elmuerte]

If you sell your game through steam, and steam takes a 75% cut, then your revenue is that 25%, of that 25% Epic takes 25%, you in the end you have 18.75% income of the original sales. The 75% tale of steam in the initial sale is not part of your revenue, because you don't get that money and then hand it off to steam. It's just like selling a game in retail, the cut of the retailer doesn't count towards your revenue.

Because:
You offer your game for $25 to retailers. They sell it for $100. Your revenue from a sale is $25, not $100. For the retailer their revenue is $100.

[Digit]

If you sell your game through steam, and steam takes a 75% cut, then your revenue is that 25%, of that 25% Epic takes 25%, you in the end you have 18.75% income of the original sales. The 75% tale of steam in the initial sale is not part of your revenue, because you don't get that money and then hand it off to steam. It's just like selling a game in retail, the cut of the retailer doesn't count towards your revenue.

Because:
You offer your game for $25 to retailers. They sell it for $100. Your revenue from a sale is $25, not $100. For the retailer their revenue is $100.

I'm afraid I have to disagree, you'd be correct if Epic said that they charge 25% on your profit however.
Sadly, Revenue != Profit
Revenue is usually known to be the total sales from goods and/or services, before any expenses and taxes.
So basically this means, if you offer your game on Steam for $50, and Valve takes a 50% cut, Epic isn't going to take 25% on $25.
Epic takes their 25% cut from the $50 because the $50 is the amount of money you receive before any expenses or taxes are taken out of it.

Profit is the total money you're left with after all expenses and taxes are taken out.
So since Epic states that they take 25% on your revenue they take their cut from the listing price of your product, not the profit made from your product.

[elmuerte]

I'm afraid I have to disagree, you'd be correct if Epic said that they charge 25% on your profit however.
Sadly, Revenue != Profit
Revenue is usually known to be the total sales from goods and/or services, before any expenses and taxes.
So basically this means, if you offer your game on Steam for $50, and Valve takes a 50% cut, Epic isn't going to take 25% on $25.
Epic takes their 25% cut from the $50 because the $50 is the amount of money you receive before any expenses or taxes are taken out of it.


But you don't get $50 from Steam and a bill from Valve for $25. You get $25 from Valve because that's the price they payed you for your product. This is just like the brick and mortar retailers. They buy products from you fro price X, they add Y to the price to cover their costs + profit margin. And they sell it to customers for X+Y.

[Digit]

But you don't get $50 from Steam and a bill from Valve for $25. You get $25 from Valve because that's the price they payed you for your product. This is just like the brick and mortar retailers. They buy products from you fro price X, they add Y to the price to cover their costs + profit margin. And they sell it to customers for X+Y.

Not quite.
A lot of electronic distributers, like Steam, often subtract their "cut" from your earnings based on sales obtained directly through them.
They don't buy your game at a predetermined price and redistribute X number of prepurchased units for a profit, as most brick and mortar retailers, since you're not selling physical copies to them.
Now I don't mean that they directly pay you $50 then bill you for $25/game later in the year.
At the moment of sale however, they take their percentage from the $50.
It doesn't matter that the money never went into your pocket in the first place, their 50% charge is considered an expense taken from your product's revenue.
Thats why you'd still have to pay Epic 25% on the initial $50.

Now if you solely meant establishments that buy directly from you for a preset negotiated price, thats different.
Because if you tell me you want to buy my game for $25 and you go sell it for $50, you're correct, my revenue would be $25.
However it depends on how the store itself does business and what type of contract you have with them.

So depending on where you sell your product and your particular country's tax laws, 25% on your revenue can easily suck the life out of pocketbook.
Which is why I actually specifically made an account to weigh in on this discussion.
Its more than likely an attempt to get people to shell out for seats, which is completely understandible.
However if you (the user) misunderstand exactly what they mean, you're potentially setting yourself up to get sued.

[Hourences]

It is quite heavy, especially with European taxes, up to a point where it is unsustainable. It are especially the taxes too that put a huge burden on everything. Here is a very rough quickly calculated example, with the information I have.

20USD Game
25% goes to Epic, that is 5USD
35% goes to Valve (or any similar digital distributor), that is 7USD

You have 8USD left after costs.
On that 8USD you pay, in Europe, around 60% tax.
You end up with 3.2USD for a 20USD game. A 20USD game would be the upper limit for most UDK games. Most games would sell for less. 10USD perhaps?

This takes into account that you made the entire game on your own. If you have 5 people you make 0.64c a copy, or 40 euro cent.

You also have development costs to pay for too, not included in this calculation. There may also be VAT to deal with.

So a 5 member team on an expensive big UDK title of 20USD title earn 0.64c a copy. At 10 000 copies sold that makes each member 6400USD nett.

They would have to sell 50 000 copies to make a modest year salary each, or sell the game solely through their own website.

[ambershee]

Digit's got it with regards to the royalty percentages, I'm afraid.

Consider selling through Steam and from the UK as an example too - you lose 50% to Valve, 25% to Epic, and 17.5% to VAT.

You get 7.5% - if your game is being sold for $20, you'll get $1.50.

Edit: Damn you Hourences, beating me to it with a better post xD

[Digit]

Yeah, sadly.

But whatever, its still an alright investment depending on your goals.
If you are a single person or a very small group of say 4 students.... this could still be worth it.
I mean $5,000/€5,000 without the 25% charge from Epic isn't that bad for an individual or group that size, just for pocket-change anyhow.
Long story short, don't expect to turn it into a fulltime job using the $/€99 royalty-bearing license.
So, if you're an indie company/group either without funding or with barely any funding, I wouldn't really say its worth it.

[Hourences]

Here is with VAT and a meager 10 000 USD development costs (5 people using 3 Photoshops, 2 3D programs, Visual Studio, and some misc stuff. Costs to start and run a legal entity. No hardware taken into account)

20USD game - and you sell 10 000 copies. That is 200 000 USD Revenue

25% VAT - Not sure if Valve's/Epic's revenue share takes vat into account, but lets say, best case scenario, that it does.

15USD left (or 150 000USD for 10 000 copies)

5.25USD to the digital distributor (35%)
3.75USD to Epic

6USD left, and you sold 10 000 copies, that makes 60 000USD.

Minus 10 000 USD for your costs.

50 000USD left

37500 after corporate tax

15000USD left after income tax and social security.

3750USD a person, or 2500 Euro.

That is 0.375USD cent per person per copy, or 0.2 Euro cent.

You need 100 000 copies in this case to make a decent living.

On 200.000 USD revenue, you keep just 15 000USD, or 3750USD if you have 5 people in the team.

Edit: Forgot 25% corporate tax. Changed calculation.

[Digit]

Yup.
Exactly why I said that if you plan on doing anything fulltime with UDK you'd better dish out the cash for the non-royalty seats.
But thats the whole idea.
They want you to buy the seats if you plan on using UDK to make money, and rightfully so.
2,500/yr per seat, is actually not a bad license for an indie company that has funding.

Edit:
Scratch what I said, I reread the license.
The 2,5k/yr per seat is only for the development/maintenance of internal company applications.
So no love for the Indies after all...

[R2D5]

How to understand this 5000 limit? Is it per project/game or per group/person/company?

[Demruth]

I was under the impression that you had to go with the Royalty based thing, and that the $2,500 thing wasn't an option if you wanted to go commercial with your product. That's how I read it the first time. Could be wrong.

[Digit]

How to understand this 5000 limit? Is it per project/game or per group/person/company?

Per group/person/company.

As per:

...0% royalty on you or your company's first $5,000 (US) in UDK related revenue, and a 25% royalty on UDK related revenue above $5,000 (US)...

Meaning any revenue you/your company/group made by using UDK.
So if your first project makes 10,000 you only pay 25% on 5,000 but if your second project makes 10,000 you pay 25% on all 10,000.


I was under the impression that you had to go with the Royalty based thing, and that the $2,500 thing wasn't an option if you wanted to go commercial with your product. That's how I read it the first time. Could be wrong.
Just re-read it, right you are.
The 2,500 thing is for internal company use as long as the company uses UDK to develop/maintain their application apparently.

In that case, scratch what I said about it being an indie-friendly license.
Bah.

[schizoslayer]

Digit's got it with regards to the royalty percentages, I'm afraid.

Consider selling through Steam and from the UK as an example too - you lose 50% to Valve, 25% to Epic, and 17.5% to VAT.

You get 7.5% - if your game is being sold for $20, you'll get $1.50.

Edit: Damn you Hourences, beating me to it with a better post xD

Just wanted to point out that you don't have to pay VAT in the UK until your revenue exceeds ~£60k a year.

[elmuerte]

Wait... so Valve takes 35%-50%? That's quite insane. Is there any public info about the cuts various digital distributers charge?

[ambershee]

Wait... so Valve takes 35%-50%? That's quite insane. Is there any public info about the cuts various digital distributers charge?

They're usually negotiable, and as such, not held in the public domain - but expect to fork out between 40 and 60%.


In that case, scratch what I said about it being an indie-friendly license.

More indie friendly than say it's main competitor, CryEngine.


Just wanted to point out that you don't have to pay VAT in the UK until your revenue exceeds ~£60k a year.

Yes, this is fortunate. In other countries in Europe it doesn't work that way though - most of Scandinavia as far as I'm aware are at 25% without a revenue limit.

25% royalty + 50% distribution + 25% tax = fail.

[schizoslayer]

Wait... so Valve takes 35%-50%? That's quite insane. Is there any public info about the cuts various digital distributers charge?

Steam has always been around 35% according to rumour (only people with deals with Valve know what their own deal is and are under NDA so are not allowed to tell others).

However the theory runs that while Steam takes a cut it exposes your game to lots more people.

In truth if you want to make money from your indie game then you have to sell it yourself from your website and have Steam etc as an option for those people who want it. Encourage people to purchase from you rather than others by dropping the price for a direct sale a little.

Example:

Selling Via Steam at $10
Valve takes $3.50
Epic takes $2.50
VAT (UK) takes $1.75
You get: $2.25 (Which you then pay income tax on)

Selling via your website at $8
Epic takes $2
VAT (UK) takes $1.40
You get $4.60 (Which you then pay income tax on)

Your customers save money and you keep more than twice what you would selling via Steam. Every sale via Steam at the higher price is worth 48% of a sale from your own website.

[ambershee]

Probable catch might be a clause in Steam's contract however, that prevents you from undercutting your own determined Steam prices >.<

[Masakari]

Hum.. as far as i know, Valve is usually around 30-40%. But yes, i think you guys are right, since it's revenue, it's 25% of the total.

Which is really brutal for an indie, combined with digital distro and tax. I guess the only viable option is to sell it through our own website.

[ambershee]

Or set up shop in a taxless country xD

[schizoslayer]

Probable catch might be a clause in Steam's contract however, that prevents you from undercutting your own determined Steam prices >.<

I believe you are allowed to determine your own price for Steam. As they are a retail solution and not a publisher they have to do what you tell them to (they are selling you a service). There are plenty of games on Steam that have artifically high prices so that Steam doesn't undercut brick and mortar stores. Heck 2DBoy recently had a sale where you could pay whatever you wanted for World Of Goo (minimum 1 penny) and the Steam price stayed at $20.

[Digit]

More indie friendly than say it's main competitor, CryEngine.
Haha, most definately.
But then again, what do you expect for AAA engines?





Which is really brutal for an indie, combined with digital distro and tax. I guess the only viable option is to sell it through our own website.


Your customers save money and you keep more than twice what you would selling via Steam. Every sale via Steam at the higher price is worth 48% of a sale from your own website.

Remember that Steam gives your game a lot more exposure than your own website ever will.
So even if you get almost 50% more money by selling it on your own website, you're losing exposure to an enormous amount of possible customers.
And if you're thinking of advertizing your own game, depending on the extent, that cost in and of itself can run the license price of some royalty-free A-Grade game engine.

[schizoslayer]

Just ran a few numbers based on an example indie game chosen at random from Steam: Eufloria

My Target "Profit" is £30,000 (Which after income tax in the UK is £22,000ish)

Eufloria sells at £14.99 on Steam

Assume a 40% cut goes to Steam (Based on average wholesale prices) and they pay 17.5% VAT on that to the UK Goernment ( I believe Eufloria is developed by Britishers but I could be wrong).

Steam takes ~£6
VAT takes ~£2.60
Dev takes home ~ £6.40

Number of copies that must be sold to hit Target of £30,000 = 4700 ish

If we factor in an Epic Royalty however this number jumps up to 11,500 copies

However Eufloria is also for sale via their own website for £14.95 and this works out at only 2500 copies sold to hit target. 3500 if there was an Epic royalty.

[schizoslayer]

And if you're thinking of advertizing your own game, depending on the extent, that cost in and of itself can run the license price of some royalty-free A-Grade game engine.

The best advertising for Indie games is 100% free. It costs nothing to get your game played by people that will write about it.

Worth noting however that when I talk about "Indie" devs I'm talking about 1-2 people max trying to earn a living wage from it. I'm not talking about teams of 5-10 people with a full corporation, offices and assorted overheads to cover. The number of copies you need to sell to support yourself is a tiny fraction compared to the amounts needed to fund a small studio.

[Digit]

The best advertising for Indie games is 100% free. It costs nothing to get your game played by people that will write about it.

Worth noting however that when I talk about "Indie" devs I'm talking about 1-2 people max trying to earn a living wage from it. I'm not talking about teams of 5-10 people with a full corporation, offices and assorted overheads to cover. The number of copies you need to sell to support yourself is a tiny fraction compared to the amounts needed to fund a small studio.

I was mainly referring to advertizing exposure via television or adverts in magazines as they are usually whats responsible for the brunt of the game's exposure.
Whilst an article written on a game is great, and depending on who's writing it and where its being published can be a great means of exposure in and of itself, the main problem is the so-called ADD culture these days.
Unless you find a way to actively remind people you're out there without them going to look for you, you can easily slip between the cracks.
There are many absolutely amazing indie games who never get the recognition they truly deserve just because of this.


As for the living wage of 1-2 people.
Its certainly possible, but lets take your target profit of £30,000 for an example.
First off, assuming you're serious about making it a full-time thing, you'll have to set aside at least some money for that whole endeavour, lets say £10,000.
Now you split the remaining £20,000 between the two of you and you have £10,000 each.
Now lets say from development to release it took you a year to release your game.
So you'd be making roughly £830/month as your salary if you hit your mark profit-wise.
Also, remember that your target of £30,000 could take months to reach even after development, so in reality its even less than that.

Don't get me wrong though, anything is possible.
Someone could very well have a revolutionary idea that nets them enough to actually license the engine properly, its just highly unlikely given the circumstances is all.
(but then again, so is the lottery :p)

[elmuerte]

Ok, so now I'm avoiding steam even more and will directly buy from the devs.

[Xendance]

So has anyone actually asked Valve what their offer for Steam distribution is? Or are you guys just taking the percentages out of your asses? :confused:

[Merlinson]

I suppose we won't get final closure on this until Epic speaks, but my impression is that the 25% comes out of your revenue. If a reseller sells your game for twice what they pay you, half is their revenue and half is your revenue. You also don't have to pay their taxes for them. The 25% is not based on profit, obviously, but also shouldn't be based on someone else's revenue.

[Digit]

So has anyone actually asked Valve what their offer for Steam distribution is? Or are you guys just taking the percentages out of your asses? :confused:
On my part the 50% was just a worst case estimate.
I'd link you to a quite interesting article about Steam pushing the limits, so to speak, but I'm unsure of off-site linking rules.


I suppose we won't get final closure on this until Epic speaks, but my impression is that the 25% comes out of your revenue. If a reseller sells your game for twice what they pay you, half is their revenue and half is your revenue. You also don't have to pay their taxes for them. The 25% is not based on profit, obviously, but also shouldn't be based on someone else's revenue.
You are correct although its not that simple when it comes to digital distribution.
See my earlier post. (http://forums.epicgames.com/showthread.php?p=26963252#post26963252)


Offtopic:
I feel like a spammer. :rolleyes:

[Solid Snake]

Well, it's a bit unfair to compare it to indie games where they develop everything by themselves. It's much fairer to compare it to indie developers who also spent a large amount of money buying an engine such as Naked Sky with RoboBlitz.

At the end of the day if you want to make as much money as possible, write your own engine / game from scratch.

[schizoslayer]

I was mainly referring to advertizing exposure via television or adverts in magazines as they are usually whats responsible for the brunt of the game's exposure.
Whilst an article written on a game is great, and depending on who's writing it and where its being published can be a great means of exposure in and of itself, the main problem is the so-called ADD culture these days.
Unless you find a way to actively remind people you're out there without them going to look for you, you can easily slip between the cracks.
There are many absolutely amazing indie games who never get the recognition they truly deserve just because of this.


As for the living wage of 1-2 people.
Its certainly possible, but lets take your target profit of £30,000 for an example.
First off, assuming you're serious about making it a full-time thing, you'll have to set aside at least some money for that whole endeavour, lets say £10,000.
Now you split the remaining £20,000 between the two of you and you have £10,000 each.
Now lets say from development to release it took you a year to release your game.
So you'd be making roughly £830/month as your salary if you hit your mark profit-wise.
Also, remember that your target of £30,000 could take months to reach even after development, so in reality its even less than that.

Don't get me wrong though, anything is possible.
Someone could very well have a revolutionary idea that nets them enough to actually license the engine properly, its just highly unlikely given the circumstances is all.
(but then again, so is the lottery :p)

My target of £30,000 was for one person not two. I also know very few people that have gone into indie development cold. All the people I know who made the transition were working full time jobs until they hit a point where they could make a living off their indie work and quit their day jobs.

EDIT: Remember most UT3 mods are vastly more ambitious than an indie game that can be sold for £15. Heck you can sell a Sudoku game for £3 and make money.

[Masakari]

I know a dev who said it's (for them) around 35%, and there have been multiple articles on gaming sites and interviews which mention between 30-50%, and always mention it being much less than (for example) XBLA, which is around 50-70%. There's also the recent controversy with Randy Pitchford from Gearbox who has been stating Steam % is higher than it should be - curiously, all devs inquired either had no comment, or supported Steam saying it's a fair percentage.

@Digit: oh, don't get me wrong, Steam is a good thing. What I just realized with this thread, however, is that I shouldn't put all my eggs on one basket, and thus should sell it from our website, and possibly D2D, Impulse, and whatever else. The more the merrier.

As for supporting the devs by buying direct, absolutely. I came to that conclusion awhile ago because of games from Zombie Cow Studios, which are the same price on their site as on Steam, but obviously the Steam sale gets cut for the Valve percentage. When i saw that, i figured Indies putting their games on Steam was great, but if you really want to support them, buy direct.

[Hourences]

I suppose we won't get final closure on this until Epic speaks, but my impression is that the 25% comes out of your revenue. If a reseller sells your game for twice what they pay you, half is their revenue and half is your revenue. You also don't have to pay their taxes for them. The 25% is not based on profit, obviously, but also shouldn't be based on someone else's revenue.

Maybe, but that 35% for Valve is a cost. You pay someone else to do something for you that benefits your product. That is a cost. Revenue includes that cost.
I would love to see it be what you say though.

In the same case, the license states that if you sell services, you must also pay 25%. What if I help out a team by making something for their game. Is this selling a service? That game is already going to pay by its own. In that case Epic would take 25% both on the game and on the "salaries" for the contributors?
That would make it incredibly incredibly costly, up to a point where it is insane. From what point on is a contributor to a game not selling a service, but part of the team.

The same goes for education. The license states that training people must also make you pay 25%. What about schools? They train people. Should the school give away 25% of its budget? That would be a huge amount of cash for them and a reason to totally not use Unreal.
But what if a teacher is hired for a month or three to explain Unreal? Does that person make a living on Unreal? Yes, but he is also part of that school for 3 months. And if schools will have to pay 25% extra just to get someone who can explain their students Unreal, they will just go with another engine instead.

Etc.

[Digit]

My target of £30,000 was for one person not two. I also know very few people that have gone into indie development cold. All the people I know who made the transition were working full time jobs until they hit a point where they could make a living off their indie work and quit their day jobs.

I see, while thats more reasonable money-wise, remember that it also increases your production time dramatically.

I misunderstood your initial statement then, apologies. ;)

Either way, I think we're jumping a bit off-track.
We went from discussing royalties to salaries, lol.


@Masakari:
It seems we read the same articles. :p
And as for your view on distribution, I couldn't agree more.
Even if only 10% of your total sales are from a certain distributor, its 10% you might not have sold otherwise!

[Merlinson]

I think the issue of resellers versus digital distribution should be treated the same since it is essentially the same retail markup despite the differences in detail. I'm not claiming how it is, rather how it should be. Still, I don't think that Epic's intent is to screw us in the fine details. The issue of salaries related to UDK is also a valid concern that I don't have answers to either, but I would like to know. That is why the voice of authority would be helpful to clarify this.

[ambershee]

Merlinson - digital distributors are not resellers; they do not assume sales tax, they don't buy your product from you and sell it with a markup, they instead sell your product and take a cut which of what they pass back to you.

Some smaller, independant shops (particularily things like art galleries) work using this technique; they don't buy the art from the artist and then sell it on at a markup, they put the art in their gallery, and take a cut from the artist.

[Digit]

Just heard back through email about some questions of my own regarding the license.

I'll quote the parts relating to certain things discussed here.

If you sell a game via Steam and Stream charges you 30% the royalty would be calculated on the 70% Steam remits to you.
Which is great!
For those of you scratching your heads...
This means Epic treats it as if you've sold Steam physical copies at a prenegotiated price.



If you are going to make/sell a game to the public the royalty terms are the only terms available to you.

Dun dun dunnnn.
As you can see, this confirms the speculation that the 2.5k per seat license is only for in-house applications.


Doesn't answer all the questions in this thread but its great to at least have some official word on the matter.

[Hourences]

I just shot off an email too with a range of additional questions...

Good news though. Now I want to know about VAT, and services and trainings.

[Merlinson]

ambershee - Thanks for your response. Again, I am not claiming there is no difference, just that it is a distinction with out a real difference to me. That is my revenue which I never see reduced by costs I don't actually pay, it's just gone. It feels like that wasn't my revenue in the first place. Too bad that this appears to be a case where the devil in the details trumps common sense.

Edit: In the immortal words of Emily Litella, Never mind!

[meri]

They do take a lot, taking vat and distribution under consideration leaves you with very little money, BUT on the other hand, you have a free tool of extreme power thanks to which you can compete with the biggest game developers out there - free of charge until you start selling. Also, it is a great deal for students and stuff.

[ambershee]

Digit, that's brilliant news indeed (and not what most of us interpreted it as). That leaves a much healthier margin for profit.

[SnowBrigade]

This actually isn't the way to do this.

First of all, portals such as Steam will take sales tax as well. They won't give you xx% without taking sales tax unless you sign some special agreement.

Some posters say Epic's 25% is on gross revenue, and now suddenly it's on net takings by the developer. Epic has to come out and be clear, they release an awesome sdk but their license fees are obviously not clear at all.

Would you be willing to base a contract on some forum posts saying it's this or that? You could be talking thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars in difference of what you owe Epic. Come on. Someone from Epic has to make the license fees clear.

[cdiddy]

i agree we need someone from epic to clear this up.

what would the cost be if u had it on your own website??

[Benfica]

Steam looks like a rip-off. Look into alternatives like Direct2Drive, gog, etc... There are also Google ads. You can also consider you game as trial and upload it to shareware sites like Tucows and download.com

In order to get paid you have the digital distributtors. But of course you should set up your web page since Google ads and shareware sites link there. You should have one anyway for screenshots, videos, tutorial, even forum.

Note: I'm not talking about dropping Steam. It's great advertising and you get paid. It's just that you shouldn't be tied to one solution

[Hourences]

i agree we need someone from epic to clear this up.

what would the cost be if u had it on your own website??

For a pretty large game, about 30USD a month, 50USD a month max. Fixed price, so if you sell 1 game or 30 000, it is still just 50USD.

It is very doable. The big problem is making people visit your site. Getting the whole website, including secure e-commerce service, up and running isn't incredibly expensive or difficult at all.