Epic improves royalty deal for UDK devs

Epic Games has relaxed royalty rates for commercial use of the Unreal Development Kit, the company has announced.

Indies and start-ups using the free-to-download engine now have to make $50,000 in sales before Epic begins taking a 25 per cent slice of subsequent revenues.

Before, Epic would have begun taking a cut after $5,000.

The move is seen as a bid to stimulate further use of UDK across the indie and mobile games space, and another bid from the company to capture the sizable market of developers using tech such as Unity and Torque.

“We’re really excited about folks making some amazing things with UDK and we realize that a lot of you are just started in the business so not having to pay royalties on your first $50,000 should help you get a financial footing toward building a quality game development business,” said Epic Games president Mark Rein.

Rein also reiterated that Epic calculates its 25 per cent cut after publisher fees. On iPhone and Android devices, for example, Apple and Google take a 30 per cent revenue slice in exchange for hosting a game.

Indie developers don’t need to pay for non-commercial use of Unreal Development Kit, yet a $99 fee is required to register as a developer using the tech in a commercial capacity.