July 11, 2018

Epic announces Unreal Engine Marketplace 88% / 12% revenue share

By Dana Cowley

Epic Games has announced a sweeping change to the Unreal Engine Marketplace, whereby creators on the store will now receive 88% of their product sales, an increase from the common 70% / 30% split of other digital stores.

The Unreal Engine Marketplace is a store targeting the Unreal Engine community, and enabling game developers to purchase digital content sold by 3D modelers, digital artists, sound designers, programmers and animators, and use those assets in their own projects. Many successful UE4-powered games, such as ARK: Survival Evolved and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds made use of Marketplace content in their development.

This new 88% (developer) / 12% (store) revenue split applies to all Unreal Engine Marketplace transactions past, present and future. In addition to implementing the policy for future sales, Epic is paying out all Marketplace sellers retroactively, applying the more creator-friendly 88% rate to previous transactions dating back to the store’s 2014 launch. 

“Thanks to both the Marketplace’s growth and the success of Fortnite, Epic now conducts a huge volume of digital commerce,” said Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic. “The resulting economies of scale enable us to pass the savings along to the Unreal Engine Marketplace community, while also making a healthy profit for Epic.”

The Unreal Engine ecosystem is growing faster than ever, with Epic confirming:
  • As of July 2018, more than 6.3 million users have chosen Unreal Engine 4, an increase of more than 1 million users since March.
  • In the first half of 2018, the Unreal Engine Marketplace experienced 30% growth in active sellers. There are now over 1,500 creators offering more than 5,000 curated products on the Marketplace. 
  • There have been nearly 8 million downloads from the Marketplace since the store’s launch in 2014.
  • There have been more than 1 million downloads of the free Paragon assets to date, representing $300 billion in total value to the development community. 
We reached out to a few Marketplace sellers to brief them on today’s news in advance and to get their feedback. Here’s what they had to say.

“This is unreal. It's a really wonderful day for all people using the Unreal Engine Marketplace. Now all involved artists, modelers, animators, programmers and other Unreal developers will be a bit happier, find it easier to live and invest more in their own dream projects and make more high-quality assets and plugins for others,” said Dmitry Smirnov, VEA Games. 
Caption: See VEA Games Ultimate River Tool in action

“I remember the moment when Unreal Engine became free,” he said. “It was a great event for the whole community of game developers and all the people who love games. And this moment is comparable and somewhat surpasses it. Epic Games is a company that every year surprises and creates an environment for people where it is pleasant to create and work.”

"Epic has proven time and time again that they do what they can to do right by the sellers on the platform,” said Michael Allar, director of Gamemakin LLC. “This is something that many sellers lose sight of, regardless of engine or platform, when working with marketplaces day to day.” 
 
“It is incredibly refreshing and even inspiring when a giant like Epic is able to move forward with such a strong move that will not just help sellers on the Unreal Engine Marketplace but should eventually ripple to all sellers of all game assets around the world,” he said. “There are still many challenges that game development marketplace sellers face, but finally, we can rejoice that one of our biggest obstacles for self-sustainability has been knocked down with such force."

"The new revenue split is amazing, and retroactively paying this back is not only generous, it’s just down right magnificent," said Mike Clephane, director of Synty Studios, whose co-director, Andrew Stairs, added, "It's humbling that a company as big as Epic is giving back to the little guy in such a huge way. Thank you, this is truly Epic!"

Thanks to all of our Marketplace creators for being valuable members of the Unreal Engine community. We wish you continued success and can’t wait to see what you build next.