4 ms·

Not so fast. Retailers' gross is SRP*Units. Dev's gross is what the next link in the supply chain pays him. That is still true in today's distribution model sin

Not so fast. Retailers' gross is SRP*Units. Dev's gross is what the next link in the supply chain pays him. That is still true in today's distribution model since Apple/Play/Steam store take some cut of the retail price and pays you the rest. One could even argue that you developing and you selling are two distinct companies and that gross is what dev you makes (actually they are quite distinct business functions, so I'm not bending anything here).

gabriel34 13y ago
Come to think of it, you could wrap it around a thin wrapper program and provide that as a product for a nominal fee over which you'd have to pay 5%, then develop your game over the wrapper. What is to stop anyone from doing this? Maybe the license says your product must be licensed the same way, so if the end user mods your game and sells it they too have to pay 5%.
- njharman 13y ago
  > What is to stop anyone from doing this? Being the guy who gets to spend tens to hundreds of thousands in legal fees to convince jury they aren't just trying to cheat someone out of their royalty.
- cdash 13y ago
  License says if you sell your game for 10 dollars on the app store and Apple takes 30% cut of that Epic is taking 5% of 10 dollars and not 5% of 7 dollars.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
  - gabriel34 13y ago
    Seems you are right: "When releasing a product using UE4, you're signing up to pay Epic 5% of gross product revenue from users, regardless of what company collects the revenue. That means: If your game makes $10 on the App Store, Apple may pay you $7, but you'd pay Epic $0.50 (5% of $10)." Still, you'd have to legally define end customer because you could have, as I pointed out, much more complex cases. I didn't search much, but couldn't find the actual fine print license to see how they did it, but they probably did it well and ironclad and don't need legal advice from a guy with no formal legal education. I stand humbled.
    - sseveran 13y ago
      All these types of deals (even not in the game industry) use gross revenue since anything else can be manipulated.
gamblor956 13y ago
Unreal redefined "gross revenue" in the EULA for Unreal 4 Engine, so they are not using the standard meaning that's used everywhere else in the world. Their definition of "gross revenue" is actually something similar to "total retail sales." It's a dick move on their part. They could, and should, have used a different term to avoid the confusion.

gabriel34 13y ago

Come to think of it, you could wrap it around a thin wrapper program and provide that as a product for a nominal fee over which you'd have to pay 5%, then develop your game over the wrapper. What is to stop anyone from doing this? Maybe the license says your product must be licensed the same way, so if the end user mods your game and sells it they too have to pay 5%.

njharman 13y ago
> What is to stop anyone from doing this? Being the guy who gets to spend tens to hundreds of thousands in legal fees to convince jury they aren't just trying to cheat someone out of their royalty.
cdash 13y ago
License says if you sell your game for 10 dollars on the app store and Apple takes 30% cut of that Epic is taking 5% of 10 dollars and not 5% of 7 dollars.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- gabriel34 13y ago
  Seems you are right: "When releasing a product using UE4, you're signing up to pay Epic 5% of gross product revenue from users, regardless of what company collects the revenue. That means: If your game makes $10 on the App Store, Apple may pay you $7, but you'd pay Epic $0.50 (5% of $10)." Still, you'd have to legally define end customer because you could have, as I pointed out, much more complex cases. I didn't search much, but couldn't find the actual fine print license to see how they did it, but they probably did it well and ironclad and don't need legal advice from a guy with no formal legal education. I stand humbled.
  - sseveran 13y ago
    All these types of deals (even not in the game industry) use gross revenue since anything else can be manipulated.

gamblor956 13y ago

Unreal redefined "gross revenue" in the EULA for Unreal 4 Engine, so they are not using the standard meaning that's used everywhere else in the world. Their definition of "gross revenue" is actually something similar to "total retail sales." It's a dick move on their part. They could, and should, have used a different term to avoid the confusion.