Epic increase UDK royalty cap tenfold

The Ball

Epic have announced a ten-times increase on the royalty cap for games created with the Unreal Development Kit. The free software kit is powerful enough to let anyone create a game using Unreal Engine 3. Before now, games earning profits of more than $5,000 would have to make royalty payments to Epic. The royalty cap now stands at $50,000, making it easier for new developers to get started.

Vice President of Epic Games, Mark Rein, made the announcement was made on the Epic forums . He says "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."

The release of the UDK, in combination with the Make Something Unreal contest, has given a headstart to a number of small developers. The most recent success story was The Ball, which was the runner up in last year's Make Something Unreal contest, and recently released a full retail release on Steam . If you're interested in creating something using the UDK, it's available to download for free from the Unreal Development Kit site.

Tom Senior

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.