Game engine licensing terms come in three basic shapes, and the published numbers are public. Unreal Engine takes a royalty: 5 percent of gross revenue, with no fee at all on the first US$1 million a product earns. Unity sells subscriptions and tried a per-install fee before canceling it. Godot gives the whole engine away under an open license. Which shape fits depends on what a studio sells, how big its team is, and how much contract reading it wants to do up front.
Engine paperwork is one of several places where the industry leaves a public trail, much like the Steam Machine filings Valve made at the FCC. The difference is that engine terms decide money math for every project built on them.
Here is what each model charges and where the published lines sit. Nerdic's tech news section tracks the business side of these shifts.
How Much Does Unreal Engine Charge, and When?
Unreal Engine 5 retains the royalty model that started with Unreal Engine 4: developers return 5 percent of gross revenues to Epic Games. No fee applies to the first US$1 million in gross revenue per product, a line Epic made retroactive to January 1, 2020. Sales through the Epic Games Store skip the royalty entirely. In October 2024, Epic lowered the rate to 3.5 percent for non-store sales when a game also lists there.
What About Non-Gaming Uses of Unreal?
The royalty is not the only model Epic publishes. Since April 2024, companies using the engine's runtime for non-gaming work, such as film and television production, need per-seat licenses once their revenues pass $1 million. Each seat costs $1,850 per year. A studio building a virtual production stage reads a different contract than a game team, and the price shows it.
What Does Unity Charge Now That the Runtime Fee Is Gone?
Unity sold its paid tiers outright for a decade, then moved to subscriptions in 2016. The free tier covers smaller companies, a ceiling raised over time to US$200,000 in annual revenue, and Unity Pro kicks in above that. On September 12, 2023, the company announced a per-installation runtime fee, revised it ten days later under backlash, and canceled it in September 2024. CEO Matthew Bromberg replaced the model with annual price increases on existing plans. Unity's stock lost about 60 percent of its value over the year to May 2024, a fall partly attributed to the fee policy.
What Did the Fee Fight Leave Behind?
The numbers from the game jam circuit show the damage. Unity powered 61 percent of Global Game Jam entries in 2023 and 36 percent in 2024. At the GMTK Game Jam, Godot overtook Unity in 2026, ending nine years of Unity dominance there. Unity's engine source code, meanwhile, is licensed case by case through special arrangements rather than published openly. This connects to our earlier piece, Razer Project AVA Gets a Launch Window: H2 2026, Deposits Now Open.
Why Do Some Studios Pick Godot Instead?
Godot Engine is free and open source under the permissive MIT license. The published terms allow use for any purpose, including commercial distribution under a different license, and the engine's copyright does not extend to content made with it. A studio keeps sole ownership of its game and owes the project nothing. Forks are allowed under proprietary terms too, as long as the engine's copyright notice travels with the redistributed code. The trade is support and tooling depth rather than money.
Conclusion: The Numbers Are Public, So Read Them
Every figure above comes from a published term page or a documented statement, and each one carries a date. That is the practical takeaway for any team picking an engine. A royalty scales with success, a seat license scales with headcount, and an open license scales with neither. The right choice is the contract that matches the game's budget, the team's size, and the studio's tolerance for future revisions of terms it did not write.
