Unreal Engine Marketplace says it will take less developer revenue

Epic Games has just made 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 modellers, digital artists, sound designers, programmers, and animators, and use those assets in their own projects. Many 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.”

In addition, Unreal Engine has released some new developer statstics:

• 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.