Epic lowers Unreal Engine Marketplace payment due to Fortnite success

Epic Games has reduced the percentage content creators are required to pay for sales through the Unreal Engine Marketplace from 30 percent to 12 percent. According to the company, the reduction is the result of the success of the marketplace and Fortnite.

Not only will Epic Games now let content creators keep 88 percent instead of 70 percent of their earnings from the Unreal Engine Marketplace, but that new ratio will also be retroactive. Epic will therefore refund the sellers based on all previous transactions, up to the opening of the Unreal store in 2014.

Tim Sweeney, founder and CEO of Epic, says his company’s digital commerce is booming thanks to the growth of the Unreal Engine Marketplace and the success of Fortnite. According to him, Epic can let the users of the marketplace benefit from it while still making a healthy profit for itself. In addition, the new payment ratio should probably make the marketplace more attractive to designers and attract new users.

He also announced that 6.3 million people now use Unreal Engine 4, compared to 1 million in March. In the first half of 2018, the number of active sellers on the marketplace grew by 30 percent to fifteen hundred, who together offer five thousand digital products. Since its inception in 2014, there have been 8 million downloads.

The marketplace allows graphic artists, musicians and other digital designers to offer their files. Game makers, among others, can use it for their projects. For example, designs from the Unreal store have been used for ARK: Survival Evolved and PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, among others. The company SuperData recently calculated that Fortnite brought in about $300 million for Epic in May.