Unreal royalties waived for Epic Store sales

This bundling turns Unreal Engine from a standalone cost into a funnel for Epic Games Store supply. A studio that sells an Unreal game on Epic can avoid the usual separate engine royalty on those store sales, so the all in platform cost is lower than it looks from the store fee alone. That gives Epic a concrete way to pull developers away from Steam, where the store cut is higher and there is no matching engine offset.1 2 3 4 5

• Epic set up the store this way from launch. The original store announcement said Epic would cover the 5% Unreal engine royalty out of its 12% store fee for sales on the store. Epic still describes Epic processed in store purchases for Unreal games as royalty free today.4 3 1
• The practical effect is a lower combined take rate for Unreal developers. On Epic, a sale can carry a 0% take on the first $1M of annual net revenue per title and 12% after that, with engine royalties waived on Epic processed store payments. On Steam, the standard benchmark in Epic materials is a 30% store cut.1 3 5
• This matters because Epic is trying to win both layers of the stack. Unreal is the tool teams use to build the game. Epic Games Store is the shelf where they sell it. Waiving the engine royalty links those products together and makes each successful Unreal launch more valuable to Epic beyond the engine business alone.6 7 2

The next step is deeper cross product bundling. Epic is already tying store placement to engine economics through programs like Launch Everywhere with Epic, which reduces the standard Unreal royalty rate for qualifying launches. That pushes Epic toward a model where engine, payments, distribution, and creator ecosystem work as one package rather than separate businesses.8 9 3