Interactive internal advertise Licensing

Development Programming & Scripting
1

Hi,

As many other ones before us we have a licensing issue and would like to be sure that our prodcution can be royalty free. We already contacted you by email, it seems that it would be royalty free, but our (nice) contact strongly recommended us to ask the question on this forum.

We’re approached by a luxury brand for setting up an artistic installation using Unreal; and
as the project is quite hybrid we’re not sure anymore how you would
consider it.
We have two main interrogations :

  1. The installation would be a 3D walkthrough in a virtual showroom,
    where we’ll find about 15 furnitures that they wish to present. There will be a succinct scenario and the user won’t be
    free to move, the camera would follow a ride, with some predetermined
    pauses. But the installation would use 3D glasses (similar to occulus), so the user can turn his head and
    look around him; so first of all, we’re not sure if we should consider this
    process as an interactive installation or just as a 360° movie, as the engine will be used to launch and stop the ride, manage the view orientation, but nothing more.
  2. Compared to an architectural visualization, and even if it is an
    artistic installation, the aim is not only to convince but also to sell
    furnitures. It’s not for advertising to the general public audience, it
    is more an internal use as the exact aim is to promote furnitures to
    some stores owned by the brand and some franchisees ones (we’re not sure
    of the proportion). So we’re not sure if it can still be considered as a
    design/architecture visualization or if we have to consider it as
    commercial product. About that, we have to precise that our work, at
    least for now, will only be installed on one device wich will travel
    around the world, it’s not supposed to be duplicated.

So based on that description, could you please tell us :
1- if the use of Unreal Engine is free in this case
2- if not, on wich amount the fees should be calculated → the app
amount (graphic + developpement), the whole prodcut we’ll sell
(including hardware) ? If they decide to duplicate it, will it have any
impact on the fees, even if we don’t sell it again ?

Many thaks in advance for your answer !

2

It certainly seems royalty free. The operative question is whether the software experience itself will be sold. It sounds like the answer is no, so there would be no direct revenue. If it’s just a vehicle to generate interest in physical products, there’s no royalty. For your work-for-hire fees, there’d be no royalties.

3

Hi
Many thanks for your answer ! It’s now very clear, and it’s good news !

Rgards