I am running a company that creates and operates alternate reality games, city games, escape rooms and other real life interactive entertainment and would like to use UE4 to test out some of my designs and systems for my games and experiences so I can see if an idea or mechanic would be worth developing further. We would not be using UE4 in any of our games. Would I owe royalties to Epic based on the money we make on the groups playing our alternate reality games, escape rooms, city games, … ?
Would this be a case for an enterprise solution?
This sounds like a very interesting use of UE4. If you pursue it, you should let us know how it goes.
I think that the use you describe would not generate royalties because it’s really just internal planning purposes. If you used UE4 in the games themselves, my answer could change.
As for Enterprise, you’d need that if you wanted support or some element of the EULA didn’t work for you.
As Canon (atypic) notes using UE4 as an internal scenario design tool would not carry a royalty. Your post calls out a number of different use cases. Some I am not familiar with. I’ve been in a few Escape Rooms (love’em) so I get that one.
What are: alternate reality games, city games, and other real life interactive entertainment?
Well these terms are often used interchangeably to refer to real life games you play with other people in the real world. Things such as scavengner hunts, spy games throughout a city where we setup scenarios very much akin to what the fantasy of being a spy or an adventurer is like, or how they expect it to be from movies. We try to recreate the fantasy and excitement of being someone like James Bond or Indiana Jones or Nathan Drake as closely as possible. We would not be using UE4 during the games but to prototype or playtest systems before we develop them a game engine like UE4 would be very benificial