Do I have to notify epic before I release:
- a free tiny non-game draft of a concept, proof of concept, work in progress, bunch of balls flying around, etc
- meant for a totally non-entertainment related topic and audience on a very local non-english level (less than 5000 people will ever hear about it)
- from someone who is indie with no studio nor any company
- will not be published on any 3rd-party commercial games platform
- published through a free random file hosting service or my own FTP/HTTP server.
Epic has to do some deep research on this and separate what are “commercial games or non-games”, “free games”, “free WIP,snippets, concepts, localized niche randomness” and “free “playable” visualizations of infrastructure construction projects, shipbuilding, etc”
Epic has to update the legal stuff and really define stuff, I do not agree that a free visualized house which you can walk around in to be considered as a “free game”. A “free game” needs more technical description so it’s clear what components are a game and if it’s released on various platforms, a map in which I spend 20 minutes making the terrain with minimal textures, put down 2 roads, setup some barebone vehicles, make some blueprints, and you can go fly and watch the cars dance around and maybe interact a little bit by flipping some switches, that is NOT a game and shouldn’t be considered as a “free game” like in F2P, etc. Then Epic has to decide whether it will separate “completely free games” and “free game now and pay later if you want to continue” … what I’m trying to do is “completely free misc drafts, snippets, schemes, visualizations, simulations”
I metioned less than 5000 people, that’s a educated guess, but not definitive obviously, now, how many people would actually download and install it … id say below 1000 total.
- What if I release an updated version every few days, would I also have to notify and go through the process ?
- What about the EULA in such a case, since this isn’t defined legally nor explained I
““You must notify Epic when you begin collecting revenue or ship your product; see here for more details.””
So if I take this literally, that “or ship your product” could mean everything else that’s free and not a game is also counted ? Which is I hope Epic didn’t really mean that, whatever Epic meant, this text is too vague.
The legal text has to define what “ship” means. Does it include uploading to a public FTP server ? and/or a 3rd-party free hosting site ?
PS: Sorry if I sound angry, it’s a bit late here.