Fab's Personal tier: old trees, new money, different bills

Summary

A valid Personal-tier purchase under Fab's Standard License does not require an upgrade merely because the buyer later crosses the revenue threshold.
The purchase-time test covers the preceding twelve months, specified control relationships, advances and other funds raised.
Personal and Professional provide the same scope of rights. Publishers may charge the same price for both tiers or set different prices.

A successful forest keeps its old receipt

A game finally sells. Its fictional developer opens the dashboard, enjoys the unfamiliar sight of money arriving, then notices two price tiers on Fab: Personal and Professional. What about the trees bought six months ago? Have they been promoted? Does every rock now want a better contract?

For assets correctly acquired under the Standard License's Personal tier, Fab's answer is reassuringly dull: crossing the revenue threshold after purchase does not require an upgrade. The forest does not invoice the launch party.

The timing matters more than the friendly tier names. Section 2(a) of the agreement tests eligibility at the transaction. The official licence summary explains the treatment of later growth. Together they give an eligible old purchase a stable past, while leaving the next purchase to face the buyer's current circumstances.

That is a commercial choice with consequences for both sides. A seller can offer a lower entry price to a qualifying buyer. If that buyer later becomes successful, success alone does not create a claim for the Professional-tier difference on the earlier purchase. The seller needs another sale.

The studio with no sales can still fail the test

Personal sounds like a description of a person. In Fab's agreement it is a calculation.

At the time of the transaction, the buyer, entities controlling it and entities under common control must not have generated more than $100,000 in gross revenue from commercial activity in the digital-content industry during the preceding twelve months. The agreement includes advances received and other funds raised in that calculation. Exactly $100,000 is within the stated limit.

Consider a second invented studio. It has sold no copies because its game is unfinished, but it has raised $150,000 during the relevant period. The zero in its sales column does not settle eligibility. The money raised is part of Fab's contractual test, whatever heading the studio normally uses for it in its accounts.

Nor can a small team inside a larger group inspect only its own game budget. The control relationships define a wider perimeter. Five developers and a modest office can belong to a financial structure much larger than five desks.

The twelve-month window also moves with the purchase date. Last year's accounts can miss an advance received yesterday. A finance event can therefore change the appropriate tier before it changes anything visible about the team's daily work. The artist shopping for a convincing boulder may be the last person to hear about it.

Tomorrow's castle gets tomorrow's classification

Take another explicitly hypothetical case. An independent studio has $80,000 under the applicable twelve-month calculation when it buys a tree using Personal. Later, that calculation reaches $150,000. The properly acquired tree remains a properly acquired tree.

A castle bought now is a new transaction. It must use the category for which the buyer qualifies now. This distinguishes a historical library from a continuing entitlement to make new Personal purchases. The first has acquisition dates; the second would ignore them.

The distinction protects work as well as the original asset budget. Someone adjusts the tree's textures. Someone places it across a level. Someone tests collisions and performance. A cheap file accumulates expensive labour. A rule that leaves a valid acquisition's tier alone makes that labour easier to plan around: later revenue does not automatically reopen the old price.

For a studio, the alternative mistakes are equally unhelpful. Reserving money to upgrade every valid old purchase can unnecessarily tie up the next production budget. Assuming that yesterday's Personal eligibility covers tomorrow's purchases can produce a genuine selection error.

Professional does not grow better bark

Personal and Professional offer the same scope of rights under the Standard License. Personal permits commercial use. Compatible tools can be used beyond Unreal Engine. The higher-sounding name does not automatically buy better geometry, extra source files or permission to make money that the other tier lacks.

Fab requires publishers to offer both tiers and lets them use identical or different prices. The arrangement permits price discrimination by buyer circumstances while keeping the basic rights the same. A creator can make entry cheaper for one class of buyer and ask more from another.

There is no universal Professional markup in these rules. If a publisher fills both boxes with the same price, the classification still applies but produces no price gap. The economic effect depends on the listing, not on an assumed multiplier.

Other distinctions remain real. Personal—Reference Only supplies access to a referenced asset rather than its source content. Available source and reference formats under ordinary Personal and Professional depend on the product's offering. Code plug-ins are licensed per seat. A buyer must check the files it needs and the people who will use a plug-in; equal tier rights do not answer either question on their own.

The old bill that can come back

Fab does provide for a price correction when a buyer selected a tier for which it was ineligible at the time. On request, the buyer must pay Epic the remainder of what an eligible tier would have cost.

Two companies can look identical today and have different answers for yesterday's purchase. One qualified, bought and grew. The other already failed the test when it chose Personal. Present size cannot reconstruct that history.

The useful record is mundane: transaction date, purchasing entity and the basis for the calculation then. Keeping it avoids confusing subsequent success with an original mistake. It also avoids making the artist responsible for guessing the group's financing arrangements while looking for a decent cliff.

The seller's 88% still needs a sale

Fab's publisher guide states that sellers receive 88% of revenue generated by their product sales. Refunds are deducted from the next payout or several payouts. A higher Professional price may raise receipts per order; it still needs orders, and the proceeds must support the work of creating and helping customers use the product.

The public documents do not provide the tier mix or buyers' response to price differences. Matched seller transactions and refunds would be needed to measure the earnings effect. The contract establishes a pricing opportunity, not a demonstrated windfall.

The buyer receives a licence, while intellectual-property rights remain with their holders. The licensor can be the publisher rather than Epic. Incorporating content into projects is permitted within the terms; standalone resale or redistribution is forbidden. Fab also does not guarantee perpetual re-download availability. Keeping legitimate project files and their acquisition records remains useful work, without enlarging the licence or authorising use of content removed for rights problems.

The bargain is more intelligible when expressed in dates. The seller prices the next transaction. The studio establishes its circumstances when making it. An eligible earlier purchase does not acquire a success surcharge merely because the game later takes off. The old forest can stay cheap. The new castle must meet the studio as it is today.