I just heard that the owner of Unreal Engine (Epic Games?) charges 5% royalties if you use it in your game. Is this true? What other "hidden costs" to use assets, program, liveries and copyright are part of the reason games are getting more expensive? Are there substantial "baked in" costs that don't even go to the company making the game, but must be paid to other companies?
AFAIK, the UE royalties only apply after the first $1M in revenue. I imagine the licenses would have a cost as well, both going to the railroads and to the lawyers drawing up the agreements. Thomas probably didn't come cheap either.
I wonder how much acquiring DEM and LiDAR data plus mapping costs for professional use? Probably not cheap. Though back in the day, before we had DEMEX or similar (plus hi res DEM to work with) when I was making routes for MSTS I had to physically buy the Ordnance Survey maps from the shop. I then had to manually extract and convert grid references to the Kuju format for the route itself and key features/contours to manually sculpt the terrain. No wonder I can hardly bear to go near any train sim route editor, these days!
