Anyway, current versions are unaffected it’s only people who want to keep adopting new versions which will face the changes.
Way more importantly making it retroactive was unheard of. Unity even had promised to support "pick your license" for released titles in perpetuity but then during this change said "we never said the runtime was free in perpetuity".
Charging more for your product isn't great but it always happens.
Also on that topic Unity got started as the "no revenue sharing" option and was paid for by very expensive per seat costs. So there was a bit of "you are double dipping" feeling too.
In this case Unreal is charging for a new market is the goal which makes sense.
Certainly the bait and switch of free now not is a bit sour but how sour depends on the cost.
The problem here is that "providing for free" to gain adoption and then suddenly charging is a bit of a rug-pull.
The same argument was made for Unity, it's not the customer's job to make your business model work.
> Are they expected to provide the engine for free?
If you choose to grow your market share in an unsustainable way (like giving your product away for free), and then later on go "oh shit we can't keep doing this!" then you should expect that some of the customers who adopted your product based on the previous terms will be unhappy with this switch.
Many might be fine with it, but the idea that everyone should just accept this switch is bullshit.
Lots of companies are clear up front that their product will be free for some time (like during a beta or early access period) but that customers should expect to be charged at some point in the future.
I'm not sure this is what Epic did. But I don't follow this space closely so maybe they did set that expectation? Some other commenters seem to be saying this was "expected"..