Havok reduces licensing fee for studios with game budgets under $20M

Havok announced that it will reduce its licensing fee for game studios who have game budgets under $20 million.

The price cut reflects the tough times in the game industry. Now, Havok, which is owned by Microsoft, said that its licensing fees per game title will be $50,000, for the companies that are making a game with a budget under $20 million.

This means that the company’s technologies, including Havok Physics and Havok Navigation, will be available to a broader range of studios.  Havok technologies are used by most of the world’s largest game franchises, and we are excited to see what a new range of innovative studios will achieve with Havok Physics and Havok Navigation.  

The licensing model is straightforward with no royalty and is available to game companies with per-title budgets as high as $20 million.  In addition, studios can take advantage of plug-in versions of Havok Physics and Havok Navigation for Unreal Engine.  

This lets game development studios use the full Havok feature set that powers many of the leading franchises in the industry. It allows them to ship on console, PC, and mobile. And it gives them access to the latest Havok technology throughout title development. And they can build and modify the Havok Unreal Engine plugins.

David Coughlan, general manager at Havok, said in an interview with GamesBeat that this is the most significant change in pricing for Havok in the past five years. It’s a response to the tough environment being faced by smaller teams.

As for what Havok does that is useful, he said it provides a full suite of navigation and physics in games, enabling more dynamic worlds for games.

“Technology can really bring these game worlds to life and inject dynamics into the world,” said Coughlan. “But we are conscious it is a difficult time for the industry. We have seen industry expansions and contractions. When that happens, we see an evolution of the industry. what we see at the moment is studios with tens of employees with strong ambitions. They are trying for triple-A quality and we want to make sure we can reach those teams.”

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