FabricatorStudio is free for solo developers, indies, and small teams.
Under $2M a year? It's yours.
If your organization made less than $2 million USD in gross revenue last tax year, you don't need a license and you don't need to contact anyone. Use it in production, ship games with it, use it on client work. It's yours, and it stays yours.
Personal use, learning, and portfolio work are always free, whatever you do for a day job.
PRICING
One flat license per studio, per year
Above $2 million USD in annual revenue, a commercial license is required. One flat license for your whole studio, per year. Not per seat, and never a percentage of what you make. Nothing to count, nothing to activate, no license server, no phoning home.
Crossing $2 million costs you $1,000 a year, less than a single Maya seat. That's on purpose. You shouldn't get punished for a good year.
No percentages. No per-seat counting. No reporting, no audits, no license server. You look at one row, you know your number, and you can budget it a year ahead.
WHY IT WORKS THIS WAY
My whole career, I built awesome tools for big studios. Then the lay offs happened, and when I sat down to build my own game I realized I had nothing. Fourteen years of building tools, and my own toolbox was empty.
So I built it all again, for myself. While I watched my peers get laid off one by one, I realized they were starting over with nothing as well. So I decided to release my toolset. This one is free for you.
The idea is simple: the studios that can afford a Technical Artist help keep it free for everyone who can't. A flat license above two million a year in revenue is what holds the door open for the solo developers and small teams who are building without one.
For comparison: Epic charges non-game companies over $1M in revenue $1,850 per seat per year for Unreal Engine. Our line is twice that, and above it you pay once for the entire studio, instead of once per person.
THE LICENSE
The toolset ships under the Business Source License 1.1, with one added grant: free use for organizations under $2 million USD in annual gross revenue. Every version becomes fully open source four years after it ships, automatically. That conversion is written into the license and cannot be revoked.
Read the standard BSL 1.1 text →Getting a license
Email us your company name and revenue band. No sales call required unless you want one. Need hands, not just a license? See Services.
QUESTIONS
We're a small studio owned by a large publisher.
The threshold counts your parent and sibling companies. If a large company controls your studio, you're over the line.
We spun out of a big company and we're independent now.
Then you're independent, and only your own revenue counts. The test is who controls you today, not who used to.
I'm an individual contractor working at a large studio.
Your own learning, portfolio, and personal work is free, always. Work you do for the large studio is use for their benefit, so they need the license, not you. Point them here.
What about the Advanced Ribbon Modules?
Those are a separate paid product for everyone, at any size. A commercial license covers the free toolset for a large organization; it doesn't include the Ribbon Modules, and buying the Ribbon Modules doesn't remove the need for a commercial license if you're over the threshold.
What happens to old versions?
Every release becomes open source under the GPL four years after it ships. That's built into the license and cannot be revoked.
Is this open source?
No, and we won't call it that. You can read and modify every line, but it's not an OSI approved license, because those licenses can't ask a large company to pay.