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Epic Games releases $12M worth of Paragon assets for free
- sergiotapia 9y agoEpic is absolutely SWIMMING in money thanks to what was essentially a weekend project by two of their engineers. Fornite BR is exploding in popularity, with Ninja recently streaming with Drake, Kim Dotcom and another popular rapper. They broken the all-time record with 620k+ viewers at 2am! I'm sure their success facilitated the decision to release this for free and also give out refunds for Paragon. Win/win for them!
- Splines 9y ago> Epic is absolutely SWIMMING in money thanks to what was essentially a weekend project by two of their engineers. Are you talking about Fortnite in general, or the Battle Royale mode? The weird thing is that my impression is that Fortnite was talked about for awhile as this Horde-mode construction game, sort of like minecraft meets L4D. Then the BR F2P mode was added and the whole thing blew up.
- k__ 9y agoWell, pivot while you can...
- elldoubleyew 9y agoI always felt bad for the devs of the actual Fortnite game. Its clear lots of time and resources were poured into what was actually a pretty good horde style survival/crafting game, then the little BR offshoot came along and now whenever someone says "Fortnite" I just assume they mean BR because no one actually plays the survival game. I guess they can't complain about the success but it would have to feel at least a little bit demoralizing.
- unsigner 9y agoPretty fleshed-out, pretty feature-rich, pretty long developed - but not pretty good. If it was pretty good we would be talking about the fort construction mode in PUBG now.
- k__ 9y agolol, serendipity. As far as I know the regular mode is not free to play. I only tried it because it was a free alternative to PUBG
- eridius 9y agoThe regular mode will be F2P, it's just currently in the "founder's pack" stage of F2P games.
- Maxious 9y agoSame with Warcraft 3 and DOTA right?
- k__ 9y agoWasn't Dota a mod? Like, the guy who made it had the intention to make this game (with the help of WC3)
- mdeg 9y agoCustom map technically, although the WC3 map editor let you write custom code so the line is kind of blurry.
- k__ 9y agoSure. I just had the impression DOTA was made by some guy who wanted to make something like DOTA and Fortnite was made by some people who wanted to make some mix of L4D and Minecraft, but pivoted to doing something like PUBG instead.
- ckocagil 9y ago>Then the BR (F2P) mode was added and the whole thing blew up. Summary of video games in the last 5 years.
- sushid 9y ago5 years? PUBG is probably the first massively successful battle royale game and it's not been 2 years yet. H1Z1/Rust/etc are all a continuous survivalist game and other games were mostly mods. I'm personally excited to see where Activision or EA take the genre (Blizzard too but I don't see that happening anytime soon).
- virtuexru 9y agoIs there a link to where I could see a recording of the Ninja, Kim Dotcom & Drake game by any chance? Or a link to a stream recording? Thanks so much! Had no idea Fortnite has become that big. It always seemed too "cartoony" for me (as compared to PUBG).
- matt_s 9y agoJust search ninja's youtube, it should come up to the top. Cartoony makes it fun in a way that realistic graphics based games just can't match because of the aesthetic. It begs a silly-ness to elements that make it enjoyable and Epic can refresh at will (player skins for St. Pattys day, hidden Llama's on the map, Chinese new year theme, etc.)
- kmfrk 9y agoTwitch VODs are automatically deleted after a couple of days, so either check it out now at https://twitch.tv/ninja https://twitch.tv/ninja (with the chat archive intact) or watch the recap on his YouTube channel.
- kingbirdy 9y agoTravis Scott was the other rapper playing with them. Juju Smith-Schuster of the Pittsburgh Steelers also joined them for a while.
- psyc 9y agoI find Fortnite BR really special - greater than the sum of its parts. I'm an avid gamer who does not like FPS as a rule, but I'm also always looking for one I'd enjoy. BR is the first FPS I've been delighted by since Quake 3.
- pssdbt 9y agoFortnite is 3rd-person though, maybe you meant shooters in general?
- oh_sigh 9y agoWasn't Fortnite just a quick clone of PUBG once they saw it taking off?
- thrownblown 9y agoThis where the quotes around "benevolence" would come in. I'm a total fanboy for PUBG, so take this with a grain of salt, I totally understand why Bluehole threatened to sue when Fortnite released its PUBG copy. Now PUBG is in-and-of itself a copy of a copy (turtles all the way...) of a mod, so a lot of people balked at this. PUBG had made quite a bit of money for Epic, through the UE4 licencing fees. This is akin to Amazon noticing how much money you made them through AWS and deciding to offer a free (arguably better, although I've never played more than 5 minutes of Fortnite, too much cartoon!) version of your product. TBH, that analogy may be a bit unfair, but Epic is no saint.
- alexc05 9y agoAmazon does that with games in that they're offering the lumberyard game engine (a fork of crytek) for free as long as you use AWS. Amazon ALSO makes Amazon basics branded knock off of the popular physical items in store. There's an article about an aluminum laptop stand you might be able to Google for.
- gnahckire 9y agoFortnite BR is. The Fortnite game is not.
- kmfrk 9y agoSort of, but Epic Games seem to actually know how to program. PUBG, not unlike it's former competitor H1Z1, has languished with a terrible code base whose technical debt seems to have kept PUBG from ever really fixing things. The netcode is bad, the game runs AWFUL on all setups (Twitch streamers with state of the art computers were forced to play on low settings while streaming on the same computer), and there seem to be some particular performance issues with AMD CPUs. Cheating is also a major issue. So it was a clone, but basically a better one than the original. Fortnite is the first survivor game that just works. I felt bad for PUBG first, but PUBG is still such a huge mess, I do have to give it to Epic for building an extremely solid game that runs well and isn't rife with cheaters. Shame about the business model, though.
- ocdtrekkie 9y agoThe Paragon closure has come with a surprising number of upsides compared to the usual collapse of a game. I really wish more companies opened up their assets (or even the game code) upon the closure of a game they've written off. The other highlight note is that when Epic decided to shutdown Paragon, they opened up the refund offer for all purchases, not just really recent ones. They've taken essentially a complete loss on this entire project, that I believe had upwards of 100 developers working on it at one point. But given Fortnite's success, plus the general solid padding of cash Epic always gets from having one of the most popular game engines that everyone else uses, means they can afford it.
- ramy_d 9y agoWow I hadn't heard about the refunds. That's really uplifting.
- mbesto 9y ago> They've taken essentially a complete loss on this entire project It's a genius financial and strategical move, predicated by having a lucky monster success elsewhere in the company that required a quick influx of resources (Fortnite). They can effectively write off a failed game over the next 5 years, and reduce their tax burden as a result. They then act as a "benevolent" actor to the gaming development community by giving away assets that have no financial incentive to them. So they get a nice influx of resources and get to advertise to a new pool in the same breadth. That's a win-win. EDIT: I should also note - I was a benefactor of shifting my payment from Paragon to Fortnite. Given that it had no variable cost to give me $20 worth of skins in Fortnite, that's a pretty solid user acquisition strategy.
- Erlangolem 9y agoDeleted
- gmueckl 9y agoParagon was/is already a F2P "monster".
- benbristow 9y agoNice. I bet this is going to encourage more asset flips though.
- maaaats 9y agoWhat do you mean by asset flip? (And how would this encourage this)
- dgritsko 9y agoI've generally heard the term used to refer to low-effort games that are basically just third-party assets packaged up and sold as a full experience, while having little to no "playable content". The availability of these assets could encourage this since they are freely available.
- wlesieutre 9y agoIt's especially common to throw these together as "early access" games, pretending that they're still in development and will get deeper content at a later date.
- floatboth 9y agoYeah, often it's ad-supported App Store / Google Play titles, where one developer uses the same engine with different assets to make many games and hope someone accidentally downloads them and clicks the ads. Like the (in)famous Grab That Auto https://youtu.be/yU6WC4dpaHM https://youtu.be/yU6WC4dpaHM
- detaro 9y agoAn "Asset Flip" is a commercial game puzzled together from ready-made bits as cheap as possible (e.g. get some shooter template code, drop in some free/cheap character and weapon models, copy or make some really basic levels), without consideration for the quality of the resulting game.
- jimcsharp 9y agoIf you've ever followed a Hello World game building tutorial for UE or Unity, somebody has taken the end result of that tutorial and placed it on a game marketplace somewhere. It was/is a bit taboo, but the gaming phenomena PUBG also used UE marketplace assets, although they added value by making an enjoyable game around it.
- Erlangolem 9y agoDeleted
- eutropia 9y agoThe game had been out for a few years, but as a MOBA-style game (like DotA, or League of Legends; thus competing with two of the largest video games in the market period) it didn't attract a critical mass of players to keep the ongoing dev effort worthwhile.
- wlesieutre 9y agoBeing tilted more toward the 3D shooter style, also competing against Overwatch. Different gameplay objectives, but "class based team shooter" could describe either of them.
- trisimix 9y agoto be fair moba is pretty universal/vague too.
- wlesieutre 9y agoYeah, I honestly hate that name. Just by the meaning of words, Unreal Tournament is an "online multiplayer battle arena" but somehow it came to mean specifically "top-down Warcraft 3 custom map with fighting in 3 lanes" now. But the lane fighting genre has been all downhill since Monday Night Combat anyway, so I'm happy to ignore it :P
- delecti 9y agoA number of genre names are only meaningful because people already know what they refer to. Probably the best example is RPG, which ostensibly applies to effectively every game where the player controls a character with a persona.
- abiox 9y ago
- Dude2023 9y agoI wonder which engine it works best with...
- abiox 9y agogame assets tend to be highly engine-specific things by their very nature. it can be possible to start from some raw assets when moving to another engine, but even then you may have, say, a character rig setup that's great in one engine but a huge pain in the ass in another.
- teddyfrozevelt 9y agoI wonder which engine is the only one you're allowed to use it in.
- openbasic 9y agoWhat's the EULA on those assets? Are they UE4-only?
- detaro 9y agoEpic's assets on the marketplace are UE-only, yes.
- jsheard 9y agohttps://forums.unrealengine.com/unreal-engine/announcements-and-releases/1445832-12-million-worth-of-paragon-assets-released https://forums.unrealengine.com/unreal-engine/announcements-... Q: How much do I have pay for the Paragon assets? A: Nothing! They’re completely free. You can use them in both commercial and non-commercial Unreal Engine 4 projects. Q: Are there any restrictions on the use of the Paragon assets? A: As with all of Epic’s internally developed assets, the Paragon assets are only licensed for use in Unreal Engine 4.
- ixtli 9y agoCan someone with more knowledge comment on how strictly tied to the unreal ecosystem these assets are?
- dalore 9y ago> This content is now available free of charge in the Unreal Engine Marketplace, where developers may download Paragon packs to use in their own UE4 projects. So it's only for use in your UE4 project.
- extrememacaroni 9y agoAs per their license, you cannot use them outside of UE4. This means that while you may be able to pull out the assets from your UE project and import them in Unity, it's not legal to do so.
- AgentME 9y agoMaybe you could use them in another engine if you show the Unreal engine logo on startup and pay for the licensing of the Unreal engine. (Though I assume other proprietary engines like Unity have rules against portraying their engine as another with the other's logo shown first.)
- extrememacaroni 9y agoIf you have money to get Epic to make an exception for you, you likely don't need freebies like these assets ;)
- wlesieutre 9y agoPer the linked post, they're only licensed for use in UE4. You might be able to shoehorn them into something else, but copyright wise you're not authorized to.
- hardwaresofton 9y agoOne question before I cement Epic Games as a game company (or just tech company in general) that does things differently in an an interesting way: How easy is it to import/export models/ UnrealEngine assets to other platforms? If I want to use an asset from UnrealEngine in like godot, how easy would it be? This is pretty massive if it's really a no-strings-attached release of assets to the community but the skeptic in me says there's no way it's just that
- atkbrah 9y agoLooks like the assets are licensed for only to be used in UE4 based products https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/paragon-dekker https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/paragon-dekker
- hardwaresofton 9y agoAaaaand there it is. The've basically converted their writeoff to a lossleading/marketing spend. Nothing wrong with shrewd business moves, and I guess they're not trying to mislead people intentionally. Well nice of them to release the assets at least, I'm sure devs who are already committed to UE4 are pretty stoked.
- dawnerd 9y agoIm sure the people making quick asset flips won’t mind that.
- bitwize 9y agoThis reminds me of the Golgotha drop from 2000: unfinished code and assets from a scrapped game, released as open source/PD. I don't know what, if anything, ever became of those...
- abiox 9y agowow, thanks for reminding me of that. i remember this happening...brings back some memories. i was trying to learn to program my own games, and this event (despite the unfortunate circumstances) seemed like some gift from the gods in terms of being able to see the guts of a real game. looks like some stuff is on github: https://github.com/videogamepreservation/golgotha https://github.com/videogamepreservation/golgotha https://github.com/saniv/golgotha https://github.com/saniv/golgotha
- lostgame 9y ago>> "As with all of Epic’s internally developed assets, the Paragon assets are only licensed for use in Unreal Engine 4." 'You've raised my hopes and dashed them quite expertly, sir - bravo!'
- jlebrech 9y agoBrilliant, you can make a proof of concept VR game for example and make it look good.
- erikpukinskis 9y agoMaking 3d models look good on the screen and making them look good in VR usually optimize for different things.
- tekism 9y agoI know nothing about game development or the likes. But I just browsed the site. Wouldn't it make sense to maybe create a torrent or huge iso file of this info instead of downloading each asset manually?
- jcoffland 9y ago> Epic Games releases $12M worth of Paragon assets for free > The assets, built at a cost of over $12 million... It's a common mistake to assume that something is worth what it cost to create it.
- cupofjoakim 9y agoValue is relative, right? It depends on who looks at it. To Epic, they're definitely worth $12M whilst to you and me it's probably not more than a couple hundred bucks (unless you're a game dev in need of assets, that is),
- jcoffland 9y ago> To Epic, they're definitely worth $12M No, that's the fallacy. The assets are only worth $12 million to Epic if Epic has a viable way to reap $12 million in benefit from them. The fact that it cost Epic $12 million to create the assets has nothing to do with it. That's just sunk cost.
- tonyhb 9y agoThere's now a business loss of $12M on their books, so they're getting benefits on their next tax filing. That's where the real monetary value comes from.
- icebraining 9y agoWhich is a small percentage of $12M.
- chii 9y ago> loss of $12M on their books this is really hard to quantify independently, and they can use this figure to inflate their losses to claim more taxation benefit than otherwise deserved. Why can't i say that I "lost" 12million developing my indie game, and therefore, claim some taxes off my casual contract work?
- otalp 9y ago.
- scott_karana 9y agoWrong discussion? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16619917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16619917
- otalp 9y agooops
- omot 9y agoThis is how you redeem yourself, when you screw over a gaming community.
- arca_vorago 9y agoI've had and have my disagreements and issues with Epic lately, but kudos where kudos are due. Nice job Epic, especially on the listening part. (now can we get more gnu/linux love please?)
- reiichiroh 9y agoWon't the people of the internet just use this for Source Factory type porn?
- katastic 9y ago"Free" = For use in Unreal Engine only.