6 ms·

Unreal Engine Pricing Changes

45 points by mdtrooper 3y ago

jauntywundrkind 3y ago
It seems like this couldn't hold. A lot of companies are developing visualizations or interactive systems to look cool, look high tech as shit, but where the 3d is somewhat bolt on, not the core product. If these companies just give away their 3d stuff, how was Epic ever going to make money on them? Epic is probably happy doing a couple feature pieces like virtual production in the Mandalorian, but eventually they're going to want to not just give Unreal away to any enterprise who wants to use the tech. It's boggled my mind wondering what Epic would eventually turn to to convert this Unreal for non-core-product from a give-away into a market. I guess per-seat licensing shouldn't be a surprise; few others have figured out straightforward predictable pricing models to supply software with.
- Jensson 3y ago
  Companies that pays a salary for someone to work on 3d visualizations can also afford to pay epic for a subscription, it doesn't change anything fundamental its just a small extra fee for the company/contractor. The reason this doesn't work for games is that many games are made by unsalaried hobbyists just playing around, there revenue share is much more reasonable than a per seat cost for both parties. Epic wants to get a part if the game goes big, hobbyists don't want to pay if they make no money.
  - baq 3y ago
    The actual reason it doesn't work for most games is that most games are free to play... and any non-trivial per-install cost makes the value proposition fall apart. If you're collecting $20 you'll take a hit, but it won't blow your business up immediately.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      Isn't this a per-dev fee? Which is completely different from per-install.
      - baq 3y ago
        Yes, absolutely. I had the Unity fiasco in mind. Epic has seen Unity blow itself up on the minefield and is likely reconsidering the path forward.
    - hcks 3y ago
      So you mean Unity decision will marginally disincentivize low-quality, free to play games with in game micro-transactions, and incentivise high quality, pay upfront games? Are we supposed to be mad about this?
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  This the same company that's shooting cannons of money at random targets to attract people to their game store. Letting free apps use the engine for free was something that could have held.
mdtrooper 3y ago
If I were the Epic CEO, I hold these bad news for several months, because the people has in their brain the Unity fee.
- birracerveza 3y ago
  Which is why the change is only for non-game apps... For now, at least
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    Games already have a 5% royalty. Epic makes $0 if an automotive company uses UE for doing concept visualization.
  - Culonavirus 3y ago
    I don't think a severe price hike would make that much sense for games. The current setup of not paying anything until your product makes $1M (gross revenue) and then 5% is obviously way too generous and will get corrected. I could see 100k and 7%. But changing the licence model entirely to an ongoing, per seat model would create a barrier to entry. The indie/hobbyist segment is very large, and a lot of these people end up working on UE for someone else if their own project fails. Lots of UE devs on the market is what Epic wants. If you charge the indies/hobbyists, you will not get more money, these are tiny companies or individuals operating on close to zero budget.
Animats 3y ago
Oh, I'm so glad I didn't use Unreal Engine for my metaverse client.
- pavlov 3y ago
  I think that qualifies as a game, unless you’re targeting a specific business vertical?
  - andybak 3y ago
    I think it's going to be fun watching Epic define "game" unambiguously.
- tweakimp 3y ago
  Jokes on you, you built something for the metaverse.
  - andybak 3y ago
    Which metaverse are you mocking? The web3/blockchain one? The specific Meta one? Or the broader definition which (depending on your precise definition) is doing rather well. My point is that there's no agreed term. Some people include Fortnite or Roblox. Some people say it has to involve a VR headset (VR Chat still has pretty healthy active user numbers). So - whether I want to join in with your mirth rather depends which definition of "metaverse" you're mocking.
    - Dylan16807 3y ago
      You're asking the wrong person.
    - secretsatan 3y ago
      Who calls Fortnite and Roblox 'Metaverse'?
      - andybak 3y ago
petepete 3y ago
When does a 'visual tour' (or whatever a virtual house showing is called) become a game? Collect all the coins? Use a crowbar to break up the crates in the garage?
- Topfi 3y ago
  I agree with you that there is a lot of room for ambiguity here. I'd imagine their target are e.g. architectural studios and advertisers, but how much interactivity is too much or whether this is separated by the platform a UE project is distributed by are questions that need to be clearly answered. The fact that, after the recent communication issues/attempt to pull the rug over the entire industry (depending on whom you ask) by Unity, Epic didn't prepare a detailed and easy to understand page explaining this topic in detail, rather announcing this in a speech, is somewhat disappointing and shows an apparent unwillingness to learn from their competitors missteps.
  - charcircuit 3y ago
    >Epic didn't prepare a detailed and easy to understand page explaining this topic in detail The pricing change hasn't been announced yet. This was an announcement of an announcement.
- tormeh 3y ago
  Is it sold on Steam? On Itch/EGS? Any of the consoles? It's very easy to figure this out.
  - zo1 3y ago
    They can publish it as WIP/private/in-dev/not-entirely-pubic for 1 month on Itch/EGS/Steam, and then take it down after their client has seen it. Point being that it's not "very easy" to figure this out, as the individuals that want to skirt this rule will find a way that ticks the boxes but doesn't satisfy the intent.
  - SquareWheel 3y ago
    Steam sells software and soundtracks, and previously sold movies. Epic sells developer asset packs. itch.io is even less discerning. I don't think that metrics holds well for determining what is a game.
ireallywantthat 3y ago
Could be a huge win for Godot.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Usually given as example in these last weeks, always forgetting about lack of feature parity.
  - TulliusCicero 3y ago
    Nobody's forgetting about it. Godot is trying to be a competitor, but realistically they don't have nearly the funding or total manpower that Unity or Unreal have, at least at the moment, but at the same time, they're still making good progress on being viable for some things (they're already very viable for most 2D games, and 3D games with simple graphics).
    - pjmlp 3y ago
      Doesn't look like it, given the amount of times it keeps being pushed as "alternative".
- Narann 3y ago
  Unreal for VFX is hard to scale, but have some interesting iterative advantages. If Godot is the alternative, VFX will likely fall back to path tracing.
- mattigames 3y ago
  That reads suspiciously similar to that dreaded meme of "this is good for Bitcoin"
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    I can see a little resemblance in bringing up something that didn't need to come up, but a competitor raising prices is pretty relevant. And that meme didn't really take off until it was about all kind of bad events, arguing that actually they were good things, and that's clearly not what's happening here.
ShadowBanThis01 3y ago
I wasn't impressed when I installed the UE developer materials and it put adware on my computer that displayed a banner on my desktop, without my permission. And Epic went to lengths to hide this garbage on my system (a Mac) to make it a PITA to find and remove. That is some low-rent, offensive BS. Did a quick search just now and found reports of antiviruses flagging it as malware. And oh yeah, I think it was the "Epic Games Launcher" that is in fact shitware that pollutes your system. And the more you look into this, the more hate you find among UE users for Epic and its allegedly shady, offensive software. Very disappointing. I was truly astounded that a company at this level resorts to malware to... do what, exactly? It's mystifying that they would be stupid enough to pollute developers' systems. ---- It's amusing to watch the vote count go up and down, as aggrieved devs battle shills and apologists over this issue. We were +2 a minute ago, now at zero. Who tries to bury such basic and easily verifiable assertions? Just one rant I found about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckepic/comments/bztwxx/epic_launcher_has_adware/ https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckepic/comments/bztwxx/epic_launc...
gumballindie 3y ago
I am not sure why the backlash. I am in favour of godot, but i dont see an issue with unreal wanting to monetise that segment. It’s far from what unity did, and tim is certainly not a mediocre ceo. I think unreal should also consider a “lighter” engine version, thats less demanding in resources, to carve out some of unity’s market share in the mobile segment.
mdtrooper 3y ago
It is a good time for send the showreel of serious apps in Godot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kKp0oguzr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kKp0oguzr8 I know a free software monitoring tool made with Godot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVAU2JjvHug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVAU2JjvHug https://github.com/someengineering/resoto https://github.com/someengineering/resoto
- joegibbs 3y ago
  I don't know, if I was at an architecture firm or a movie studio and saw this I wouldn't consider switching to Godot. They're fine, there's nothing wrong with them particularly, but they're very indie, very programmer-y, very 2D and not very graphically intensive. I've had a look at some of the Godot graphical showcases and the best stuff there is on par with the late 360 era, probably not on the level of the original release of UE4. If you're using Unreal Engine it's probably because you want the very best graphics and peformance and you want it to be usable for artists or architects without requiring them to learn to code. I just don't think Godot can compete in those areas until we start to see scenes which are on the same level of graphical fidelity as UE.
  - phiresky 3y ago
    The video above is the "Apps & Tools" showcase. Here's the desktop/console games showcase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAS_pUTFA7o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAS_pUTFA7o
    - secretsatan 3y ago
      Yeah, I don't see how that competes with Unreal in this space on any level.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  And is here a showreel of using Unreal, https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/events/state-of-unreal https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/events/state-of-unreal
methou 3y ago
Fun fact: QQ, one of the most popular chat app in China, started using unreal some time ago. https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3164819/tencent-quietly-updates-qq-unreal-game-engine-possible-metaverse-move https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3164819/tencent-q...
- gok 3y ago
  Because Tencent owns both Epic and QQ
sylware 3y ago
Unity did open the pandora box, to some extend of course. In the realm of c++ abominations, you also have the star citizen 3D engine. But if you don't need 3D, you better off using a 2D GFX toolkit and just be careful with the OS interfaces usages. Look at nuklear 2D GFX, everything in one C/c++ header file, and I bet it does a good enough job for already tons of apps.
stuckinhell 3y ago
Lol it's sad and funny at the same time. Game engines need a good FOSS 3d solution.
- mnk47 3y ago
  O3DE[0] looks interesting - owned by the Linux Foundation, originally based on Amazon's Lumberyard, and it has some big players involved: Amazon, Epic Games(!), Microsoft, NVIDIA, Intel, Huawei, Red Hat, and more. Seems to be in very early stages though. [0] https://o3de.org https://o3de.org

45 points by mdtrooper 3y ago

It seems like this couldn't hold. A lot of companies are developing visualizations or interactive systems to look cool, look high tech as shit, but where the 3d is somewhat bolt on, not the core product. If these companies just give away their 3d stuff, how was Epic ever going to make money on them? Epic is probably happy doing a couple feature pieces like virtual production in the Mandalorian, but eventually they're going to want to not just give Unreal away to any enterprise who wants to use the tech. It's boggled my mind wondering what Epic would eventually turn to to convert this Unreal for non-core-product from a give-away into a market. I guess per-seat licensing shouldn't be a surprise; few others have figured out straightforward predictable pricing models to supply software with.

Jensson 3y ago
Companies that pays a salary for someone to work on 3d visualizations can also afford to pay epic for a subscription, it doesn't change anything fundamental its just a small extra fee for the company/contractor. The reason this doesn't work for games is that many games are made by unsalaried hobbyists just playing around, there revenue share is much more reasonable than a per seat cost for both parties. Epic wants to get a part if the game goes big, hobbyists don't want to pay if they make no money.
- baq 3y ago
  The actual reason it doesn't work for most games is that most games are free to play... and any non-trivial per-install cost makes the value proposition fall apart. If you're collecting $20 you'll take a hit, but it won't blow your business up immediately.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    Isn't this a per-dev fee? Which is completely different from per-install.
    - baq 3y ago
      Yes, absolutely. I had the Unity fiasco in mind. Epic has seen Unity blow itself up on the minefield and is likely reconsidering the path forward.
  - hcks 3y ago
    So you mean Unity decision will marginally disincentivize low-quality, free to play games with in game micro-transactions, and incentivise high quality, pay upfront games? Are we supposed to be mad about this?
Dylan16807 3y ago
This the same company that's shooting cannons of money at random targets to attract people to their game store. Letting free apps use the engine for free was something that could have held.

mdtrooper 3y ago

If I were the Epic CEO, I hold these bad news for several months, because the people has in their brain the Unity fee.

birracerveza 3y ago
Which is why the change is only for non-game apps... For now, at least
- charcircuit 3y ago
  Games already have a 5% royalty. Epic makes $0 if an automotive company uses UE for doing concept visualization.
- Culonavirus 3y ago
  I don't think a severe price hike would make that much sense for games. The current setup of not paying anything until your product makes $1M (gross revenue) and then 5% is obviously way too generous and will get corrected. I could see 100k and 7%. But changing the licence model entirely to an ongoing, per seat model would create a barrier to entry. The indie/hobbyist segment is very large, and a lot of these people end up working on UE for someone else if their own project fails. Lots of UE devs on the market is what Epic wants. If you charge the indies/hobbyists, you will not get more money, these are tiny companies or individuals operating on close to zero budget.

Animats 3y ago

Oh, I'm so glad I didn't use Unreal Engine for my metaverse client.

pavlov 3y ago
I think that qualifies as a game, unless you’re targeting a specific business vertical?
- andybak 3y ago
  I think it's going to be fun watching Epic define "game" unambiguously.
tweakimp 3y ago
Jokes on you, you built something for the metaverse.
- andybak 3y ago
  Which metaverse are you mocking? The web3/blockchain one? The specific Meta one? Or the broader definition which (depending on your precise definition) is doing rather well. My point is that there's no agreed term. Some people include Fortnite or Roblox. Some people say it has to involve a VR headset (VR Chat still has pretty healthy active user numbers). So - whether I want to join in with your mirth rather depends which definition of "metaverse" you're mocking.
  - Dylan16807 3y ago
    You're asking the wrong person.
  - secretsatan 3y ago
    Who calls Fortnite and Roblox 'Metaverse'?
    - andybak 3y ago

petepete 3y ago

When does a 'visual tour' (or whatever a virtual house showing is called) become a game? Collect all the coins? Use a crowbar to break up the crates in the garage?

Topfi 3y ago
I agree with you that there is a lot of room for ambiguity here. I'd imagine their target are e.g. architectural studios and advertisers, but how much interactivity is too much or whether this is separated by the platform a UE project is distributed by are questions that need to be clearly answered. The fact that, after the recent communication issues/attempt to pull the rug over the entire industry (depending on whom you ask) by Unity, Epic didn't prepare a detailed and easy to understand page explaining this topic in detail, rather announcing this in a speech, is somewhat disappointing and shows an apparent unwillingness to learn from their competitors missteps.
- charcircuit 3y ago
  >Epic didn't prepare a detailed and easy to understand page explaining this topic in detail The pricing change hasn't been announced yet. This was an announcement of an announcement.
tormeh 3y ago
Is it sold on Steam? On Itch/EGS? Any of the consoles? It's very easy to figure this out.
- zo1 3y ago
  They can publish it as WIP/private/in-dev/not-entirely-pubic for 1 month on Itch/EGS/Steam, and then take it down after their client has seen it. Point being that it's not "very easy" to figure this out, as the individuals that want to skirt this rule will find a way that ticks the boxes but doesn't satisfy the intent.
- SquareWheel 3y ago
  Steam sells software and soundtracks, and previously sold movies. Epic sells developer asset packs. itch.io is even less discerning. I don't think that metrics holds well for determining what is a game.

ireallywantthat 3y ago

Could be a huge win for Godot.

pjmlp 3y ago
Usually given as example in these last weeks, always forgetting about lack of feature parity.
- TulliusCicero 3y ago
  Nobody's forgetting about it. Godot is trying to be a competitor, but realistically they don't have nearly the funding or total manpower that Unity or Unreal have, at least at the moment, but at the same time, they're still making good progress on being viable for some things (they're already very viable for most 2D games, and 3D games with simple graphics).
  - pjmlp 3y ago
    Doesn't look like it, given the amount of times it keeps being pushed as "alternative".
Narann 3y ago
Unreal for VFX is hard to scale, but have some interesting iterative advantages. If Godot is the alternative, VFX will likely fall back to path tracing.
mattigames 3y ago
That reads suspiciously similar to that dreaded meme of "this is good for Bitcoin"
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  I can see a little resemblance in bringing up something that didn't need to come up, but a competitor raising prices is pretty relevant. And that meme didn't really take off until it was about all kind of bad events, arguing that actually they were good things, and that's clearly not what's happening here.

ShadowBanThis01 3y ago

I wasn't impressed when I installed the UE developer materials and it put adware on my computer that displayed a banner on my desktop, without my permission. And Epic went to lengths to hide this garbage on my system (a Mac) to make it a PITA to find and remove. That is some low-rent, offensive BS. Did a quick search just now and found reports of antiviruses flagging it as malware. And oh yeah, I think it was the "Epic Games Launcher" that is in fact shitware that pollutes your system. And the more you look into this, the more hate you find among UE users for Epic and its allegedly shady, offensive software. Very disappointing. I was truly astounded that a company at this level resorts to malware to... do what, exactly? It's mystifying that they would be stupid enough to pollute developers' systems. ---- It's amusing to watch the vote count go up and down, as aggrieved devs battle shills and apologists over this issue. We were +2 a minute ago, now at zero. Who tries to bury such basic and easily verifiable assertions? Just one rant I found about it: https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckepic/comments/bztwxx/epic_launcher_has_adware/ https://www.reddit.com/r/fuckepic/comments/bztwxx/epic_launc...

gumballindie 3y ago

I am not sure why the backlash. I am in favour of godot, but i dont see an issue with unreal wanting to monetise that segment. It’s far from what unity did, and tim is certainly not a mediocre ceo. I think unreal should also consider a “lighter” engine version, thats less demanding in resources, to carve out some of unity’s market share in the mobile segment.

mdtrooper 3y ago

It is a good time for send the showreel of serious apps in Godot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kKp0oguzr8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kKp0oguzr8 I know a free software monitoring tool made with Godot: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVAU2JjvHug https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVAU2JjvHug https://github.com/someengineering/resoto https://github.com/someengineering/resoto

joegibbs 3y ago
I don't know, if I was at an architecture firm or a movie studio and saw this I wouldn't consider switching to Godot. They're fine, there's nothing wrong with them particularly, but they're very indie, very programmer-y, very 2D and not very graphically intensive. I've had a look at some of the Godot graphical showcases and the best stuff there is on par with the late 360 era, probably not on the level of the original release of UE4. If you're using Unreal Engine it's probably because you want the very best graphics and peformance and you want it to be usable for artists or architects without requiring them to learn to code. I just don't think Godot can compete in those areas until we start to see scenes which are on the same level of graphical fidelity as UE.
- phiresky 3y ago
  The video above is the "Apps & Tools" showcase. Here's the desktop/console games showcase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAS_pUTFA7o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UAS_pUTFA7o
  - secretsatan 3y ago
    Yeah, I don't see how that competes with Unreal in this space on any level.
pjmlp 3y ago
And is here a showreel of using Unreal, https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/events/state-of-unreal https://www.unrealengine.com/en-US/events/state-of-unreal

methou 3y ago

Fun fact: QQ, one of the most popular chat app in China, started using unreal some time ago. https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3164819/tencent-quietly-updates-qq-unreal-game-engine-possible-metaverse-move https://www.scmp.com/tech/big-tech/article/3164819/tencent-q...

gok 3y ago
Because Tencent owns both Epic and QQ

sylware 3y ago

Unity did open the pandora box, to some extend of course. In the realm of c++ abominations, you also have the star citizen 3D engine. But if you don't need 3D, you better off using a 2D GFX toolkit and just be careful with the OS interfaces usages. Look at nuklear 2D GFX, everything in one C/c++ header file, and I bet it does a good enough job for already tons of apps.

stuckinhell 3y ago

Lol it's sad and funny at the same time. Game engines need a good FOSS 3d solution.

mnk47 3y ago
O3DE[0] looks interesting - owned by the Linux Foundation, originally based on Amazon's Lumberyard, and it has some big players involved: Amazon, Epic Games(!), Microsoft, NVIDIA, Intel, Huawei, Red Hat, and more. Seems to be in very early stages though. [0] https://o3de.org https://o3de.org