9 ms·

Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

160 points by intunderflow 3y ago

croes 3y ago
>That means that while the developers of big-selling games pay royalties, those who use Unreal Engine for film making and other uses pay nothing. Understandable but could introduce a revenue limit too.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  They have a revenue limit ($1M) but also currently only apply that to people who use the engine code in the delivered product (which is apprximately gaming uses, but could include some other interactive non-gaming use), not people who use the engine to produce things like movies that are distributed without the engine code.
  - croes 3y ago
    That's what I mean, a revenue limit for VFX would be good too
- wlesieutre 3y ago
  Article does say "There will be minimum revenue thresholds for commercial projecrs, and student/educator use will remain free"
  - croes 3y ago
    Missed that part, thanks
nullptr_deref 3y ago
This would probably drive all the hobbyist to learn something open source like Godot, wouldn't it? This would mean Godot would be the thing worth investing for.
- croes 3y ago
  It does not affect game developers, but only VFX artists who have never had to pay anything so far.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  No, it doesn't affect game developer hobbyists (actually, if anything, it makes them more secure, since Unreal would have a broader pool of paying clients and less beed to squeeze low-revenie games before they can afford it.) Unless you mean, e.g., movie-making hobbyists where they go from never having to pay to having some (probably, as currently exists for games, based on a revenue threshold) some condition where they would have to pay, which might drive some of them to a different toolchain, though if it is setup similar to gaming, it won't affect most hobbyists unless they have way unexpected success, so probably shouldn't rationally affect hobbyiat choices much.
  - Snafuh 3y ago
    Tim Sweeney confirmed on Twitter there will be a revenue threshold just like for game dev. Small time studios or individuals won't have to pay unless they make money. Lots of enterprise customer paid before already anyway for Epic's (questionable) support
  - zlg_codes 3y ago
    What incentives are there to learn Unreal if the money you make with it will be dipped into? That percentage is subject to change, too. I don't want the success of my game to ride on paying my game's protection/engine licensing fee. It's hard enough to make money with a game and Unreal makes it harder.
    - nrb 3y ago
      Unreal can make your game possible in the first place depending on your required functionality, timeline, and budget. That can be a mightily powerful incentive.
      - 3y ago
tomschwiha 3y ago
The headline may be better less clickbaity by clarifying "not free anymore for vfx or movie users".
- SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
  Movie VFX budgets are often in tens of millions anyway. Not sure that "not free" will kill them. I've heard it sad that "The three most expensive are wars, space programs and making movies".
  - johnnyanmac 3y ago
    I'm not worried at all about Disney paying more licenses. I'm honestly shocked to realize that the Madelorian was made and the engine behind it got nary a penny for it.
    - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
      The engine running on the virtual set screens (1) is a small part of the whole Mandolorian production. But yeah, "a small part" of a few $10 million budget would not trivial to Unreal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StageCraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StageCraft I see that I accidentally a word above. It's the word from the quote that I wasn't sure of ... "The three most expensive - One of (endeavours, enterprises, occupations, hobbies, pastimes, things) are"?
  - CyberDildonics 3y ago
    They didn't say it "will kill them" or anything about that, they were just correcting the title.
automatoney 3y ago
Hmmmm just given the recent Unity news, maybe this headline is a bit misleading as it seems to be focused on VFX users, and not game developers? Maybe "Unreal... be free for animators"?
AequitasOmnibus 3y ago
> Speaking at Unreal Fest 2023, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said Unreal Engine would become “a licensable piece of software like Maya or Photoshop” with a subscription-based pricing model. SAAS is rent-seeking at its worst. It’s predatory, anti-consumer and downright annoying. I hope this backfires on Epic.
- raytopia 3y ago
  It's only for non gamedevs who were paying $0 for the engine.
- tomschwiha 3y ago
  In contrary I like PhpStorm (and other Jetbrains software) which has a nice SAAS license. You always own the old versions or you keep subscribed and pay for upgrades. With evolving software (aka never finished) someone has to pay for the upgrades. In the best case its the existing user base. But true, most SAAS is just cash cow milking.
  - pxc 3y ago
    I'd say that PhpStorm doesn't really qualify as SaaS. Not all software subscriptions are SaaS. See, e.g., here: https://www.dataversity.net/saas-and-subscription-complements-not-synonyms/ https://www.dataversity.net/saas-and-subscription-complement... SaaS means someone else runs the software and your access to it is mediated by their service (usually a networked service). Some SaaS tests: If you can keep running it when your subscription runs out, it's not SaaS. If it runs on your own hardware, it's not SaaS. This concept creep elides the extraordinary level of alienation inherent in SaaS, which is exceptional even for proprietary software. This overly broad usage of the term can make the tradeoffs involved¹ in actual SaaS seem less severe than they are. -- 1: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...
    - tomschwiha 3y ago
      Makes sense, thank you for clarifying.
raytopia 3y ago
Honestly it makes sense. I was always a little confused that non-gamedevs had to pay 0. Of course that could've also just been the plan to get VFX and other industries onto Unreal Engine so Epic Games could start charging them later. I'm also confused how Epic Games has become unprofitable suddenly. I think I read somewhere it was in the last 10 weeks but I could be wrong about that.
- Manfred 3y ago
  The strategy is to worm your product into companies and make people comfortable with (or depend on) your tools. When there is enough adoption, you slide in and claim a piece of the pie.
  - yazzku 3y ago
    Mind if I slytherin?
  - slowmovintarget 3y ago
    Which is a good strategy when you don't do it retroactively, and you do give time to switch. If your product is best of breed (which UE5 is) it would make sense.
- Krutonium 3y ago
  It's not that they suddenly became unprofitable, it's that they're (partially) owned by Tencent, and Tencent is calling in their dues. Epic took their money to try and unseat Valve, which clearly did not work. Now the economy is taking a dip, so they need money.
  - SeanAnderson 3y ago
    Why do you feel this is Tencent's doing if they're not the majority shareholder?
    - moe_sc 3y ago
      Going with the theory this is caused by a shareholder: They own 40%, the only bigger stakeholder beeing Tim Sweeney, Epics CEO and founder. [1] Assuming Sweeney wouldn't be the one causing it, Tencent is the party that would be able to cause the most financial headaches. [1] https://www.fool.com/investing/how-to-invest/stocks/how-to-invest-in-epic-games/ https://www.fool.com/investing/how-to-invest/stocks/how-to-i...
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
[dupe]
- ChrisArchitect 3y ago
  Some more discussion earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37774917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37774917
JamesLeonis 3y ago
[flagged]
- whimsicalism 3y ago
  or just profit taking? I wouldn’t call raising prices enshittification.
- anonylizard 3y ago
  Its not obvious at all how this is enshittification. UE5 was previously provided for free in non-video game contexts, as they clearly were trying to expand their presence in say film production. Now they've succeeded, they are charging for it, what is so unfair about it? Are they expected to provide the engine for free? UE5 is also constantly trying intensive innovation. So the product quality is going up, not going down. Unity was bombed because it was trying some inane pricing model (imagine UE5 charging moviemakers by number of viewers). And the fact that Unity Engine itself was being heavily neglected. And fundraising is not relevant when their core business, Fortnite, is declining. Sorry fundraising != charity for employees.
  - sbarre 3y ago
    > UE5 was previously provided for free in non-video game contexts, as they clearly were trying to expand their presence in say film production. Now they've succeeded, they are charging for it, what is so unfair about it? 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"..
endisneigh 3y ago
Why should VFX people not have to pay when gamedevs did? There's no winning with people - ads bad, paying bad.
- ravenstine 3y ago
  I'm guessing because engines like Unreal have game developers in the bag. VFX, on the other hand, has been a long term pursuit of Unreal and can have a large payoff for them. Based on some second hand insider knowledge I have, the VFX and animation industries are all over the place in terms of tooling, and a lot of pipelines are more or less bass-ackwards, especially when it comes to the pre-visualization stage of production. Even big studios are relying on tools that would appear "legacy" to many software engineers and are inferior to game engines in a lot of ways. The status quo often remains because these studios are already making enough money and have little incentive to address their internal bureaucracy that prevents them from making legitimate improvements to their pipelines. There are plenty of technical directors and artists out there pushing to use things like Unreal Engine, but these efforts often go nowhere for a variety of reasons. I know of at least one major animation studio that pondered over utilizing Unreal for over a decade, and there's another major studio I'm aware of where they're trying to use Unreal but the organizational support just isn't there. Another problem I see in adoption of Unreal in animation is that the entertainment industry historically hasn't valued its engineers in the same way that Silicon Valley does. Unless you're working directly for a company like Unreal or Autodesk, why would a software engineer go work on some shitty duct-taped pipeline for a studio that will inevitably pay them less and make them work more hours, unless said engineer is particularly enamored with movies or shows? Based on what I know, I believe that the entertainment industry struggles to find and hold on to engineering talent, and not in the cliche way we hear from every company out there. However, if Unreal reaches the same level of ubiquity and vendor lock-in within VFX that Autodesk has, for instance, then it would be a humongous cash cow for them. They want to keep their engine free to that industry for that reason, and it's a big incentive considering the exorbitant costs typical to VFX software.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
lholden 3y ago
Very misleading article title. The licensing changes target big commercial usages outside of game development. (With revenue thresholds, similar to how it already works right now for game development.) For example, up until now Unreal has seen use in vfx for movie and tv production. The licensing model for Unreal was primarily oriented for game development, which meant that this wasn't generating any revenue for Epic unless that company opted into the optional support plan. Unlike the crazy situation with Unity, these changes are being announced in advance without affecting usage of previous versions of Unreal. (Not saying I like or care for subscriptions for software. But context helps understand what's going on here.) I'm surprised they didn't make this change sooner.
- ksec 3y ago
  >I'm surprised they didn't make this change sooner. Same here, I thought they were also earning big money from TV and Hollywood. As they have been constantly improving non-gaming usage in every release.
- lwhi 3y ago
  Yep, it seems pretty fair.
- Dylan16807 3y ago
  Based on your bullet points here, I'm not sure what you find misleading? The headline doesn't specifically say outside of games, but I don't think that makes it misleading, especially because the "for all" makes it clear that it's only about some cases. And people generally know that games pay. Being announced in advance, not affecting previous versions... none of that is implied otherwise by the headline.
  - aroo 3y ago
    "Unreal Engine will no longer be free for non-gaming companies" is 100x less misleading. You are right in that technically speaking it's not misleading, but to me it feels like it's skirting the line of lying by omission. Obviously now with hindsight I can see how the "for all" changes the meaning, but it wasn't obvious (at least to me).
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
dark-star 3y ago
Unreal Engine was never "free for all"...
justin66 3y ago
Burying this six paragraphs deep seems a little douchey: Sweeney has now clarified that there will be minimum revenue thresholds for commercial projects that have to pay for a subscription and that student and educator use of Unreal Engine will remain free.
lamontcg 3y ago
Seems like every company these days are trying to figure out how to increase the rents that they collect. No actual value add, just trying to optimize to make that top line number go up. It feels very end-of-business-cycle.
- diggan 3y ago
  Not sure you could argue that Unreal Engine hasn't provide any actual value, it basically helped spawn a whole new area in film production via the whole "Virtual Production Sets" that you can build with Unreal Engine.
  - lamontcg 3y ago
    I'm saying this pricing change doesn't add any value. I would be literally impossible to argue that UE doesn't add any value, which is why I'm not making that argument.
    - diggan 3y ago
      I'd say they already added the value but never charged for it, until now. Seems fair to me.
      - lamontcg 3y ago
        Which still means that this change doesn't add any value. I'm uninterested in if it is "fair" or not.
        diggan 3y ago
        So if someone builds something of value but doesn't charge for it until 2 years later, you'd say that they aren't providing value with this change? I mean, I get what you mean, but seems needlessly pedantic to just "forget" the thing that is being charged for and because there was no other changes made with the new price being added, the change itself isn't adding any value. Regardless, I get what you mean, no value for you that they start charging. True.
frameset 3y ago
What non-zero interest rates does to a company.
dang 3y ago
Recent and related: Unreal Engine Pricing Changes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37774917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37774917 - Oct 2023 (51 comments)

160 points by intunderflow 3y ago

>That means that while the developers of big-selling games pay royalties, those who use Unreal Engine for film making and other uses pay nothing. Understandable but could introduce a revenue limit too.

dragonwriter 3y ago
They have a revenue limit ($1M) but also currently only apply that to people who use the engine code in the delivered product (which is apprximately gaming uses, but could include some other interactive non-gaming use), not people who use the engine to produce things like movies that are distributed without the engine code.
- croes 3y ago
  That's what I mean, a revenue limit for VFX would be good too
wlesieutre 3y ago
Article does say "There will be minimum revenue thresholds for commercial projecrs, and student/educator use will remain free"
- croes 3y ago
  Missed that part, thanks

nullptr_deref 3y ago

This would probably drive all the hobbyist to learn something open source like Godot, wouldn't it? This would mean Godot would be the thing worth investing for.

croes 3y ago
It does not affect game developers, but only VFX artists who have never had to pay anything so far.
dragonwriter 3y ago
No, it doesn't affect game developer hobbyists (actually, if anything, it makes them more secure, since Unreal would have a broader pool of paying clients and less beed to squeeze low-revenie games before they can afford it.) Unless you mean, e.g., movie-making hobbyists where they go from never having to pay to having some (probably, as currently exists for games, based on a revenue threshold) some condition where they would have to pay, which might drive some of them to a different toolchain, though if it is setup similar to gaming, it won't affect most hobbyists unless they have way unexpected success, so probably shouldn't rationally affect hobbyiat choices much.
- Snafuh 3y ago
  Tim Sweeney confirmed on Twitter there will be a revenue threshold just like for game dev. Small time studios or individuals won't have to pay unless they make money. Lots of enterprise customer paid before already anyway for Epic's (questionable) support
- zlg_codes 3y ago
  What incentives are there to learn Unreal if the money you make with it will be dipped into? That percentage is subject to change, too. I don't want the success of my game to ride on paying my game's protection/engine licensing fee. It's hard enough to make money with a game and Unreal makes it harder.
  - nrb 3y ago
    Unreal can make your game possible in the first place depending on your required functionality, timeline, and budget. That can be a mightily powerful incentive.
    - 3y ago

tomschwiha 3y ago

The headline may be better less clickbaity by clarifying "not free anymore for vfx or movie users".

SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
Movie VFX budgets are often in tens of millions anyway. Not sure that "not free" will kill them. I've heard it sad that "The three most expensive are wars, space programs and making movies".
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  I'm not worried at all about Disney paying more licenses. I'm honestly shocked to realize that the Madelorian was made and the engine behind it got nary a penny for it.
  - SideburnsOfDoom 3y ago
    The engine running on the virtual set screens (1) is a small part of the whole Mandolorian production. But yeah, "a small part" of a few $10 million budget would not trivial to Unreal. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StageCraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StageCraft I see that I accidentally a word above. It's the word from the quote that I wasn't sure of ... "The three most expensive - One of (endeavours, enterprises, occupations, hobbies, pastimes, things) are"?
- CyberDildonics 3y ago
  They didn't say it "will kill them" or anything about that, they were just correcting the title.

automatoney 3y ago

Hmmmm just given the recent Unity news, maybe this headline is a bit misleading as it seems to be focused on VFX users, and not game developers? Maybe "Unreal... be free for animators"?

AequitasOmnibus 3y ago

> Speaking at Unreal Fest 2023, Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney said Unreal Engine would become “a licensable piece of software like Maya or Photoshop” with a subscription-based pricing model. SAAS is rent-seeking at its worst. It’s predatory, anti-consumer and downright annoying. I hope this backfires on Epic.

raytopia 3y ago
It's only for non gamedevs who were paying $0 for the engine.
tomschwiha 3y ago
In contrary I like PhpStorm (and other Jetbrains software) which has a nice SAAS license. You always own the old versions or you keep subscribed and pay for upgrades. With evolving software (aka never finished) someone has to pay for the upgrades. In the best case its the existing user base. But true, most SAAS is just cash cow milking.
- pxc 3y ago
  I'd say that PhpStorm doesn't really qualify as SaaS. Not all software subscriptions are SaaS. See, e.g., here: https://www.dataversity.net/saas-and-subscription-complements-not-synonyms/ https://www.dataversity.net/saas-and-subscription-complement... SaaS means someone else runs the software and your access to it is mediated by their service (usually a networked service). Some SaaS tests: If you can keep running it when your subscription runs out, it's not SaaS. If it runs on your own hardware, it's not SaaS. This concept creep elides the extraordinary level of alienation inherent in SaaS, which is exceptional even for proprietary software. This overly broad usage of the term can make the tradeoffs involved¹ in actual SaaS seem less severe than they are. -- 1: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.en.html https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-s...
  - tomschwiha 3y ago
    Makes sense, thank you for clarifying.

raytopia 3y ago

Honestly it makes sense. I was always a little confused that non-gamedevs had to pay 0. Of course that could've also just been the plan to get VFX and other industries onto Unreal Engine so Epic Games could start charging them later. I'm also confused how Epic Games has become unprofitable suddenly. I think I read somewhere it was in the last 10 weeks but I could be wrong about that.

Manfred 3y ago
The strategy is to worm your product into companies and make people comfortable with (or depend on) your tools. When there is enough adoption, you slide in and claim a piece of the pie.
- yazzku 3y ago
  Mind if I slytherin?
- slowmovintarget 3y ago
  Which is a good strategy when you don't do it retroactively, and you do give time to switch. If your product is best of breed (which UE5 is) it would make sense.
Krutonium 3y ago
It's not that they suddenly became unprofitable, it's that they're (partially) owned by Tencent, and Tencent is calling in their dues. Epic took their money to try and unseat Valve, which clearly did not work. Now the economy is taking a dip, so they need money.
- SeanAnderson 3y ago
  Why do you feel this is Tencent's doing if they're not the majority shareholder?
  - moe_sc 3y ago
    Going with the theory this is caused by a shareholder: They own 40%, the only bigger stakeholder beeing Tim Sweeney, Epics CEO and founder. [1] Assuming Sweeney wouldn't be the one causing it, Tencent is the party that would be able to cause the most financial headaches. [1] https://www.fool.com/investing/how-to-invest/stocks/how-to-invest-in-epic-games/ https://www.fool.com/investing/how-to-invest/stocks/how-to-i...

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

[dupe]

ChrisArchitect 3y ago
Some more discussion earlier: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37774917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37774917

JamesLeonis 3y ago

[flagged]

whimsicalism 3y ago
or just profit taking? I wouldn’t call raising prices enshittification.
anonylizard 3y ago
Its not obvious at all how this is enshittification. UE5 was previously provided for free in non-video game contexts, as they clearly were trying to expand their presence in say film production. Now they've succeeded, they are charging for it, what is so unfair about it? Are they expected to provide the engine for free? UE5 is also constantly trying intensive innovation. So the product quality is going up, not going down. Unity was bombed because it was trying some inane pricing model (imagine UE5 charging moviemakers by number of viewers). And the fact that Unity Engine itself was being heavily neglected. And fundraising is not relevant when their core business, Fortnite, is declining. Sorry fundraising != charity for employees.
- sbarre 3y ago
  > UE5 was previously provided for free in non-video game contexts, as they clearly were trying to expand their presence in say film production. Now they've succeeded, they are charging for it, what is so unfair about it? 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"..

endisneigh 3y ago

Why should VFX people not have to pay when gamedevs did? There's no winning with people - ads bad, paying bad.

ravenstine 3y ago
I'm guessing because engines like Unreal have game developers in the bag. VFX, on the other hand, has been a long term pursuit of Unreal and can have a large payoff for them. Based on some second hand insider knowledge I have, the VFX and animation industries are all over the place in terms of tooling, and a lot of pipelines are more or less bass-ackwards, especially when it comes to the pre-visualization stage of production. Even big studios are relying on tools that would appear "legacy" to many software engineers and are inferior to game engines in a lot of ways. The status quo often remains because these studios are already making enough money and have little incentive to address their internal bureaucracy that prevents them from making legitimate improvements to their pipelines. There are plenty of technical directors and artists out there pushing to use things like Unreal Engine, but these efforts often go nowhere for a variety of reasons. I know of at least one major animation studio that pondered over utilizing Unreal for over a decade, and there's another major studio I'm aware of where they're trying to use Unreal but the organizational support just isn't there. Another problem I see in adoption of Unreal in animation is that the entertainment industry historically hasn't valued its engineers in the same way that Silicon Valley does. Unless you're working directly for a company like Unreal or Autodesk, why would a software engineer go work on some shitty duct-taped pipeline for a studio that will inevitably pay them less and make them work more hours, unless said engineer is particularly enamored with movies or shows? Based on what I know, I believe that the entertainment industry struggles to find and hold on to engineering talent, and not in the cliche way we hear from every company out there. However, if Unreal reaches the same level of ubiquity and vendor lock-in within VFX that Autodesk has, for instance, then it would be a humongous cash cow for them. They want to keep their engine free to that industry for that reason, and it's a big incentive considering the exorbitant costs typical to VFX software.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]

lholden 3y ago

Very misleading article title. The licensing changes target big commercial usages outside of game development. (With revenue thresholds, similar to how it already works right now for game development.) For example, up until now Unreal has seen use in vfx for movie and tv production. The licensing model for Unreal was primarily oriented for game development, which meant that this wasn't generating any revenue for Epic unless that company opted into the optional support plan. Unlike the crazy situation with Unity, these changes are being announced in advance without affecting usage of previous versions of Unreal. (Not saying I like or care for subscriptions for software. But context helps understand what's going on here.) I'm surprised they didn't make this change sooner.

ksec 3y ago
>I'm surprised they didn't make this change sooner. Same here, I thought they were also earning big money from TV and Hollywood. As they have been constantly improving non-gaming usage in every release.
lwhi 3y ago
Yep, it seems pretty fair.
Dylan16807 3y ago
Based on your bullet points here, I'm not sure what you find misleading? The headline doesn't specifically say outside of games, but I don't think that makes it misleading, especially because the "for all" makes it clear that it's only about some cases. And people generally know that games pay. Being announced in advance, not affecting previous versions... none of that is implied otherwise by the headline.
- aroo 3y ago
  "Unreal Engine will no longer be free for non-gaming companies" is 100x less misleading. You are right in that technically speaking it's not misleading, but to me it feels like it's skirting the line of lying by omission. Obviously now with hindsight I can see how the "for all" changes the meaning, but it wasn't obvious (at least to me).

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

dark-star 3y ago

Unreal Engine was never "free for all"...

justin66 3y ago

Burying this six paragraphs deep seems a little douchey: Sweeney has now clarified that there will be minimum revenue thresholds for commercial projects that have to pay for a subscription and that student and educator use of Unreal Engine will remain free.

lamontcg 3y ago

Seems like every company these days are trying to figure out how to increase the rents that they collect. No actual value add, just trying to optimize to make that top line number go up. It feels very end-of-business-cycle.

diggan 3y ago
Not sure you could argue that Unreal Engine hasn't provide any actual value, it basically helped spawn a whole new area in film production via the whole "Virtual Production Sets" that you can build with Unreal Engine.
- lamontcg 3y ago
  I'm saying this pricing change doesn't add any value. I would be literally impossible to argue that UE doesn't add any value, which is why I'm not making that argument.
  - diggan 3y ago
    I'd say they already added the value but never charged for it, until now. Seems fair to me.
    - lamontcg 3y ago
      Which still means that this change doesn't add any value. I'm uninterested in if it is "fair" or not.
      - diggan 3y ago
        So if someone builds something of value but doesn't charge for it until 2 years later, you'd say that they aren't providing value with this change? I mean, I get what you mean, but seems needlessly pedantic to just "forget" the thing that is being charged for and because there was no other changes made with the new price being added, the change itself isn't adding any value. Regardless, I get what you mean, no value for you that they start charging. True.

frameset 3y ago

What non-zero interest rates does to a company.

dang 3y ago

Recent and related: Unreal Engine Pricing Changes - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37774917 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37774917 - Oct 2023 (51 comments)