5 ms·

the $19 paywall complicates all things. complicates distrbution. their github repo cannot be public. etc. If you going for indies, why not just go all in and ma

by pdeva1 13y ago

the $19 paywall complicates all things. complicates distrbution. their github repo cannot be public. etc. If you going for indies, why not just go all in and make it free to start. The money they make is on the 5% not $19

bobx11 13y ago
$20 is just the tire kicker filter... all those people who would never actually ship a game (most devs) are not going to waste the time of the unreal engine team with their beginner requests.
- odonnellryan 13y ago
  Then again, just promoting the community would inevitably help many companies involved by generating programmers and other enthusiasts.
  - Jare 13y ago
    To target passionate enthusiasts while retaining control, they could have waved the initial $19 fee to anyone who signs up only during GDC week. IIRC Unity did something similar a couple of years ago with their 3.5 non-Pro mobile plugins, shortly before releasing Unity 4, and the experiment eventually convinced them to provide free non-Pro licenses across the board (consoles excluded of course).
mattzito 13y ago
If I had to guess, it's designed as a threshold barrier so they don't have to deal with trying to track down thousands of "projects" where the developer is someone who had big plans to build a game but got bored a week in. At least now, presumably the $19 at least covers the operating costs of tracking all the people you might need to be collecting license revenue from.
- pdeva1 13y ago
  well thats the whole point of opening it to the community. that 'failed project' developer will himself gain a lot of experience that he can freely share. I dont think they care about hunting down extremely tiny devs and even $19 doesnt cover that cost.
  - potatolicious 13y ago
    The key thing to understand about game development is that everyone wants to be a game developer, in the same way everyone wants to be a rock star, or a famous actor. It's a prestige profession, which means most self-professed practitioners of it don't actually practice at all. Put plainly, that "failed project" developer is in all likelihood not a developer at all. That "failed project" developer likely has never written a line of code in his/her life. That "failed project" developer is much more likely to be some schmuck with starry-eyed naivete about game dev and thinks the UDK is some magical unicorn that will carry them to fame and fortune. That won't stop said "developer" from flooding the forums with inane questions that anyone who has written code before would have figured out already. They are noise in the system, and as far as game dev goes they outnumber the people who actually know what they're doing. There are tire kickers (people who are technically proficient but don't really want to license your software), and then there are tire kickers (people with little/no technical ability who have played many games and imagine themselves capable of making them, and downloaded your SDK on the assumption that they can point and click their way to success). The latter group generates a stupid amount of customer support load.
    - wernercd 13y ago
      Make UnrealDev.StackExchange or something similar... push $20/month people there. Have a separate tier for "paying" customers. Problem solved all around.
- sillysaurus3 13y ago
  Actually, they only care about 5% of the big successes, just like any good investors. Or at least that's what they should be caring about.
adventured 13y ago
They likely realize what they're doing. I'd wager it's a friction fee. Markets often have fees just to add friction to eliminate some problems that derive from completely free access. They clearly don't care about the $19, it's meaningless except for one plausible purpose.
- Fuxy 13y ago
  It's not $19 it's $19/month that's a large friction fee. They would be making money even when the game is in development. Say your game takes 1 year to make well you have just spent over $200 and still haven't made any money. That's an unnecessary burden on indie developers.
  - adventured 13y ago
    $200 is a burden? You're serious? It's not a meaningful fee at all. Particularly given the technology in question. You do realize how valuable this technology is, and how much it would otherwise cost? You don't build a serious UE4 based title with no budget. If you have an interesting project and want to get started, but don't have $240 to cover a year: raise donations, try kickstarter, borrow $60 from your aunt to get started. At $19 the options are plentiful. If you can't find $500 for your UE4 engine game over time, I'd argue you stand zero chance of ever completing it. UE4 is a beast of an engine, it's not a one man job to build and launch a serious game. So if you can put together a real team of developers to build a serious game, $200 or $500 is the absolute least of your worries. And if you're just looking to learn, $19 is not a lot of money to have unfettered access to one of the best engines in gaming.
  - jerf 13y ago
    Even for Indie developers, if $19/month is not a trivial component of your budget, for something as foundational as this, you can't afford to be making games. Epic's marketing is correct here; if the engine is worth anything to you at all, it's worth way more than what they're asking here. If it can't save you $200's worth of time and effort in one year, it was a bad choice to ever go with it. (That's not rhetorical; there are certainly cases where this is the wrong engine and isn't worth it for your project, even free. Being industrial strength comes with its costs, and you may be better off with something that has traded power for ease-of-use and speed of development.)
davidjhall 13y ago
Regarding the tire kickers, could you just subscribe for 1 month, download the source, and then cancel? You wouldn't get access to the forums and the latest code, but if you wanted to get your feet wet and see where your skills take you, you can try it out (for $19) and then come back on board when you have a game coming close to finish.
- davidjhall 13y ago
  Answered my own question: from https://www.unrealengine.com/faq https://www.unrealengine.com/faq When you cancel your subscription, you won’t receive access to future releases of Unreal Engine 4, however your login will remain active, and you are free to continue using the versions of Unreal Engine 4 which you obtained as a subscriber under the terms of the EULA.

by pdeva1 13y ago

bobx11 13y ago

$20 is just the tire kicker filter... all those people who would never actually ship a game (most devs) are not going to waste the time of the unreal engine team with their beginner requests.

odonnellryan 13y ago
Then again, just promoting the community would inevitably help many companies involved by generating programmers and other enthusiasts.
- Jare 13y ago
  To target passionate enthusiasts while retaining control, they could have waved the initial $19 fee to anyone who signs up only during GDC week. IIRC Unity did something similar a couple of years ago with their 3.5 non-Pro mobile plugins, shortly before releasing Unity 4, and the experiment eventually convinced them to provide free non-Pro licenses across the board (consoles excluded of course).

mattzito 13y ago

If I had to guess, it's designed as a threshold barrier so they don't have to deal with trying to track down thousands of "projects" where the developer is someone who had big plans to build a game but got bored a week in. At least now, presumably the $19 at least covers the operating costs of tracking all the people you might need to be collecting license revenue from.

pdeva1 13y ago
well thats the whole point of opening it to the community. that 'failed project' developer will himself gain a lot of experience that he can freely share. I dont think they care about hunting down extremely tiny devs and even $19 doesnt cover that cost.
- potatolicious 13y ago
  The key thing to understand about game development is that everyone wants to be a game developer, in the same way everyone wants to be a rock star, or a famous actor. It's a prestige profession, which means most self-professed practitioners of it don't actually practice at all. Put plainly, that "failed project" developer is in all likelihood not a developer at all. That "failed project" developer likely has never written a line of code in his/her life. That "failed project" developer is much more likely to be some schmuck with starry-eyed naivete about game dev and thinks the UDK is some magical unicorn that will carry them to fame and fortune. That won't stop said "developer" from flooding the forums with inane questions that anyone who has written code before would have figured out already. They are noise in the system, and as far as game dev goes they outnumber the people who actually know what they're doing. There are tire kickers (people who are technically proficient but don't really want to license your software), and then there are tire kickers (people with little/no technical ability who have played many games and imagine themselves capable of making them, and downloaded your SDK on the assumption that they can point and click their way to success). The latter group generates a stupid amount of customer support load.
  - wernercd 13y ago
    Make UnrealDev.StackExchange or something similar... push $20/month people there. Have a separate tier for "paying" customers. Problem solved all around.
sillysaurus3 13y ago
Actually, they only care about 5% of the big successes, just like any good investors. Or at least that's what they should be caring about.

adventured 13y ago

They likely realize what they're doing. I'd wager it's a friction fee. Markets often have fees just to add friction to eliminate some problems that derive from completely free access. They clearly don't care about the $19, it's meaningless except for one plausible purpose.

Fuxy 13y ago
It's not $19 it's $19/month that's a large friction fee. They would be making money even when the game is in development. Say your game takes 1 year to make well you have just spent over $200 and still haven't made any money. That's an unnecessary burden on indie developers.
- adventured 13y ago
  $200 is a burden? You're serious? It's not a meaningful fee at all. Particularly given the technology in question. You do realize how valuable this technology is, and how much it would otherwise cost? You don't build a serious UE4 based title with no budget. If you have an interesting project and want to get started, but don't have $240 to cover a year: raise donations, try kickstarter, borrow $60 from your aunt to get started. At $19 the options are plentiful. If you can't find $500 for your UE4 engine game over time, I'd argue you stand zero chance of ever completing it. UE4 is a beast of an engine, it's not a one man job to build and launch a serious game. So if you can put together a real team of developers to build a serious game, $200 or $500 is the absolute least of your worries. And if you're just looking to learn, $19 is not a lot of money to have unfettered access to one of the best engines in gaming.
- jerf 13y ago
  Even for Indie developers, if $19/month is not a trivial component of your budget, for something as foundational as this, you can't afford to be making games. Epic's marketing is correct here; if the engine is worth anything to you at all, it's worth way more than what they're asking here. If it can't save you $200's worth of time and effort in one year, it was a bad choice to ever go with it. (That's not rhetorical; there are certainly cases where this is the wrong engine and isn't worth it for your project, even free. Being industrial strength comes with its costs, and you may be better off with something that has traded power for ease-of-use and speed of development.)

davidjhall 13y ago

Regarding the tire kickers, could you just subscribe for 1 month, download the source, and then cancel? You wouldn't get access to the forums and the latest code, but if you wanted to get your feet wet and see where your skills take you, you can try it out (for $19) and then come back on board when you have a game coming close to finish.

davidjhall 13y ago
Answered my own question: from https://www.unrealengine.com/faq https://www.unrealengine.com/faq When you cancel your subscription, you won’t receive access to future releases of Unreal Engine 4, however your login will remain active, and you are free to continue using the versions of Unreal Engine 4 which you obtained as a subscriber under the terms of the EULA.