Welcome to Unreal Engine 4
unrealengine.com
unrealengine.com
You could imagine Adobe following suit very shortly here withs something similar and invalidate all those graphic/template/icon/texture/animation sites. You just open the "marketplace" inside of Photoshop and browse around for the assets you might want.
Same would go for video-editing. No more buying Action Essentials, just load up Final Cut and look for the perfect blood animation.
You could imagine at some point your IDE having a marketplace inside of it to allow you to purchase proprietary platforms directly and integrate them into your project without much hassle.
It's a really cool proposition, ripe for monopolization unfortunately, but surely convenient if executed on well.
http://helpx.adobe.com/legacy/kb/stock-photo-service-being-d...
I don't know anyone who uses it.
Well, they're playing catch-up with Unity here, which has had that capability for (3?) years now.
I think revenue from the Asset Store is relatively minor compared to that. Ive heard of success stories that sell plugins worth a couple of thousands per month, but thats about it and those are not many.
So that suggests there's certainly some revenue there.
I got carried away. But yeah, an asset marketplace will be essential in the future if only to keep art team sizes manageable.
Once the channels for management can provide a painless experience to customers (studios, artists, etc.) this will do to assets what iTunes did to music.
Maybe that's not a huge difference from what a lot of people are doing at AAA studios anyway, but my god.
Remember also that they offer a Pro version that costs money, and that they restrict the use of the free version to companies that make less than $100k per year.
There are a lot of people wanting to get into game-making these days, since tools have gotten better and the indie market has proven its worth. It's telling that Epic is putting even more emphasis on their tools than their games these days. In a gold rush, as it's said, the ones that get rich are the ones selling pickaxes.
The fact though is that you can publish commercially (even to mobile app stores) without a Pro license. The reason why making the base version free is commercially viable for them (aside from their hope that some users upgrade to Pro) is because of the success of their asset store.
Pretty much all Unity developers spend money on the asset store even if they're on the free plan. I myself have spent a few hundred dollars on the asset store of which Unity gets a cut thus allowing them to immediately monetize their free users.
Here's the reasons I think you need to be a little bit more nuanced on this topic:
a) Sometimes it doesn't matter - The plate and chair in the background don't need to be invented from scratch everytime
b) Sometimes it's just a starting point. You won't know it's library content because it's been edited, enhanced or used in new ways.
c) Sometimes it's just part of a bigger whole. You're not going to notice the brushed aluminum bump map when it's combined with the libraries 'scratched specular map' and a few other ingredients - a cook isn't cheating when he uses bouquet garni or a garam masala from the catering supplier.
Their (free) app is 90% geared toward using content purchased from their store (not free).
Perhaps Unreal will introduce some new ideas there such as a first-come, first-licensing or bidding model. Another idea might be a royalty system.
https://creativemarket.com/blog/2014/03/19/building-the-worl...
As others have pointed out, that is a huge amount, that is probably 25 - 30% of your "profit". The accounting is pretty easy though. Units * SRP * 0.05 == royalty.
That said, it is a lot simpler than investing $25 - $30K up front while building the game, only to have it go poof because the market or your designer flaked out. Figure 3 year development at $20/month that is less than $1,000 at risk. This gets people using their engine early and often perhaps hoping they can negotiate a different royalty later on. It would also be interesting to see if it had a cap, like $1M or something.
Kudos to the Epic folks for coming up with a pretty creative strategy in todays market.
I call it a wash, but the lower numbers (5 vs 25, 19 vs 100) make for some good marketing. And full access to the source is new and welcome.
Also I'm not sure if this change to their royalty scheme will make any difference to their flat $400k-per-game license that the big studios probably use.
You'd have to find something that they would think was a better deal. Like "I pay you lump sum $X in exchange for no more royalty payments. At which point, it becomes a gamble for both sides.
You have a much better chance of negotiating something like that before your game even begins development. Expect to spend a metric ton of cash on that license deal, however.
"When releasing a product using UE4, you're signing up to pay Epic 5% of gross product revenue from users, regardless of what company collects the revenue. That means: If your game makes $10 on the App Store, Apple may pay you $7, but you'd pay Epic $0.50 (5% of $10)."
Still, you'd have to legally define end customer because you could have, as I pointed out, much more complex cases. I didn't search much, but couldn't find the actual fine print license to see how they did it, but they probably did it well and ironclad and don't need legal advice from a guy with no formal legal education. I stand humbled.
Being the guy who gets to spend tens to hundreds of thousands in legal fees to convince jury they aren't just trying to cheat someone out of their royalty.
It's a dick move on their part. They could, and should, have used a different term to avoid the confusion.
I've used UE at previous jobs, and while I'm not gonna say it is the best ever engine, allowing this piece of software in the hands of indies for 19 bucks a month is a bargain. I will probably not use it as I left the games industry, but compared to other commercial offerings out there, the 19 bucks a month plus the 5% is a bargain if any team is doing high end graphics games. You can bitch about Linux or try to do all the math you want to say Epic are being money grabbers, but seriously, unless you had access to full source code before and see what the engine can offer you, please take a moment to step back and appreciate what they are doing here.
ps: not affiliated with Epic at all. Just from many years in the games industry, Unreal has been the best engine I worked with and this is a FANTASTIC offer
I'd be rather surprised if they asked for 5% of profits due to Hollywood Accounting:
My impression is Unreal is designed to make giant games, not small ones. True?
My impression is Unreal is not nearly as iterative as Unity which lets you change code as it's running. True?
Also Unity targets more platforms?
Of course it's great the Unreal is accessible. Appearently Crytek now has an even better deal. But, I just wonder is Unreal really suited to indie development and quick prototyping or is it more designed for large teams who don't care as much about iteration time and expect to spend way more time getting started
Since I haven't used Unreal I have no idea. Please enlighten me
This is particularly bad for retail games where you're getting 30% or less of retail price (and that's hardly pure profit).
Unity, in comparison, costs more per month (or $750 per upgrade cycle) but no revenue share at all.
Game was free... DLC packs are $10 per. Sorry Unreal... no monies for you.
What about downloadable content, in-app purchases, microtransactions, virtual currency redemption, and subscription fees, as well as in-app advertising and affiliate program revenue? Revenue from these sources is included in the gross revenue calculation above.
Are any revenue sources royalty-free? No royalties are due on the following:
Ancillary products, including t-shirts, CDs, plushies, action figures and books. The exception is items with embedded data or information, such as QR codes, that affect the operation of the product. Consulting and work-for-hire services using the engine. This applies to architects using the engine to create visualizations as well as consultants receiving a development fee. Linear media, including movies, animated films and cartoons distributed as video. Cabinet-based arcade games and amusement park rides. Truly free games and apps (with no associated revenue).
The things that make up your revenue vs profit gap are probably things like salaries, insurance, and (in the case where you have no traditional publisher) marketing. Even now when an indie game is sold at retail, the retail side of things is typically handled by a publisher and those people handle the retail income and distribute the cut to the developer.
Also, this gives you access to the engine source code, which for Unreal Engine 3 meant paying a fee on the upper scale of six figures (some engines are even more expensive, CryEngine costs over a million bucks).
5% (even considering it's gross) is really really competitive, considering what you're getting in return.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games#Un...
If it's an FPS or "action" game released in the past 5-ish years, chances are good it uses UE3.
If you are really tight on cash then I guess that you can check the change log and only pay the 20$ for the month for crucial updates. Paying for product updates is usually a big red flag for me but since it got down from several tens of thousands of dollars up front then this is not such a bad deal.
$19 per month is a very low barrier to entry. And 5% isn't much compared to every other AAA engine.
And access to source code for this price? Damn.
I'm still going to stick to my open source tools (for now), but this just put Unreal Engine on my radar...
That's pretty standard. I spoke to a guy working with the Cryengine, and he said that it was so full of unfinished features and bugs that you were absolutely forced to work on the engine's codebase.
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.
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.
Problem solved all around.
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.
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.
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.)
Really?
How much does the computers of these Indie Devs cost? Rent? Electricity? Internet?
$200 is what a developer may spend in lunch in one month. $20 per month is a blip in the radar
$200 per year is very affordable, even if you're in a 3rd world country, no kidding.
$240/year for full access to a state-of-the-art graphics engine is cheap. Your cable TV probably costs more than that.
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.
Consumer are/will benefit from this movement.
One area Epic win here is that by making their AAA-grade engine affordable to individuals they'll end up with a lot of budding game developers self-trained in Unreal. This creates a sort of lock-in: AAA studios are more likely to chose Unreal because it's easier to hire people with Unreal experience.
But i think the pricing is fair and i like it otherwise :)
What platforms can I access under the subscription plan?
If you access the source code, you'll see that there is early work on other platforms, including Oculus VR, HTML5 and Linux. You are welcome to extend and modify this code, and also build and ship games for these platforms.
$20/mo for access to the source code. 5% of revenue to sell something using it.
Although I would really like Unity or Carmack to make an engine that is potent enough to threaten UE. The unreal homogenization is probably not that good in the long term. Healthy competition is a must.
So why risk missing the next Minecraft for a measly $20?
Not sure if this will 'break the spirit' of GitHub and open source, but the next logical feature the GH team could do to accommodate this model more effectively would be to implement a "subscription button" users can click on to instantly get access. The fee is then tacked-on to the user's GH account (some of whom will already have their credit card on file), which is then distributed back to the repo owner less a small commission.
$19/mo is for code updates. What they really want is 5% of your revenue, which ends when you stop making money from it.
"Through GitHub you can access UE4 C++ source code from Epic and also see code contributions from other developers across the community. We have lots in store for this channel, and we're looking for feedback on what you'd like to see here as well."
How do I submit Unreal Engine 4 changes back to Epic?
GitHub is our channel through which the community can fork and modify Epic's code alongside our own engineering team. Source code changes you check in at GitHub will be viewed by the community, and if the vetting process goes well, we'll incorporate your code into UE4. This means you'll help lots of people!
...but hey, I would be 100% not surprised to see the guys from Unity pull a similar 'cheaper but with profit share' for pro licenses.
Basically, it's a MASSIVE amount of work/cost to create individual blades of grass that independently react to a person walking on them, vs just pasting an static grass texture on the ground. And unless the movement of the grass is really important to the story, it will never be cost-effective to create all the art work, physics, CPU processing time, and disk space to include it.
Interesting theory at least.
It may be that instead of looking at rendered photo-realistic grass, one may be better of going out touching the real thing.
As for the artificial realm, who cares if it isn't photo-realistic? It is artificial anyway.
The algorithms to control grass reacting may be difficult to write, but that only has to be done once. You could as well have said ten years ago that it would never be cost-effective to create photo-realistic CG films, but that has been pretty much accomplished at this point, and game developers are already borrowing techniques from films.
Also, the great thing about games is that they're not necessarily meant to conform to reality as a standard. If you want photorealistic graphics, go outside. A game that relies primarily on its graphical fidelity is doomed to obsolescence, but a game with good mechanics and an aesthetic is potentially timeless.