Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

creativebloq.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 123 posts

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#11

Post by dragonwriter »

croes wrote: post #4

>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.

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.

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#15

Post by Manfred »

raytopia wrote: post #8

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.

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.

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#16

Post by tomschwiha »

AequitasOmnibus wrote: post #7

> 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.

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.

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#17

Post by ukd1 »

AequitasOmnibus wrote: post #7

> 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.

What do you propose? They should continue to allow everyone outside of gaming to use it for free?

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#18

Post by dragonwriter »

nullptr_deref wrote: post #2

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.

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.

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#19

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

tomschwiha wrote: post #3

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

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".

Post reply on HN