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Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

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Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#41

Post by SeanAnderson »

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.

I don't know about suddenly, but Fortnite makes more money for Epic than Unreal Engine and Fortnite's numbers are going down. Seems pretty easy to extrapolate from there that dials need to get turned until innovation occurs.

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#42

Post by sbarre »

anonylizard wrote: post #25
JamesLeonis wrote: post #12

[flagged]

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…

> 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"..

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#44

Post by londons_explore »

anonylizard wrote: post #25
JamesLeonis wrote: post #12

[flagged]

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…

> imagine UE5 charging moviemakers by number of viewers

Actors commonly demand a percentage of revenue. The main software package used for all the special effects demanding the same doesn't seem unreasonable.

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#45

Post by lolinder »

JamesLeonis wrote: post #12

[flagged]

Using the word "enshittification" is a great way to get a comment pinned to the top of an HN thread, but this is not that.

This is Cory Doctorow's definition of enshittification [0]:

> Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

Note that he's talking about platforms, specifically middlemen. For Doctorow's enshittification to be a thing, there has to be a dichotomy between "users" and "business customers". Enshittification is the cycle of luring in users to make yourself valuable to your real customers (the "business customers"), then abusing those users to make your business customers even happier, then abusing your business customers to extract the absolute largest amount of value for yourself, then dying because you forgot who payed the bills.

Unreal Engine is not a platform in this sense. Epic doesn't have "users" that it needs to lure in in order to appease "business customers", it just has business customers. It brought a lot of business customers in by offering the product for free for non-gaming use cases in order to demonstrate to those non-gaming business customers that it was actually a viable product for their needs. Now that they don't need to make that case any more, they're doing what every business eventually needs to do and actually charging for the product.

[0] https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#46

Post by rockemsockem »

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, since it won't affect hobbyists per the CEO's tweet in the article and unreal is, as I understand it, far ahead of everything else.

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#47

Post by Retric »

sbarre wrote: post #42
anonylizard wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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 busine…

Providing for free is hardly going to continue forever. This will end should be a basic assumption whenever you start using a free product.

Anyway, current versions are unaffected it’s only people who want to keep adopting new versions which will face the changes.

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#50

Post by tomcam »

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 would you do to allow them to not lose money?
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