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

111–120 of 123 posts

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#111

Post by lamontcg »

AlexandrB wrote: post #103
lamontcg wrote: post #59

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.

Yup. A good time for open-source alternatives to re-assert themselves in the market. Low interest rates made commercial software unnaturally cheap for a long time. Will also be interesting to see how well subscription-based software fares when people start tightening their belts due to inflation and rising interest rates.

Yes, someone who gets what I'm talking about.

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#112

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #95
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

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.

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

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"?

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#113

Post by iyasu »

zlg_codes wrote: post #106
iyasu wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>In-house development doesn't suffer from this issue, and you'll have full control over the code. Proprietary engines suffer from plenty which you haven't stated - can be a mess to read or understand; many hacks done to accomplish a certain feature because it helped ship X feature - tons of tribal knowledge. If you've worked with a proprietary engine before, you already know documentation will be lackluster and to li…

Game development is not exclusive to business, but you are correct I have not worked for a firm to make a game. Nothing about that arrangement attracts me, especially given the abusive nature of the industry and the frequency that they go through crunch, lack any real worker protections, no unions, etc. The way AAA studios make games and do business puts me off as well, so pointing to them as an example doesn't reall…

>Nothing about that arrangement attracts me, especially given the abusive nature of the industry and the frequency that they go through crunch, lack any real worker protections, no unions, etc.

I'd beg to differ on this point. Lots of changes have been made in game development culture including less crunch culture[0]. Worker protection/unions aren't exactly something that's afforded to many white collar jobs in the first place, not sure why that would be an expectation here. Even so, there have been improvements to this - e.g. the Game Workers Alliance. I encourage you to ask developers this question today.

>No game dev company out there seems to treat its staff well during a game's development, so even if I wanted to work on a game as part of a team, I'd be looking at a poor work/life balance and a stressful work environment. I'm too old for that kind of BS.

There are game companies that do treat their staff well! I don't think it's fair to make blanket statements like this when there are a ton of studios with a ton of varying cultures. It's not like solo development isn't stressful or immune to crunch either, even if you choose your own hours. Solo development calls for highly varying skills - it's one of those things you underestimate until you've actually tried it.

>If I can't build and release the game myself, then it simply isn't good enough to release. I cannot trust collaborators to not take control of my projects, nor would I entrust creative ideas to a for-profit entity without my cut.

Nothing good in this world gets built in a vacuum. A hyperbole, potentially (e.g. Stardew Valley, Rainworld), but game development really is a road best driven with a team - people to help out in different disciplines, lighten the load on others. Finding a good team is hard, but once you do, it's hard to want to forgo them. I don't think I can convince you on this front, but the vast majority of solo developers who don't release a game should be proof enough.

No hard feelings from me - I just wanted to clarify what the game industry is actually like today. The Kotaku articles can be frightening, but talking to people in the industry today and getting thoughts from different roles (e.g. producers, designers, engineers, QA, artists, etc.) and different industries within game dev (indie, AA, AAA studios,etc.) would help form a more informed opinion.

[0]: https://twitter.com/GrantPDesign/status/1402325020890652672

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#114

Post by CyberDildonics »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #19
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".

They didn't say it "will kill them" or anything about that, they were just correcting the title.

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#115

Post by almatabata »

lamontcg wrote: post #59

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.

In this case it went from completely free to pay something. The completely free tier clearly could not last. The company has to pay the bills somehow. They wanted to gain market share in the sector and now that they think they want to recoup some of the cost.

You have cases where companies jack up the prices out of pure greed but i would not count this as one. Why should studio not pay a license fee for high quality software like the unreal engine?

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#116

Post by lamontcg »

almatabata wrote: post #115
lamontcg wrote: post #59

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.

In this case it went from completely free to pay something. The completely free tier clearly could not last. The company has to pay the bills somehow. They wanted to gain market share in the sector and now that they think they want to recoup some of the cost. You have cases where companies jack up the prices out of pure greed but i would not count this as one. Why should studio not pay a license fee for high quality…

Please read the other thread completely and particularly my last comment.

I'm making a macroeconomic comment, you're assuming I'm arguing about the morals of the microeconomic decision making here.

Arguing about the morality or ethics or greed involved isn't useful. Just like it wasn't useful to argue about greed involved in our recent spike of inflation.

This fairly large company is still just another cog in the macroeconomic machine and their behavior is almost deterministic.

The more interesting question to me is what it indicates about the macro climate and if there's stormclouds on the horizon or not.

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#117

Post by elteto »

zlg_codes wrote: post #107
elteto wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, why would you expect them not to charge you money for something they clearly spend tons of money in developing? They are a business. The bait and switch is real, but after N of them we have to start asking ourselves whose fault is it if we fall for the N+1th one.

In my case I haven't fallen for anything, but this community seems to have a problem with pointing out it's mostly businesses doing this behavior. If you stay away from commercial software, this crap disappears. It shouldn't be normal to expect to be exploited imo.

It was a rhetorical "you" ;) Businesses will do business things, I don't think we should really be surprised when they decide to not subsidize everyone anymore.

In other words, a company giving you a "free" product like Unreal should be assumed to be a loan that you will have to pay in the future.

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#118

Post by drunkan »

zlg_codes wrote: post #105
nrb wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What does Unreal provide that other engines can't?

An unreal amount more. No - seriously. It practically has everything you need to build a game. I guess a clear and easy way to learn it though.. that it cannot seem to provide.

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#119

Post by ksec »

lholden wrote: post #26

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…

>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.

Re: Unreal Engine will no longer be free for all

#120

Post by ksec »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #92
Dylan16807 wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do they need to explicitly contrast the situation with Unity in the headline to avoid being misleading? Headlines don't have a lot of space! And as I said in a different comment, the subheading seems to address the main complaints, and in most situations you'd see the headline and the subheading together.

>Headlines don't have a lot of space! "Unreal Engine starts charging for non-game development". It's not about space, and we know it's all too easy to bury the lede and leave the internet to lash out as it is oft to do. But I don't blame the author. I know in larger sites editorial will make the title without context of the writing independent of the contents in order to maximize traffic.

>"Unreal Engine starts charging for non-game development".

Exactly. Surprised that argument was coming from an 2010 account.

Post reply on HN