301–310 of 375 posts
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If they sold it as a one time purchase this kid would have never been able to use Unreal.
If Adobe sold their suite as one time purchase many creatives who can just afford a monthly subscription couldn't use it. Does it make it a great business model.
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I depends on the background. I'm 2 years into solo developing a game and all programming, artwork and animation is my own. I had to invest into quite some learning to make it possible, but I figured it's a worthwhile investment. I do work with a composer, though. Point being, it depends on which skills you bring to the table, which ones you are willing to learn and which ones are worth collaborating on. I still think…
If a project is far more work than one person can do (as this train simulator obviously is), the term solo developer is no more justified than it would have been if Steve Jobs claimed to have solo-developed the iPhone, even if he could have justified saying he "brought the iPhone from idea to the finish line."
So you need the solo developer not to contract out or buy in existing music, graphics, 3D assets, animations, marketing, or you won't call them a solo developer.
Right, so do you also need them to create the 3D engine or are they allowed that off the shelf? Oh, they need to make it themselves. You're strict!
Ok, so they're allowed to write for a platform? Oh, no they're not, that's relying on other people's code.
And writing in an existing language? Tsk tsk tsk. Got to invent the programming language yourself, otherwise you need to list the entire GCC/LLVM team as your collaborators on the game.
They have to create their own silicon too, it's cheating to rely other people's chips, how can you call yourself "solo"?
Are they allowed to sell it on Steam or do they need to build their own store and payment networks? Heck, should they get themselves accredited as a payment network. Oh, and as a bank.
And presumably, if the game needs to be translated to any language other than the developer's own, they have to do that translation themselves, right? Not rely on experts in that language. Can't really be a "solo" dev that way, can you?
And so on.
Building a game involves effort, and millions of decisions. Is the gameplay right? Is the story right? Are the graphics right? Design the characters, the levels, the world. Make the game run. Make the game available?
I can accept that solo developers will sometimes make the graphics/music/"assets" themselves, sometimes buy off the shelf, sometimes pay others. But unless they hire that person full time to collaborate on the game... they're still the solo developer.
They will definitely lean on existing 3D engines, libraries, plugins, font engines... and that reminds me, I've almost never seen a game developer design their own fonts. These reusable components can be used in games, and some are even intended to (e.g. engine plugins). But do they define the game experience? Generally, no. That's on the game developer.
Here is Jonathan Blow's placeholder art for Braid: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2f/Braid-art-1.j...
Here is how good David Hellman, the artist he hired, made it: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/2e/Braid-art-2.j...
David Hellman is credited as the game's artist, but it's still effectively Jonathan Blow's game from top to bottom.
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You're calling my argument insane, you're saying my comment is low quality, and imply I'm the one insulting. What is my argument then, in your opinion?
If that’s all you have to respond then you sir are the one with no argument. I have listed my points multiple times. All you keep saying is “they could offer it at a fixed price”. Well that price would be well above any hobbyist. It is kind of an insane argument. They have had fixed pricing before without royalty and usually that price is north of $1mm. Free + 5% is pretty amazing. There is enough competition in this…
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If Adobe sold their suite as one time purchase many creatives who can just afford a monthly subscription couldn't use it. Does it make it a great business model.
Sorry I don’t know what you are trying to say?
I can't find a website for the developer, also nothing listed in the Indonesian Wikipedia article. Sadly no way to buy it directly and give them 100% of the money in their currency
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Unreal is completely free for up to $1 million in revenue. And at that point, the 5% royalty is very much a happy problem.
Lifetime royalty fee on any related worldwide gross revenue is a happy problem?
If unreal cost money up front, would this have been built? No.
Unreal is saying: hey, we contributed to 1/20th of your success, because you could not have done this without us.
Thus, in the event that you're extremely successful, yes, you'll owe unreal a million dollars. But that's only because you made 20mm and keep 19mm for yourself.
That's an incredible bargain.
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I think this is incredible, and I am so happy for him, he deserves all the praise he gets (and maybe more). I will sin and make this about me, briefly, but just to say that when I was a kid/teenager with a really slow computer, a) I enjoyed coding much more, b) I think I was a way better programmer. Constraints make you better, you have to be smarter. I miss those times.
Well, nothing is easier then adding constraints. Removing them is what's difficult - so why don't you add them back if it makes you a better programmer and you enjoy doing it more? Personally, I think the reason you enjoyed it more as a teenager is just down to the fact you were fully in control of what to do and had no external pressure to earn money etc, so if anything you had less constraints - at least from my po…
Technically it's easy. Mentally it's nearly impossible. This comment posted on Ars yesterday blew my mind:
https://arstechnica.com/ai/2026/07/we-cannot-choose-to-becom...
tl;dr: When given the easy option, people always take it, even when they know the hard route would be better in the long term. But the full story is interesting and not that long, it's worth reading.
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If that’s all you have to respond then you sir are the one with no argument. I have listed my points multiple times. All you keep saying is “they could offer it at a fixed price”. Well that price would be well above any hobbyist. It is kind of an insane argument. They have had fixed pricing before without royalty and usually that price is north of $1mm. Free + 5% is pretty amazing. There is enough competition in this…
If you are a fan of royalty based business models, you can be that. What are you so upset about?
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Sorry I don’t know what you are trying to say?
What are you trying to say? You can't even get the name of the company right. "unreal" won't give their work away for free. UE is a product, Epic is the company that develops UE.
Edit: NM you are a new account. Shadow banned on my end. Enjoy!
So is it fun to play or just fun to look at? I'm getting "Mixtape" vibes from the article (not good!)
You probably won't enjoy it because it's a sim game and not fun in the same way Super Mario Bros is. But it's probably more interactive than Mixtape since you are operating a train. I personally probably won't play Mixtape or this game but both look like good experiences to me if you are in the respective target audience.
