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Welcome to Unreal Engine 4

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Re: Welcome to Unreal Engine 4

#41

Post by zemo »

rkalla wrote: post #36

Everyone seems pretty focused on the pricing - I thought the inclusion of an asset-marketplace directly into the editing environment was brilliant. 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…

people aren't talking about that as much because Unity already has that, so it's not quite as new. It's just keeping up with the competition at this point.

Re: Welcome to Unreal Engine 4

#42

Post by infogulch »

wernercd wrote: post #35
Tloewald wrote: post #5

The 5% is a bit misleading too because it's 5% of "sticker price" (what they call "gross revenue" which means purchase price not including sales tax). So for a $10 iTunes game they get $0.50 (5% of what Apple gets) and not $0.35 (5% of what you get). 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 (o…

Wonder where DLC comes in? 5% of that as well? Or advertising? Game was free... DLC packs are $10 per. Sorry Unreal... no monies for you.

From the new user faq:

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).

Re: Welcome to Unreal Engine 4

#44

Post by jerf »

Fuxy wrote: post #24
adventured wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They likely realize what they're doing. I'd wager it's a friction fee. Markets often have fees just to add friction to eliminate some problems that derive from completely free access. They clearly don't care about the $19, it's meaningless except for one plausible purpose.

It's not $19 it's $19/month that's a large friction fee. 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.

Even for Indie developers, if $19/month is not a trivial component of your budget, for something as foundational as this, you can't afford to be making games.

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.)

Re: Welcome to Unreal Engine 4

#45

Post by davidjhall »

pdeva1 wrote: post #4

the $19 paywall complicates all things. complicates distrbution. their github repo cannot be public. etc. If you going for indies, why not just go all in and make it free to start. The money they make is on the 5% not $19

Regarding the tire kickers, could you just subscribe for 1 month, download the source, and then cancel? You wouldn't get access to the forums and the latest code, but if you wanted to get your feet wet and see where your skills take you, you can try it out (for $19) and then come back on board when you have a game coming close to finish.

Re: Welcome to Unreal Engine 4

#46

Post by theandrewbailey »

drx wrote: post #32

This is huge. Unreal Engine 3 was used in a lot of AAA games, including the Arkham games, Borderlands etc. And this is the new version. Basically, the state of the art 3d game engine for 5% gross royalties. 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…

Complete (or at least huge) list of Unreal Engine games:

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.

Re: Welcome to Unreal Engine 4

#47

Post by Zarathust »

"You can cancel your subscription at any time and keep using the engine, though without monthly updates."

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.

Re: Welcome to Unreal Engine 4

#48

Post by RussianCow »

Fuxy wrote: post #19

That seems a bit ambitious either gt with 5% or 19$ but both?

As others have pointed out, $19/month is just the friction fee to keep it from being completely free/public. The actual monthly cost is negligible; the real cost is the 5% royalty.

Re: Welcome to Unreal Engine 4

#49

Post by davidjhall »

davidjhall wrote: post #45
pdeva1 wrote: post #4

the $19 paywall complicates all things. complicates distrbution. their github repo cannot be public. etc. If you going for indies, why not just go all in and make it free to start. The money they make is on the 5% not $19

Regarding the tire kickers, could you just subscribe for 1 month, download the source, and then cancel? You wouldn't get access to the forums and the latest code, but if you wanted to get your feet wet and see where your skills take you, you can try it out (for $19) and then come back on board when you have a game coming close to finish.

Answered my own question: from https://www.unrealengine.com/faq

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.

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