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The future of Unreal Tournament begins today

unrealengine.com

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Re: The future of Unreal Tournament begins today

#11

Post by gtaylor »

baddox wrote: post #7

> When the game is playable, it will be free. Not free to play, just free. > We’ll eventually create a marketplace where developers, modders, artists and gamers can give away, buy and sell mods and content. Earnings from the marketplace will be split between the mod/content developer, and Epic. That’s how we plan to pay for the game. What distinction are they trying to make between "free to play" and "free"? To my un…

I think this distinction will be largely moved along by the people who contribute to their eventual content marketplace. If there's a ton of interest in commercial mods, then you'll see non-free mods, though the base game itself will be free.

It's very hard to predict how this will shake out right now, though.

Re: The future of Unreal Tournament begins today

#12

Post by acegopher »

baddox wrote: post #7

> When the game is playable, it will be free. Not free to play, just free. > We’ll eventually create a marketplace where developers, modders, artists and gamers can give away, buy and sell mods and content. Earnings from the marketplace will be split between the mod/content developer, and Epic. That’s how we plan to pay for the game. What distinction are they trying to make between "free to play" and "free"? To my un…

>What distinction are they trying to make between "free to play" and "free"?

I think the distinction is that Android Platform is "free". The Unreal Tournament Platform is "free".

Both give you usable functionality out of the box, and free. Both give you the opportunity to purchase additional functionality in a "store".

"Free to play" generally means the developer will add more content, or cheats, or whatever to purchase, whereas "free" in this case means they will offer a platform and a store where they will take a cut.

Re: The future of Unreal Tournament begins today

#13

Post by palcu »

baddox wrote: post #7

> When the game is playable, it will be free. Not free to play, just free. > We’ll eventually create a marketplace where developers, modders, artists and gamers can give away, buy and sell mods and content. Earnings from the marketplace will be split between the mod/content developer, and Epic. That’s how we plan to pay for the game. What distinction are they trying to make between "free to play" and "free"? To my un…

I guess they are talking about Team Fortress 2 here. In TF2 you are allowed to buy actual weapons and power packs in the marketplace, not just skins for them. You could also get them by playing, but it takes an awful amount of time.

Re: The future of Unreal Tournament begins today

#14

Post by DatBear »

Joona wrote: post #9
baddox wrote: post #7

> When the game is playable, it will be free. Not free to play, just free. > We’ll eventually create a marketplace where developers, modders, artists and gamers can give away, buy and sell mods and content. Earnings from the marketplace will be split between the mod/content developer, and Epic. That’s how we plan to pay for the game. What distinction are they trying to make between "free to play" and "free"? To my un…

I think they mean that there won't be "pay-to-win" content.

That seems like it would be hard to enforce with an open modding system...

Re: The future of Unreal Tournament begins today

#15

Post by pault »

This will be very interesting to watch. I think I spent more time playing with skyrim mods from steam than playing the original game, which was a new experience for me, since using fan-made game mods was usually more trouble than it was worth in the past. A streamlined "app store" experience can add years of life to a game, and with the massive investments required for AAA titles these days, that has to be good for the publishers, as long as they can capture some of the revenue. It also provides a low friction platform for new game developers and artists to get their content in front of a lot of people who may not be part of the indie/casual game demographic. I really hope this model catches on, it would be a win for everybody.

Re: The future of Unreal Tournament begins today

#18

Post by ColinDabritz »

baddox wrote: post #7

> When the game is playable, it will be free. Not free to play, just free. > We’ll eventually create a marketplace where developers, modders, artists and gamers can give away, buy and sell mods and content. Earnings from the marketplace will be split between the mod/content developer, and Epic. That’s how we plan to pay for the game. What distinction are they trying to make between "free to play" and "free"? To my un…

Free to play is typically monetized. While they are allowing others to publish paid mods, and profiting from it, they seem to be indicating that they will provide a quality core UT class game, for free, without charging for any of it. Which is pretty awesome.

You're definitely right that the distinction they are making isn't very clear, and they could message that part better.

Re: The future of Unreal Tournament begins today

#19

Post by gtaylor »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #17

It's not clear whether this will eventually be licensed under an open source license. Since it doesn't look like they're planning to monetize the game directly then it might seem to make sense to do so.

It drives up subscriptions to Unreal Engine 4, so that's probably the primary monetization strategy. They won't make any money from players until the content marketplace opens, but this could do a lot to drive people to use and learn UE4.

It's a potentially smart business move, will be interesting to see how it works out for them.

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