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It appears they've backed off on the royalties, too: originally, it was 5% of gross[1], and now it's 5% of gross after $3000 sales per quarter.[2] 1 https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/welcome-to-unreal-engine-4 2 https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/ue4-is-free
https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/15056/need-some-c...
How does it fare against Unity? My understanding, from previous versions, is that Unity offered a lot more tooling than Unreal. Also, Unreal's SDK demanded a lot of C++ code, which can be unappealing for small studios compared to Unity's Mono and several possible (managed) language choices. However, Unreal appears to be much more capable, and better performing. Also, is Crytek still competitive? It used to be competi…
I really like this easy 5% above X model. Seems fair enough.
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It's free enough for most hobbyist game developers, many of whom will never make enough (or anything at all, really) from their games to matter. You want ideological purity? Go write your own system.
"Ideological purity" is irrelevant. The point here is that people are abusing terminology to create ambiguity. As we are talking about software, the term "free" has specific connotations that differ from everyday language. UE4 is a source-available, gratis game engine. This is fine. It is not open source, nor is it free or libre.
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I've always wanted to know how the 5% royalty is enforced. Other, much lesser known, engines have attempted to do something of this sort by acting as an intermediary eg. publisher, planning to pay developers after they were paid by Apple. For obvious reasons that was immediately dismembered by the community. The only way I can figure is they'll ask for an iTunes connect login so they can check on the numbers for them…
Lawsuits. I imagine the revenue distribution would follow a power law here. So it would only really make sense for Epic to go after non-compliant "whales", where the unpaid royalties exceed the legal costs. Also, the more profitable the project, the lower the non-compliance rate, probably. It makes little sense to defy the royalty agreement if you have a successful project.
The Unreal Engine is free neither as beer, or freedom. Its free as in a mob protection money is given freely , with a lot of strings attached. Overall a very smart strategy. Free Software Walled Gardens I highly believe will start to become a common thing in the software industry. As you get most the benefits of Free Software, without the normally feared industry risks.
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It's hard to compare unity and unreal. To answer the question about c++, with UE4, the blueprint system removes almost all of that. Entire games can be written in their visual programming language. I also think there are ways to use c# ( https://mono-ue.github.io/ ), if you prefer that as well. C++ is needed if you want to extend the native classes. Regarding the editor, unreal is pretty amazing. It really shines in…
I was thinking about something like Lua. Now, the multiplayer map size limitation seems odd nowadays.
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It's not as clear cut. You can use C# with Unreal Engine if you prefer, and Unreal Engine offers a lot that Unity doesn't (e.g. Blueprints). I recommend everyone interested in the two try both. I personally prefer Unreal Engine, but everyone is different. Unreal Engine is also moving quite quickly, adding new features, marketplace content, improving the UI, etc.
I've been trying to decide which to cut my teeth on, to build a prototype MMORPG. I'm comfortable with C++, though my colleague won't be. Any suggestion on which engine/toolkit would be better for that type of build? Graphics quality is not a big concern, mostly just want to use the tool that have the best chance of becoming proficient with.
The Unreal Engine is free neither as beer, or freedom. Its free as in a mob protection money is given freely , with a lot of strings attached. Overall a very smart strategy. Free Software Walled Gardens I highly believe will start to become a common thing in the software industry. As you get most the benefits of Free Software, without the normally feared industry risks.
Many open source projects do something like this, a dual license where the source code for the project is GPL, but the creator is willing to license it for something as non-gpl to people unwilling to release their source code.
This requirement set by unreal is very very analogous. They just have some shifted priorities, however for me this project now meets the standard of what I would consider "ethical".
Could it be better? Sure why not? It could be GPL dual license, people who want to benefit from open source but release closed source I think should have to pay, that would be better. However, this library can now be effectively used for open source initiatives. This is fantastic.
That's my estimation of the situation anyway, you perhaps do not see it like this. Could you go further into your position?