Unreal Engine 4 Launching With Full Source Code

jones_supa writes "Today Epic launched Unreal Engine 4 for game developers. Supported platforms are Windows, OS X, iOS and Android, with desktop Linux coming later. The monetization scheme is unique: anyone can get access to literally everything for a $19/month fee. Epic wants to build a business model that succeeds when UE4 developers succeed. Therefore, part of the deal is that anyone can ship a commercial product with UE4 by paying 5% of their gross revenue resulting from sales to users. This gets them the Unreal Editor in ready-to-run form, and the engine's complete C++ source code hosted on GitHub for collaborative development."

Comments

This is very exciting for indie devs

[glasshole]

and even medium sized devs who couldn't shill out for the giant license fees before.

Re:This is very exciting for indie devs

[Anonymous Coward]

UDK used to be free to play with. It's exciting until you realize there's a subscription attached and if you build a game with it 5% of the gross. That doesn't sound like much but when you stack it on top of the ~30% gross from your preferred sales channel, plus the fees from whatever other middleware you might want (Scaleform, FMOD, Bink, and Havok come to mind) and then add taxes, you're struggling to break even.

Re: This is very exciting for indie devs

[alen]

then don't license everything under the sun
or buy your software upfront
or write your own engine. go start an open source game engine project that supports all the new hardware tech before it comes out and see how it works out

Re:This is very exciting for indie devs

[brit74]

Unreal has had some good licensing terms for years. Three years ago, I their offer was 25% of sales and your first $50,000 of income is free (i.e. you owed nothing to Epic if your game grossed less than $50,000).

Re:This is very exciting for indie devs

[Adriax]

https://store.unity3d.com/
$1500 gets you the pro version, or $75 a month. That's not thousands.
Android and iOS are another chunk of cash each but are not required unless you're targeting those pro features.

Of course you can use and release free if you don't need the pro features...

And what financial risk are they taking? If I make a game and it flops badly with no sales they are still ahead by my monthly subscription.

Re: This is very exciting for indie devs

[brit74]

Geez, it's 5%. Stop pretending like this is an onerous burden on developers. Commercial 3d engines used to cost a flat fee in the mid-six-figure range (i.e. $250,000 to $500,000).

Re: This is very exciting for indie devs

[Assmasher]

5% of gross is a lot. 5% of net is not.

Re: This is very exciting for indie devs

[alen]

epic is not as dumb as the authors of popular books licensing their works to hollywood

Re: This is very exciting for indie devs

[hairyfeet]

Its 5% of GROSS not net, so it really ought to be labeled as more than 35% because they are getting their cut before a single one of your costs is figured in.

I know being a little shop owner I don't care what you offered me if it were for a % of the gross? Kindly do piss off. oh and UDK used to be 100% Free to download and play with so its actually worse than it was before as it'll cost you a $20 to even try the thing.

I have a feeling that while they may get some indies (who don't know the difference between gross and net) a LOT of the big studios will either negotiate for a flat rate or just switch to another engine, not like there aren't great engines out there besides Unreal.

Re:This is very exciting for indie devs

[angel'o'sphere]

If you can not afford to pay $19 per month for a piece of software, I really don't want to know what you consider to pay your developers per hour.

Re: This is very exciting for indie devs

[suutar]

I don't see what you mean. Assuming revenue of 100 and 40% expenses (taxes, sales channel), 5% of gross is 5 bucks, but 5% of net is only 3 bucks. 2 bucks difference on the bottom line may not sound like a lot, but scale it up and it starts to matter more.

Since it seems I'm misinterpreting what you said, could you please clarify?

Re: This is very exciting for indie devs

[Stickiler]

Actually, the 'big hit' indie developers will get burnt by this new system a shit load less than the previous UDK system. The previous UDK system was 25% net, with the first $50k free. Assuming 30% fees on top of UE fees, the new system equals the old system at $400k gross revenue, and from that point on is just flat out cheaper than the previous one. Obviously the new system gets worse the higher additional fees you have, but on the flip side, the lower your additional fees, the more attractive the new system is. Plus not to mention you are allowed to contact Epic Games to try and work out a better deal with them.

Re:This is very exciting for indie devs

[gbjbaanb]

What I find interesting is that the slashdot sqwark of outrage over unreal charging 5% seems to ignore that the 'sales channel' of Apple, Google or Valve's stores is more like 30%, yet no-one seems to care that 5% for writing a good-quality isn't such a bad deal.

If you want to complain about costs - take umbrage with the sales channels that happily cream a fucking third of your revenue away for doing little more than hosting a download site.

Re: This is very exciting for indie devs

[angel'o'sphere]

Apple does a lot which makes it for simple minded people easy to sell/distribute software (and books).
It offers you a 'store system' for free, you can upload upgrades, you have cathegories to put your software into, users can rate it, comment it, you can do in app adverticing and in app purchases, everything via a platform which is basically free. If you had to set that up your own you spent more time setting up your sales and billing infrastructure than it takes you to craft your first App.
On top of that: Apple handles the billing for you. That is again a majour obstacle if you want to set it up yourself: solved for you.

Y'know what would be awesome?

[Voyager529]

If Epic demonstrated the capabilities of this engine by also having a first-party game released along with it. They could make it a multiplayer first person shooter, which I know is a well-trodden field, but I really think Epic could do it - especially one that includes LAN play, which seems to be poorly represented in games these days. And then, they could bundle a few of the tools with the game so that some gamers could make their own content for it, and do something really earth-shattering - user-generated DLC, FOR FREE!

If only I could think of a name for this game....

Re:Y'know what would be awesome?

[Chris Mattern]

They could call it Quake!

Re:Y'know what would be awesome?

[i kan reed]

That doesn't sound like a real thing.

Re:Y'know what would be awesome?

[AnontheDestroyer]

It's truly unreal that they didn't do this.

If it's such a great development environment...

[RDW]

...couldn't they use it to build UT4? Please? After 6 years, I'm getting just a little bored of UT3.

Re:If it's such a great development environment...

[Kremmy]

The arena shooter isn't dead, it just went free to play.

Re:If it's such a great development environment...

[Nimey]

Meh, why not fire up UT2004? IMO that's the best of the series.

Re:If it's such a great development environment...

[i kan reed]

No, arena shooters are ones where you spawn in random locations, run to grab guns and gear, move relatively quickly, and tend to have little incentive to not shoot(such as long reload times, precision weapons, stealth). With a tendency towards more explosive weaponry and "arena" styled battlefieds. It's a subgenre thing.

Re:If it's such a great development environment...

[jrronimo]

Totally agreed. My friends and I still play UT2k4 on a weekly basis. With the Heaven of Relics mutator and some of the great Community Bonus Pack maps, it's still fun, ten years on. As it came out March 16, 2004, happy Tenth Anniversary UT2k4!

Re:Licensing if my game cost $0 ?

[Rhacman]

So if I make a game from this and pay people to play it, will Epic cut me a check for 5% of what I'm paying the players?

Re:A release for linux?

[NotDrWho]

They promise to release it when winter comes to Game of Thrones.

A smart move for Epic

[downix]

Epic's terms for 4 are quite affordable, that's why we made the move to 4 from three for City of Titans after our Kickstarter last year. These terms are very positive for those seeking to deal with a top end game engine which is, simply, a joy to work with.

Re:A bit misleading

[Adriax]

I really doubt a AAA with a 300 person team is going to purchase a game engine for a multi-million budget AAA title by going to a publicly accessible web store and queuing up 1 pro license + 299 team addon licenses and plunk down a credit card for that $151,000 bill.
Just guessing here, but the same sales team that processes their console licenses will probably give that AAA different licensing prices and terms for a huge order like that.

Re: So, basically the cost is $19

[ynp7]

Nothing?

According to the UE4 EULA: "However, cancellation of your Subscription will not affect your rights under the License with respect to any Licensed Technology you have already downloaded under the License."

https://www.unrealengine.com/e...

Not a bad price, but...

[rebelwarlock]

$19/month honestly isn't that bad for what you're getting. I'm a member of a few indie dev communities, and I've seen what pre-release versions of the engine can do. It's very impressive, and one guy can do a whole hell of a lot more by himself in a month than he used to be able to, and make it look good in the process. However, I can't help but think they'd have a bigger market share if they used the old pricing model instead. It used to be free to play with, and free to sell games with unless you made over $50000usd. On the other hand, I doubt the decision was made arbitrarily. These guys watched the market, and saw how their engine was being used. I'm guessing a lot of indies had games that didn't make it to the $50k mark, so much so that a subscription cost is better.

Re: So, basically the cost is $19

[Jesrad]

The $19 a month is likely just for covering the costs of hosting and distributing the source code, binaires and documentation. You'd be paying for the continued convenience of accessing those anytime, the studio's clearly not intending to get rich over those subscriptions.