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

[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

[alen]

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

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.

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...

[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: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?