Are you satisfied with Unity License?

Every question you asked can be answered here: https://www.unrealengine.com/eula

Just scroll down to the royalties section, it's in list order and very easy to read.

 

I think they need to make the price monthly equal to 2 years of unity 3d and get rid of the minimum 12 months, because that is essentially what is the release schedule. I don't understand why you would make the decision hard for the customers, should be instead providing a service to help finance them to buy unity3d pro. Any other pricing just makes you seem like adobe and their douchebags who made CC.

Also upgrade unity 4 to 64bit as well, who the heck says 64bit is a good marketing feature for unity5, that should of been in unity3d years ago.

 

Epic has many sources to make money from, if they manage to kill Unity, they will stop this $19/month thing, close the engine and put it back as it was before.
So, if you wanna move over to UE4 , just move, but writing here S*** like "either $7/month or I move" , blablabla to force Unity to lower their prices.., well, just move.
If you are in the middle of a project or if you have a minimum of a business plan, moving to another engine just because of the price it's nonsense, I don't think people in this situation would make a game anyways.
If you just starting and playing around, then yes, it makes sense to start in UE4.
I mean, how do you people expect them to pay their engineers ?

 

I believe the whole problem in this scenario is Unity Free. People could just prepare the whole game as widely as possible using free, subscribe for a month, add nice Pro features, publish and unsubscribe again. This would work if there was no free at all.

Personally, I don't mind the fact that you subscribe for a year. If the pricing was brought down to the levels of what a perpetual license costs, subscription would actually be a viable and attractive long term alternative. Especially if say, they include those mobile add-ons or at least drastically reduce their pricing.

 

While I agree that this scenario has merit, there is a problem with it: what happens if you have to patch a bug or asset issue?

 

You just subscribe for another month and cancel again.

Seriously, sounds stupid but I bet that's partly what they're afraid of.

 

lol easy pay for a month again, either way, you should cater to your customers and support them in a positive flexible way, thinking of ways that customers can screw you over and creating a business model around that is a bad idea.

They might need to get rid of unity3d free and have a decent subscription service like unreal engine does.

 

Bitcrusher, a few problems with the bolded part.

1. That's not even what I was talking about; I was commenting on, how for someone who is gaming the subscription model, that said setup is likely to not cost them the minimal amount.

2. There is nothing negative about a subscription model; you can choose to subscribe, or unsubscribe at any given time. For someone who is gaming the system, well, rats! It means they'll have to pay more. For someone who is honestly working on projects and wants access to a gated featureset - again, not a bad thing, because not everyone needs it - it's largely a non-issue. This objection from you leads me to wonder if you're considering gaming a system or two?

3. There is no evidence that either Unity, CryTek, or Unreal are building business models around 'ways their customers could screw them over.' That's what Terms of Service agreements mitigate.

...Extending to the rest of the post - and, I speak as a Unity Free user...

4. Unity Free itself is something that caters positively to its users, especially students, hobbyists like myself, or those attempting to break into the industry in the first place. It creates a gamable vector, true, but that's not how the majority of Unity Free users use it (those that manage to finish something at all, but even that has nothing to do with the engine, and everything to do with the developer.)

I agree that some of the Unity pricing is a bit on the steep side, but it's not totally unjustifiable. We pay our nations taxes for roads, police/military protection, and schools for our children. We pay Unity Tech to maintain existing advanced features, and actively develop new ones like the WebGL compatibility that surfaced at GDC a couple of days ago. Being a programmer myself, whose time is valuable, I know firsthand that these features are not trivial to work on.

The only reason I don't pay for them, and use Unity Free, is because said features are not yet a priority. I need to make better games first. If you polish a turd, all you get is a shiny turd.

Also, to the OP, I would like to point out that your poll dosen't take a situation like mine into account. If I didn't know better, I would say you're astroturfing/concern trolling for Unreal, because every one of your posts has an anti-Unity slant, and a pro-Unreal bias.

 

It's interesting to note that even with the $1,500 recurring cost, Unity is still a very cheap option as an engine. Let's say that Unity's release cycle is one and a half years, so 18 months. That varies, but it so far seems to take Unity a little over a year to release each new major version.
If we divide the $1,500 cost into those 18 months, we get a little over $80 per month. A bit steep, but there's cell phone plans that cost more.
It would be fantastic for Unity to lower their price, but if they don't then we know they did so for a reason. They aren't idiots - if they could lower the price, and determined that it would attract more developers OR at least retain their existing developers, they would.

What I want most of all is for Unity to retain an upfront cost option. I, unlike many here it seems, would not care at all for a subscription service. I just want to pay them upfront, and use the engine without having to worry about my monthly bill.

 

But completely ignoring ways consumers could commit fraud is business suicide.

 

Where there is a possibility of that being true, another large company will just come in and steal UE4's old idea and outdue them within time. It wouldn't be a wise move, and because of royalties, they wouldn't really have to do that. Yes a majority won't make a lot of money. But if only 100 companies EVER, would produce 200 million in revenue, they would hit 1 billion on there part. None the less, the more open market these days has produced more millionaires than ever. This includes indies.

None the less there Marketplace will treat them handsomely, just like how I'm sure a huge chunk of Unity's income is from the Asset Store. It makes lots of money!

I on the other hand am in that situation, and have released two games on mobile already, and am moving to the PC market, and am well under development. So not having a ton of money to throw around, doesn't mean jack when it comes to if someone is actually making games or is good at it. It just means they normally wouldn't be able to have the better quality features.

And lastly, I think people don't actually want to move. I for one love the community here, and have learned so much, it's amazing. For how long though can I keep making games without proper tech, because I can't afford to slam down 1,500 - 4,500 right now? Am I supposed to keep producing under par mobile games, in 2d, or with horrible lighting and effects when my ideas wants otherwise? When I especially as a very passionate person, never wanted to be doing those games anyways? (Not trying to offend anyone with that, I love 2D games! I just prefer making stuff in 3D)

I have a vision in my mind, and when the engine doesn't allow me to accomplish that vision on my budget, I will have to make too many sacrifices. Too many, to where the idea in my head that I believe is 1 part of the potential success I may have, just can't be accomplished.

 

I understand what you say, but there's something I don't get.
If you don't have any money or if you are on a tight budget, why do you think your game will be better in Unreal ?
From what I understand, you don't have any money to get decent art in your game either, so what will Unreal Lightning do to your game that Unity won't ?
Having better tech is always good, and I understand more a developer that has a good budget to make a beautiful game to change to Unreal, that developers that don't..

 

As someone who doesn't actually sell anything but is paying for Unity because it's impossible to do what I want with the free version (absolutely require rendertextures), I feel it's too expensive. Especially since I really want the source control stuff, but again that's an extra charge. I don't mind the fee when I move to sell stuff I've been making however, it's a reasonable charge.

What I would like to see is an 'indies' license, where pro features are available but with limitations on commercialization of your product, like a $$ cap. UT's royalty model would be good, but I dislike royalties because that puts a long term commitment on me if I ever release software for the duration it's selling.

 

I dunno, when prices get as low as $40, money doesn't really matter anymore. Other things become much more important factors.
Would you really switch to a different engine because of $21 dollars a month?
Would $13 dollars a month really stop you from switching?

If you are new to game dev, would you really just pick the cheapest option to save $3 a month?

 

Sorry if it has already been stated but this survey is horribly flawed. Where is the "Yes, I am very very very very happy with the completely free unity license" option?

I would bay 75 if it included every platform addon.

 

I don't pay for art, I am the artist (for a very long time too). I do everything myself. I'm not trying to make realistic life like games though, but I do want the quality and look of my game to be better. When I think big, I don't think I am making the next Battlefield or anything, not my thing anyways. I go for more characterized game development. The way lighting and such acts in the world, should at least be accurate, regardless of it being cartoony or real.

The only reason it would look better in Unreal is because I am given pro type features. The lighting, PBR, Post Processing Effect, and ease of use having a shader editor built straight in (I know Shader Forge exists, looking into it) . One dynamic shadowed Hard Light isn't going to cut it, and the slow Beast Lightmapping (very happy about PowerVR coming though ). The lighting in Unity now isn't all that good in the first place (based on my own opinion). UT5 seems like that all is about to change, so I really hope they can work something out that allows me to pay them as I go. I love unity's workflow, and want to stay as long as I can. If only it will produce my intended results, without much sacrifice.

 

I think that it'd be a lot easier to swallow some of this stuff if Unity Pro came with the Pro versions of all the addons. If you want a game with LOD support on Android and iOS, you're immediately looking at a $4,500 price tag. Hell, static batching is huge for mobile deployment, but they're behind a pretty severe paywall. It also looks ridiculous when Windows Phone, Windows Store Apps, and Blackberry are all completely free offerings.

edit: And don't even get me STARTED on Unity's mind-boggling, Adobe-level terrible subscription model.

 

Well, except that if you're into mobile dev you don't pay $75/month but rather $224/month net. That's quite a significant difference and yes, that's expensive. Either way, I've found the subscription model strange since its introduction because there is no relation to perpetual licence cost. Now, if you'd tell me I could get Unity Pro for $75 a month with the option to deploy on any mobile platform I'd want, that'd be something different and quite worth even a long term consideration.

Edit: Interesting, it seems a lot of people would be ready to subscribe if the current subscription pricing included the mobile add-ons.

 

All true and I'd agree. However, once again people are taking the base Pro license as the measure for this situation totally ignoring the huge amount of mobile developers which don't pay 1,500 but 4,500. And that's a totally different matter.

 

just reading the EULA, you can find all the answers (will most of them):

- Once you notify Epic that you will release a product based on UE4 (required by license!), i presume you will receive details on payment and how to present the sale reports to them.
- Within 45 days after the end of each calendar quarter, you will pay to Epic the full amount of the royalty due for such quarter and send Epic a royalty report on a per Product basis.
- As long as you game/product is sold or on the market, you are bound to paying royalties and present sale reports to epic for that game/product.

In case of late payments/reporting or other fishy things:
- Epic reserves the right to charge a 2% late fee, per calendar quarter (compounding), for any amounts unpaid after the required due date.
- Epic may conduct reasonable audits of your records. Audits will be conducted during business hours on reasonable prior notice to you. Epic will bear the costs of audits unless the results show a shortfall in payments in excess of 5% during the period audited, in which case you will be responsible for the cost of the audit.



Royalties is quite common in the higher end of the industry.
It mostly keeps the upfront pricing low.
It can work out quite well for both parties, or it won't.
It solely depends on your business model and goals.

Hope this helps

 

If you're making a networked game using sockets that is also a big showstopper for free. Navmesh limitations, etc.

 

This right here is awful because after the 12 month period is up, there doesn't appear to be any way to put the $900 spent toward a license that I'd actually own. The only option is to spend $75 a month for another 12 months.

And you think "Well, this is a bargain! I only have to pay $900!" but then Epic comes along and they're cheaper and they let you opt out of paying any time while being a full $50 less. I understand this is in place to prevent people from just buying the license for a single month, but that ends up being ridiculous on its face because testing a game takes longer than a month, especially when dealing with additional features like in Pro, not to mention that any updates will also require Pro, otherwise they won't build with all the features in place.

In the end, the only problem with UE4 now is the steep system requirements to run the editor and a 5% revenue share, which is incredibly reasonable. Unity looks positively backwards by comparison.

 

I'm with you guys there. I really wanted to jump on the Unity subscription when it first came out, but paying more for the subscription than for a perpetual licence just didn't make sense to me. I currently own a 3.5 pro license, so I was thinking that upgrading during the pre-order phase now would be a good move. However, the recent news has put me on the fence. I will continue to use Unity for my current project, as it is better suited. I will definitely be looking into the other engines for future projects though. I've spent a lot of time over the last year working with C++, so those engines aren't nearly as intimidating to me as they once were (though I still like the rapid prototyping that can be done in Unity).

I do think Unity can justify a higher subscription price since they currently have more indie friendly tools and community support. I would easily jump on the subscription if it were $25 per platform and/or $75 for all platforms.

UT has been picking a fight with the big engines for the last few years. It will be interesting to see how they respond now that they got one. They are a smart bunch though, so I'm sure they have their gloves on.

 

It depends, which would make development faster, and which had the better features .... then every dollar counts whether people would abandon their current usage or not and make them switch.

If UE4 is better and has more features than UT5, then the only way Unity would keep its user base is to entice them to stay with lower pricing than their competition, and if they dont, they will see their user base drop substantially. Now if UT5 is better and has more features than UE4, then and only then can they leverage higher price points.

But I think its going to be tremendously difficult for UT5 to beat UE4, simply for the fact that so many programmers will be adding to the source since its now open that the amount of brains working on expanding UE4 will greatly out number the amount of programmers working on UT5 and it will be nearly impossible. It will also mean there will be more individuals dealing with fixing problems, resulting in faster turn-arounds for bug fixes, which could eventually make Unity look like a buggy and unstable mess with long bug-fix times.

 

I have been reading all these threads and in everyone people are going nuts that you get the source code!!!
Great but just how many people understand it? Companies hire programmers to make tools etc to use based on source code. You think little tommy sitting in his bedroom is going to jump into the source code when he encounters and error and fix it? Then upload his fix to the masses? Plus he might make a mistake and upload it. Then all the masses download and thus it won't work. And more people will fix that fix.
Not to mention all the people that are jumping over the fence that haven't made a game but all of a sudden think they are going to make the most awesome game now that ue4 is out. Haven't made crap in unity sure as hell aren't going to make crap in unreal.
It is a tool! Use what fits what you are trying to do. All this is like what is the best modeling program??? Needless to say you can do the same in each, just might take a little longer and require a different path. The results are the same.
But all the nice lighting and stuff... Ya demos are made to look awesome. Now start from scratch with nothing. Again it is a tool. You make the stuff happen. Might be easier in one engine compared to another but it can be done.
Get off the source code high horse and step back and breath. And start producing.

 

Did you seriously just apply a ridiculous slippery slope argument to having source access?

 

You really have no idea what you're talking about in this area. There are these things called forks. You can't just upload your source to everybody, they have to willingly download your fork. Little tommy will just download the fixed code that hundreds of skilled and knowledgeable programmers with access to the source code with fix after a few days of errors being discovered.

 

Good post. I also will say this: If you are not ready to hire an accountant to be in charge of your finances, you are not ready to deal with handling a royalties model.

If you are ready to hire an accountant, Unity's up front price is nothing.

 

Dont underestimate the masses.

There are plenty of talented and unemployed C++ programmers all around the world looking to kill time while looking for work. They will be diving in head first into UE4's code .... A) to do something interesting B) show they have skills C) improve their skills D) brag on resume, etc etc.

That alone should scare the S*** out of Unity.

 

I don't really care what you or anyone else thinks. Keep on your band wagon and continue on.
Oh and I must have forgotten that all of you are experienced designers with multiple successful games under your belts. If you are great otherwise everyone has an opinion. So instead of bashing just go and do whatever the heck makes you happy. Or better yet start yet another thread on how your god and know it all compared to everyone else.

 

See, you should care, because we're the ones who are thinking instead of making broad and erroneous assumptions about how source access works.

 

Lol this isn't my life. I make a very comfortable living that has nothing to do with game development. And as someone that understands and runs a business I see the pros/con's of things. You jumping up and down and holding your breath isn't going to change things.
Dman! You are my idol so smart and experienced. I wanna be just like you.
But whatever, if it makes you feel better go ahead and bash me. I have way more important things in my life.

 

So... you have a job that has nothing to do with game development or source access and you're making broad and erroneous claims about game development and source access and then claiming that you have mysterious other experience that lets you understand source access and game development better than people who deal with source access and game development.

Let that sink in.

 

Lol you don't know who I am nor the people that I know. But whatever keep going.

 

David H. is that you?


lol

And dont be mad at me babycakes, I'm just saying the truth.

 

I will keep going because I'm specifically talking about things you have said yourself or demonstrated yourself.

Yet you tell a bunch of game developers that you know better than them about matters of game development.

Yet the cons you list in your other post show that you don't understand how source access works.

Of course, nevermind that the people who are going to be using the source access are going to be experienced in programming and will be uploading their own forks, not directly altering the source that everyone downloads.

This is what you are doing right this very instant.

 

I second that too. I don't mind the price of Unity Pro at all, as I'm paying for more robust tools and performance optimizations. After all, it's to get the most out of this wonderful tool. But I do mind all these platform add-ons. It's confusing, and it sort of defeats the purpose of the Unity Pro to begin with. The idea of Unity Pro user not having the most performance optimization tool for specific platforms unless he/she adds add-ons, makes me wonder what's the Unity Pro's job then.

The bottom line is, I don't think games made with Unity Pro should deliver less optimized product for any platform, compared to any other engines, and not having platform specific advanced tools doesn't help that cause IMO.

 

Source Access is all well and good but I'd rather be working on my game than the engine source to my game. If that makes sense. It's not a compelling draw for me in the slightest. Certainly it does improve epic's engine (it already has) ie lightmass tweaks - but the concept it's a game changer is far removed from reality.

 

Whats cool about what Epic is doing is it lets you benefit from people who would like to work on the engine, while you work on your game.

 

Very true. We don't need to discuss the clear benefits of source access, especially of such widespread source access, because it will inevitable lead to a lot of interesting development.

However, let's not forget the minuses. As Mark Rein said himself, they could've never made UE3's source available the way they did with UE4, because of all the middleware they had integrated in it. That's why they designed UE4 the way they did - without all the third party code. Essentially, this will probably also be a reason for why Unity won't open up its source to everyone easily. This however has its benefits, especially for small devs, because we can enjoy all those nice things built right in.

Also consider that all the middleware comes at a price, which might also be a reason for why Unity won't be able to drop to $19. That's not to say, that I don't think they should restructure their pricing (especially mobile add ons).

 

I agree with Archania. Having the source is good but only tiny portion of developers (don't count the wana-be-developers here) will use it. In the project huge as the UE4 you would need a great portion of time and determination to only get broad understanding how it works. Fixing some complex bug would be very hard because you'll need to alter some great portion of code base and be sure nothing else will break (if you don't want to only fix-it-by-hack). I don't wana be rued but a it looks like a lot of the post in this thread (and the other one in the thread about UE4) are done by noobs who don't have experience with coding/developement and thinks the UE4 is the salvation or what. But it is not. It is not.

 

Exactly. Just because some users will be "too busy" to help improve the engine doesn't mean everyone will feel that way. Projects that allow fixes to be pushed tend to get fixed much faster than those without.

 

I would also like to point out something about features. People like to say that Unity doesn't support the number of features that CryEngine and UDK have. And by features, it seems most people are referring almost entirely to graphics.
What I would like to point out is that the component based programming, fully integrated IDE, and drag-and-drop content pipeline are all features too.
As far as I'm concerned, Unity has the easiest scripting support on the planet, and the absolute best content pipeline of any game engine on the planet. Those are the most important features to me, far outweighing any graphical fanciness that UE or CE might boast.

 

Everyone can call each other noobs and flaunt their superiority as much as they want, but you should probably think for a second before calling the entirety of Epic Games a bunch of noobs. They have one of the most popular engines in the industry and a far better track record with big games than Unity. They're not idiots; they wouldn't have gone through the trouble of restructuring their engine to allow source access if they didn't think they would benefit from it.

 

I like Unity a lot, and I agree that C# is much better than C++. But Unity does not have a "fully integrated IDE"; it packages MonoDevelop, which is a third party, buggy and fairly crappy IDE in my opinion. A lot of people use Visual Studio instead, and a lot of those people buy the third party UnityVS to allow debugging. UE4 allows dragging and dropping FBX files just like Unity, but UE4 actually has a built in level editor with constructive geometry tools, something that Unity does not have at all. That alone is a big content pipeline stall for a lot of people. One of the most common questions from noobs is "So how do I actually build a level", and the common response is "Use Blender" or "Buy something from the asset store", which again is not really a great solution.

 

Source access is a positive, I am amazed that you are calling people noobs, while making up stuff to paint it in a bad light.
I already found having source access in assets store is great at rolling your own solution while also having a greater understanding of how the system works. You can use the source code in UE4 to understand how they used the slate ui system for their engine and use it for ingame purposes.

 

Source access is neither. It is a feature. For a beginner or hobbyist it is of little concern, as a beginner/hobbyist is more concerned about making a game in the first place.

Also, why are you promoting UE4 so heavily on Unity's forums? Surely there are people in the UE forums who require your vast knowledge and ability to convince them to keep using UE4?

 

It's not just beginner/hobbyist - but who has the time? You can't just leap in and start fixing, it takes months to get good with source of this size - and months is something smaller teams lack.

For me, the benefit would be others improving it rather than myself.

 

Why are you so offended by people discussing another engine in a forum that specifically says "Unity and general game development topics"? I'd say it falls under general game development, would you not?

Instead of being a weird fanboy and picking sides perhaps people should see that this is a good thing for everybody.

 

I mentioned the assets store as well... surely you prefer source access to things you buy from the UNITY ASSEST store. You said its a feature... that's a positive in my book. Why am I promoting Unreal Engine 4? well the topic I was responding to was talking about source code access and unreal engine 4.. so... yea...