Full Unreal Engine 4 Developer Kit $19/MO + 5% / Why can't Unity Offer the same!

aha! so this stunt is not sustainable per se, it's part of a bigger war in the digital entertainment arena... this may lead us to think that the best choice to UT is to look for a new partnership with a big player without overriding its current business model... make it part of a bigger strategy, join forces and leverage the risk

 

I don't think Unity is capable of this, it's just too expensive to put together a full time AAA development team at this point, and would water down the talent they need. I've suggested it to them myself before, but I don't see it happening - Unity appears to be a pure solution provider, which is actually kind of rare in this space for complete engines.

 

I don't see how you calling people out for Blinkered fanboyism is either professional or any part of this discussion either? You need to steer in the correct mannerism, not throw out accusations of trolling.

If Unity are going to play Epic at their own game, they need feedback from us as a holistic package and see what we like about UE see what we don't like and take it from there. All this falls back into the remit of $19 and 5% + what you get for it.

First thing I noticed when messing around last night, a LOT of people I've met in the Unity development community don't understand shaders, are not accustomed to PBR yet or actively go out of their way to avoid it. In Unity this isn't a problem, you buy shaders and slap your own textures on them..

In Unreal it's a completely different way of thinking. Might be a bit of leverage their? Personally I think if you're learning games design, you need to understand how materials work to some degree. But you WILL dedicate a lot of time to learning it in UE4 not only that but how they go about it, there is little choice in that matter. With Unity to some extent you can wing it..

 

Because a large majority of posts are "epic is wonderful" without clear reason why, and those posters aren't even responding to [OFFICIAL] threads. That, is fanboyism. As it's clear they have no interest in improving Unity, and are content to just promote the other product.

It's not fanboyism if you tell Unity what they need to do, as opposed to constantly hyping another product.

Don't get me wrong, I'm convinced Unity has a ton of work to do here, but at least I'm busy saying what it is they need to do. I know UE4 is amazing. But I don't need to constantly say so on this forum.

 

You're grouping a large variety of users by their lowest common denominator. If they're breaking the rules, do something about it, their posts are annoying anyway "OMGZ UNITY SUX UE4 4EVAR"

 

No, I'm just pointing out that there is a lot the community can be proactive on instead of just a blanket statement like "Unity sucks and UE4 is fantastico."

Unity needs to improve, but how? the how is important because there's a fair few things Unity actually does better than UE4.

 

Epic are a one off, we know that and credit where credit is due. Some people say "hey you didn't complain before UE4 came here", well we didn't have much of a choice before that did we?

If they want to remain royalty free and be the "premium" engine which costs more, simple fact of the matter is they have to give us a reason to keep paying for the product. It's not as though companies won't eval and use more than one engine anyway, but you have to justify it.

For a start MARKETING!, AAA visuals you say? AAA in 2008 maybe? Or is Unity selling it on the butterfly demo with a 64-bit editor that wasn't available and still isn't for the end user or non licensees? Not to mention whatever other PhysX tools they were using in that demo (could be wrong here but I smell a hint of Apex). Unity need to play on the strengths they have, not what could be..

Toolsets, you can read with your own eyes what you get. Is their any contention here as to who has the better tools?

Support, I'll give a kudos here to Unity. Graham and his team have really stepped up with patching. Good going, but Epic aren't exactly doing a bad job either.

Communication, cool we got the official threads. But what is going on? I mean where is Unity heading with all this information? What will make it through? When is anything this going to happen?

It's great giving all this feedback, but if only a quarter of it is in the engine in the next 2.5 years it doesn't serve much use to people upgrading to Unity 5, or people using Unity now does it?

I'm struggling here to find merits to it, without effective consistent communication to back all this up. I'd love to consider Unity for a long term investment, but the question I'd have to ask them is why would I?

 

Unite

If that's a flop then let the chips fall where they may.

 

I couldn't really care what they announce at Unite, I want to see practical improvements in day to day handling. Not a list of potential fancy features they may or may not get released this half decade.

So here is another thing for Unity to do whilst trying to match that $19.00 and 5%. Customer interaction..!

 

If UT is going to neglect this thread, they lose a lot of feedback, including suggestion on improvement.
hippocoder, as a moderator, has the responsibility to tell UT about this thread.

 

It's a bit of an odd argument to say that stating UE4's strengths isn't helpful in a thread about the valuation of UE4.

It's also a bit odd to suggest that stating those strengths draws no comparisons to things Unity could improve on.

People on this forum have been praising UE4's Blueprint system for 2 reasons, because it's a good system that's easy and flexible, and because Unity has no parallel. Quite easy to see what Unity could take away from that in my opinion.

 

Others users of Free versions i'm not sure they will pay that price.

Would benefits a lot UT and users at same time with community bringing some missing features and others fixing annoying bugs.

No need to buy shaders it's easy to create or modify. Could it be UT or UE , PBS is nothing hard to understand if you have already worked with materaisl like normal and specular, UE made great documentation to understand PBS :
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/Materials/MaterialInputs/index.html
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/INT/Engine/Rendering/Materials/ExpressionReference/index.html
Using same system as blueprints, it's easy to create any shader combinations.

Let's see when UT5 will be out and the new prices for Pro users and for Free users ?

 

@zenGarden

You or me won't find it that hard, I've been doing shaders for well over a decade and been using UE4 since mid last year. Still doesn't mean it's not scary to people learning it, some don't even try and Unity allows for that to happen. Point being no matter how simple you think it is, others won't and it can being off-putting..

Personally I don't mind C++, but a lot of people find it difficult. Another point of contention..! (I prefer C# now I've started to get used to it, only to go back to c++ )

Thing is I'm so used to C++ and OpenGL, I actually struggle in Unity more than most others would for certain things. It's all about what you're used to.

I like sitting back and messing about / learning... It's the calm before the storm !.

 

How about being involved? I went back at least a week, over 300 messages, and did not see a single response from a Unity employee. One way Unity could improve is to ask themselves how UT would respond to an active thread continuously RIPPING APART THEIR ENGINE. I'd wager the legendary Tim Sweeney might have a thing or two to say.

Gigi

 

During the first week of the first official threads, interaction and communication was way up. I said it back then, that it was a good start, but it was just that, a start. Now a month or two later, UT is still the old UT. They got back to their old habits of doing occasional blogs and cryptic and rare forum info crumbs. Only thing we got was patch releases, which was planned before the start of the year. All in all, no effective change.

I'm really tired of doing this comparison, but I think it is still worth pointing it out. Epic devs are on forums, on irc, on answer hub and on twitch. They are way more active than Unity devs and I'm not even talking about the forum traffic vs dev response ratio. They are literally more active regardless of the forum traffic. You can see responses from devs in almost all sub forums. They do twitch streams where they actively and openly talk about future updates, and even things that may not even make it to the releases ever. Their roadmap is open for all to see and vote.

Compare that to the weekly newbie training videos Unity makes, the blog posts that point to 5.x as their release (mind you, that is anywhere between 6 months to 2.5 years!), and the ultimately no feedback official threads that we see.

Unity 5 release date is supposed to be 2014 summer. Still no substantial info on Enlighten, level streaming or job queue.

UT needs to communicate a lot more. It's not surprising to see this thread so active.

 

I wouldn't say we are ripping the engine apart as such, we all know Unity is a good engine. But the mark has been set and it's time to step up, I understand how difficult engine development is. It's not for the faint hearted, but still basic priorities just don't seem to be quite right.

What did we need first, Mecanim or a 64-bit editor? Shuriken or a terrain system upgrade?

If Unity themselves went through the motions, they'd realise it.

To summarise, game dev is hard enough especially with this race to the bottom going on and you need a leg up. Anything to close the gap and if you're spending six to twelve months on tools then that's time you took out of your game.

 

I never once said that they're not being open right now. They're at the point now where they can afford to be open. That's after the long time of quiet planning that I described. It's their new culture. New. This is relevant because until now Unity was likely operating on the logical assumption that this wasn't how Epic normally ran things.

Right now I agree that they're being really open, especially for a AAA engine. But that's not what I was talking about in my other posts. It took a lot of careful and quiet planning to get things to this point...or like you say @ShadowK, "it takes a LOT of skill to get to that point..". So I think we're actually in agreement here. That's why you and others like you were under NDA, as in don't talk about what we're doing. Saying that they plan a lot of this stuff in advance really isn't a controversial statement, as I'm sure you can agree.

And @Daydreamer66, the fact that users like ShadowK and others were under NDA at one point by definition shows that you're the one who was wrong about Epic because they were keeping quiet about their plans for a good long time before release (which is the context in which I said that they keep quiet about their plans). They're not in the main planning stage anymore though, they're executing the plan.

Again, they didn't just jump into this subscription thing without having a carefully planned roadmap, and I highly doubt they just pulled that roadmap out without knowing that the features they plan on adding are both useful and achievable (which is often done via testing and prototyping and listening to feedback from devs, especially devs under NDA).

What I'm trying to get across here (again) is that this is why we can't expect Unity to just turn around and match them overnight (like some people on this thread are suggesting). One of the main points I was trying to make in my other posts was to dispel that notion that Epic is just pulling this stuff out their ass like some people seem to believe and who seem to expect Unity to just do the same, just like that (which is silly).

Epic either planned a lot of what they're doing now in advance, or they're throwing so much money at the problem so they don't have to, or it's just a temporary surge to gain marketshare. Whichever it is, it's not something Unity can just match overnight without careful planning of their own. They have to look at the bigger picture here.

Now that Epic's plans are rolling and they have the momentum going, they can be as open as they want because it's at critical mass so to speak. Getting it to that point however, that's where the secrecy was at its highest.

 

Ehhhh...to be honest I would say that UT let their guard down a bit :S To be fair, they didn't really have any reason to be guarded though. It's just that they've had their own plans and they've essentially been marching to the beat of their own drum because that's been working really well so far.

Up until this point as far as indies are concerned, Unity has been obliterating the competition, and that included UDK. I was at IndieCade last October and at one of the talks the speaker asked what engines people used. GameMaker, a couple of hands go up. RPG Maker, a few hands. A few other lesser known engines, same deal. UDK, probably about 10-15 hands go up, the most so far. Unity? 90% of the room raised their hands (there were probably 60ish people the room). Which actually surprised me a bit considering all the talk about Unity's inferior graphics/tech and stuff like that. At least at IndieCade, Unity was more popular than even I knew at the time, by a very large margin too.

Anyway point is, until now Unity has been dominating quite comfortably at their current pace so there wasn't really much of a need to speed up development.

Meanwhile though, Epic has been carefully taking notes and quietly building up their arsenal so that when they were ready to reveal their plans, they could essentially go in guns blazing. Remember, they've openly admitted that they see Unity as their main competitor, even over Cryengine. That's also why it's been so important for Epic to keep so quiet about their plans (until now) and plan so far in advance. If Unity got wind of it, Unity could prepare better.

Essentially Unity got Zerg rushed. Even I, as much as I favor Unity, I do feel a little bummed out too at the sheer volume of updates UE4 is getting (bummed in the sense that I wish Unity could be getting similar). There's some really nice stuff in there. Thing is though, if Epic is making me feel that way, that means things are going according to plan because that's precisely their goal. They want to compete with Unity and if they were delivering anything less, they wouldn't be nearly as successful.

It's not doom and gloom for Unity just yet mind you, and I'm pretty confident Unity will pull through, they no doubt have a lot of stuff up their sleeve as well. But it does mean that Unity has to be extra careful in what their next move is.
Most likely we will get a lot more news at Unite -- remember, they haven't told us everything either and they always have some surprises at Unite.

 

Epic have no reason to be quiet now the cat is out of the bag. They were *very* quiet before launch - nobody except a handful of people knew they'd drop the bombshell at gdc and overshadow Unity's Unity 5 announcement. That is business, and all is fair in business and war

Now it's out, transparency is a selling point. I don't see this as being a thing to discuss really, its fairly pointless. What is more important is what is available to you on the day.

Have you seen Unity's full feature set? it's pretty massive. Yes epic is adding tonnes, but that's tonnes of what Unity already has.

I feel though, something has to be done - for example I suggested opening the docs up to allow community input for tutorials, techniques, even documentation, but so far not much has happened there. It seems Unity does not really know how to leverage it's most valued asset: the users themselves.

Something epic knows only too well how to utilise.

 

@Jingle Fett

Well if I were to guess, I'm pretty sure Sweeney didn't walk in one day with his coffee sit down and say. Morning guys let's start on Unreal 4 were going to release the source code out to the public. Oh and get this it'll cost $19.00 a month and 5% royalties. Whilst the room just burst out laughing.! But that being said, Epic developing rapidly is nothing new they were on the ball with UE3 too and that's why every AAA cat / sheep and dog used it. They have always been open with their customers.!

That move took a lot of planning and it feels like a Tencent move, you'd need some pretty hefty financial backing in case that model fell flat.

On the other point, UE4 and especially UDK's main market isn't Unitys right now. What I do is pretty niche, so for the most part Unity was always the best route for many indies.. But it's obvious that's changing quickly..

As soon as UE4 cracks simple 3D games and mobile, they'll be in it to win it. Which from the latest demos, they are trying to do just that. Like Hippo's game, I'd have a hard time convincing him to switch..

Still always comes down to and always has been the best tool for the job, not to say I wouldn't want to use Unity for our main projects. Because I love it's simple charm, although Unity is really not cut out for it.

In summary, Unity can't afford to be complacent about this whole thing. I know we sound like a preacher shouting the end is NIGH! But seriously it could be very damaging in years to come.

 

I believe they are finally looking at implementing such capabilities.

I agree.

I would also say the same about leveraging their Asset Developers. That's a huge body of developers who can add a ton of functionality to Unity (at zero cost to Unity) while freeing the Unity devs to work on engine / core features.

 

They're utilising me for bug reports and in the war against washing machine spam, but I don't think that counts.

 

And this my friends (the part in bold) is where we get to the core of Epic's subscription plan and why it will work so well for them and makes complete sense for them...but not necessarily for Unity.

Indie developers are only one small part of the equation. The other part of the equation that many people seem to neglect is the fact that they have a huge fanbase, including modders and gamers themselves. And the people at Epic are masters at harnessing their fanbase.
When the current console generation gets into high gear and more and more games using UE4 get released, the big AAA games that everybody plays...what's the first thing the gamers will see? That big fat shiny UE4 logo slapped across the front. And then Epic can market the hell out of it.

Spoiler

Epic: "Hey gamers guess what, have we got a deal for you! You know that game Gear of War/Mass Effect/"insert AAA title" you're such a huge fan of that you paid $60-$100 for? What if we told you that you can use the SAME tools used to make those games, and make your own mods, game modes, custom maps, or even entire games?"

Gamers: "Woah, that sounds awesome! But I don't know any programming, I've never made a game before!"

Epic: "Doesn't matter! We have a lot of free art and with Blueprints, you don't have to program!"

Gamers: "But isn't the editor confusing?"

Epic: "Not at all! We've redesigned the editor with you in mind!"

Gamers: "Sounds great! But it's probably too expensive for me, and I don't expect I'd ever make enough money to justify buying it..."

Epic: "No problem! It's only $20 a month and you can unsubscribe and keep using it as long as you like!"

Gamers: "Wow, that's less than what I spend on a single game! For the price of one game I can subscribe for 3-5 months! Even if I never make anything with it, it's a great deal! I'd subscribe just for the novelty so I can say I make games and feel like a professional and learn more about this hobby that I love so much, and make games/mods that my friends can play! Plus I can finally make that super MMOFPSRTS I've dreamed of and become a millionaire because nobody has ever thought of that!"

^^Or something like that : P
So the gamers who really just aren't particularly invested or don't actually care too much, they subscribe for a month or two, maybe they lose interest and unsubscribe or maybe they forget to unsubscribe, or maybe they stay subscribed just for the hell of it. They mostly just want to dick around with shiny stuff. But lets say they unsubscribe...a few months pass and they've forgotten about it...and then the next big AAA UE4 game comes out and, oh hey, I used that thing! I love this game, let me check out UE4 again! Wow, look at all the new features and shinies! Subscribed again! Rinse and repeat indefinitely. When Epic runs out of features to add, they can just make free art packages.
This of course is money Epic makes in addition to working closely with AAA devs, royalties, developing their own games, etc.

In other words, Epic is planning to monetize gamers, in addition to all their other stuff. Which is is a stroke of genius really (and also why it's so important they keep shiny stuff readily available). But it's a very different business model from Unity's, which seems to be mainly focused on indie developers. If Unity tried the same, they would most likely fail because their situation and fanbase is very different, their core fanbase comes from a very different mindset.

 

Lets not forget the community-driven unreal tournament requires a UE4 subscription if you'd like to make and sell content.

 

Yup! Monetized modding. Take something that was free before and get people to pay for it, then market it in such a way that they'll thank you for it. If the person succeeds and makes money, Epic makes money. If they don't succeed...Epic still makes money.

AND. They can theoretically do that for any UE4-powered game released for PC too, not just the ones they develop themselves. If you want to mod Mass Effect 4 for PC, you need a UE4 sub. Mirror's Edge, Arkham, Bioshock, Gears of War...UE4 sub.

 

@Jingle Fett: It sounds like we're on the same page now. No one, including myself, had suggested that Epic hadn't carefully planned or kept secret their plans regarding UE4 prior to their GDC announcement. I only had issue with the statement referenced above regarding Epic quietly holding features back for later release. I agree that Unity is in no position to mimic a similar strategy as of yet, but I hope they are seriously considering some of the suggestions offered here (such as finding a way to more affordably open the source to the community and adjusting their license pricing).

Now, back on topic please!

 

Excuse me, is not Unity for free ? That makes it better, going free until you reach $100,000 annual profit while Unreal Engine will get you paying them if you earn 1 cent per year or even for your free games. Correct me if I am wrong.

 

Well you can pay $19 once and not pay again until you want updates. That's pretty much free, I'll have to admit

 

I still get updates for free

 

Unity Free suffers from severe feature limitations.

 

I AGREE with that !

 

You only need access to the UE4 version that the game was released with. A subscription is not required, simply a one-month payment for the newest game.

 

In an ideal world. Since we don't know yet we can't say for certain, can we?

 

True. Reading through a thread I found on UE4's forums does seem to indicate they want to go with modders having active subscriptions. But they also are suggesting the possibility of modders selling their work. I'll link the posts by Tim below.

https://forums.unrealengine.com/sho...mes-cant-be-moddable&p=706&viewfull=1#post706
https://forums.unrealengine.com/sho...cant-be-moddable&p=99475&viewfull=1#post99475

 

With UE4 you don't owe royalties until you earn over $3000 per quarter, which would be 5% of all profit over that $3000 (unless you are wildly successful and decide to negotiate a custom license). I guess the other point to consider, as mentioned above, would be the quality of the game you produce, which would likely have an impact on your game sales.

 

That is not exactly accurate. You could pay one month for $19 and unsubscribe, and that is nearly free. For the amount of updates and content, I'm happy to stay subscribed at $19/month. Also, if you sell a game, Epic does not collect any royalties on the first $3k of revenue per quarter. Epic charges 5% on revenues above the initial $3k per quarter. So you could collect up to $12k per year without paying any royalties to Epic, assuming the revenue got spread evenly throughout the year. It is not completely free, but it is still awesome licensing terms for indies and hobbyists. I really wish Unity would add another payment option for Unity Pro that matched the price and terms.

 

> payment option for Unity Pro that matched the price and terms.

Price reduction is necessary. Extremely necessary.

 

That is not the same thing. Sprites used this way is the oldes thing ever. Enemies in Wolfenstein or Doom are Sprites and animated.
But if you would run around them with a flash light, you would see that they are flat. And you would see a popping when the Sprite changes.
The point is that the UE4 imposters have normals and the material of the original model, they look like the real thing with lighting and all. Yes no spectacular feature, and available in many other engines, but cool none the less.
If the model is very simple you can run around it without seeing the popping if you constrain it to a plane, that does not work with simple Sprites.

 

This only works if the game does not use a heavily customized UE4, which some AAAs will. And only if the game producer actually wants to allow that.

 

Those integration partners for the UE4 full version also have a Unity version of their add-on.

 

Fair enough and I'm glad we're on the same page now!
Before we move on though, I just want to point out two things...The first is that some users kind of were suggesting that Epic was just doing a lot of the stuff they're doing quickly on a whim without much planning with the implication that Unity should just do the same (see some of Mugilod's posts for example).
And then the other thing is that I posted about the planning thing in the first place precisely because it is on topic...some users have been suggesting that Unity should simply offer the same as Unreal (like the thread's name) but you and I are in agreement now that Unity simply mimicking Epic's strategy probably wouldn't work out too well, at least not at the moment. So that's one big reason why Unity can't offer the same just yet.


Anyway moving along...I've been thinking about the source access aspect and as far as Unity is concerned...I'm not too sure Unity actually needs to do that.
I mean it's available for those who really do need it, you just need to contact UT and make an arrangement with them. But for most users, Unity is open enough that you can make your own tools and features, which is one of the main reasons for needing source access in the first place. I mean sure, it's not 100% open as it is (you couldn't add 64-bit editor for example and there are bugs and stuff you kind of depend on UT to fix).

But for a majority of use-cases (certainly the majority of Unity's userbase) it's open enough. I think that when comparing source access in UE4, we really do have to factor in how open Unity is without it, as well as Unity's Asset Store because there are many assets on the Asset Store with features where the only way you'd be able to get them on UE4 (I imagine) would be via source (and before other users correct me, yes I'm aware that UE4 has its own asset store). And you don't even need to buy them on the asset store, you could implement them yourself if you wanted, which would be akin to coding it yourself in UE4, only you'd have to do it in C++.

Just as a random example...if you wanted fluid simulations like Fluidity on the Unity Asset Store, or a path tracer, or real-time GI, or other crazy features like that, I imagine source access would be the only way to get them on UE4 (assuming Epic hadn't implemented them), but you don't need source access in Unity to do the same. Multiple users implemented real-time GI in Unity 4 as far back as last year, shortly after Epic announced they were dropping that feature from UE4 (though I hear they've implemented it again)..

Source access would probably also mean taking out some of that middleware we enjoy, so there's that too.

 

It is the same thing. It is the oldest thing, that was precisely my point. Apparently you missed the part in my post where I already said that the UE4 ones use normal maps, which allow them to be affected by lighting (obviously they use specular maps and other maps too) and are higher resolution. The UE4 one also uses a higher number of sprites for smoother transitions. But that's all down to hardware constraints at the time, it's still the same basic technology.

I'm not denying that it's a nice feature to have, mind you. But when I brought it up the first time, it was as an example that Epic didn't add in the whole impostor system on a whim in the latest update, and that what they did add was a slightly upgraded version of older technology (and which can be added in Unity relatively easily).

I think you're missing the point of my post, which was that Epic theoretically can require UE4 subs for modding games they don't make. Obviously this depends on whether the game devs allow modding the game...Epic can also theoretically still require UE4 subs for modding games made with customized UE4.

 

Well, putting aside that some form of those particular features are indeed in the works, I think you could try to create those sorts of solutions both with or without the code in either engine. It's just that with source access, you don't need to hack a solution out -- you can just build it properly right into the code.With UE4, oftentimes those solutions will make it into the official builds, with credit (there were 33 user submitted bug fixes and feature additions included in 4.3).

So having code access can really be a boon to the community if leveraged properly. As you say, Unity would have to strip away licensed middleware to make it happen, just like Epic did, but that doesn't preclude having a closed version as well with different licensing terms.

Who knows what those crazy Unity developers have in mind, though? We might all be very surprised come August.

 

Source access allows deep level bugs corrected by other people, UE gain from that as muc has engine users having some bugs corrected quickly when Epic team can't do all at same time.
Source allows to community to develop what becomes not plugins but core functionnalities of the engine, you don't have to download any additionnal package of pay some 100$ for it , it is integrated.

UE4 with Blueprints allows for example properties ot be visible in inspector, it's perhaps a matter of time ot be able to create plugins using blueprints.

That's the issue with UT , you have to buy many plugins to have as complete global engine tools as UE4.
You need a good enought shader system like SKyshpop so pay 125$, need shaderForge you pay 90$ , need sector streaming , need better terrain etc ... the price becomes bigger.

Second disadvantage of plugin : if the author no more supports it , you keep plugin bugs and will not have any improvements or future versions compaitibility , so your money is lost in these cases.
In UE4 community developped features are not plugins but core engine ones or and editor additionnal features, that's integrated in UE4 not additionnal middleware you hav eto integrate or pay to have it. So anyone can correct bugs , or make them evolve, that's really different from plugin system.

UE4 has many features and tools that are missing in Unity , or you'll have to spedn lot of money specially for users of Free version , just take Skyshop, ShaderForge , you are already around 200$, with UE you psend 20$ and have lot more than that.
Unity will need to expand the engine tools at some point.

 

It absolutely will be necessary now.

Look at the recent release of Unreal 4.3. The sheer amount of things updated and added to it astounding, and its starting to make Unity look bad in terms of updates, additions, and bugfixes.

 

IMO, the biggest selling points of Unity WAS multi-platform, using C# and java.
If users don't care of using C++ to get speed boost, then.....

 

And also don't care about the lost of productivity of C++..

 

Bugs fix need to be verified and tested, which is 3/4 of the work of fixing bug. You don't imagine how people can fix a bug badly... Most of the time people fix bug using a way that only work for their own project And sometimes, it creates 2 or 3 more bugs. From my experience it's almost as time consuming to verify and merge bugs from random dev, than fixing bugs yourself on a base code you know well (and it's even less rewarding than bug fixing...).
The advantage for a dev team is that they can fix bug for their own project, without waiting Epic to do it. But merging these bug fixes into the main branch is not someting that will help Unreal to be more stable faster than Unity.

Make plugins in C++, that's a nice dream in theory But you should ask AAA team that have used Unreal with source code for many years... When you will be force to spend 2 entire months redoing your production plugin each time the unreal make a massive update, like what I've experience in a AAA team, you will change your mind.
At some point I've seen AAA team avoid making an update of the new version because of that... and after that Epic refusing to support old version
But you don't have yet the experience, because Unreal just went live for most of you.

Unity solution: Give an interface between the engine and Unity. If Unity maintain this interface properly, you won't need to redo your plugin at each updates. Of course the cons is that you don't have access to everything, and Unity can't do massive rework.

Unity and Unreal have made two different choice, each with pros and cons. For an indie, the Unity choice is probably the best. For a AAA team, Unreal is the best choice. But you can't use the "source code available" as a positive argument for Unreal...

 

Open source is advantageous, bugs fixed are simply fixed even if they need some Epic team quick look.
Who said it was too hard to make engine features using open source ( better than plugins caus it'"s part of the engine ) , look at 4.3 and what people made. Some things are in place for blueprints, to make some plugin system.

Don't generalize : there is many interesting indie projects in UE , even some amateur going to use also C++ after using only blueprints. UE4 provides you all basic template for pure beginners as fps, tps, top down movement, 2.5D game, vehicle, space ship. Each on both blueprint and C++ vesrtions.All character collision system easy to use similar as Unity are included.
Blueprints make it easy for pure beginners as easy as Unity users using Playmaker.

But UE providing blueprints and all tools to help you, no need to buy many plugins and you have a prototype running and looking visually in the style you want quickly. In Unity (free eversion) to have better terrain , LOD , lightening or advanced physics clothes and destruction, some specific animations system as IK collision handling you will struggle a lot.
UE4 have made a very clear interface, trying it you are at home,using blueprints is lot better than Playmaker and lot more clear visually, UE4 has put all effort to beginners and the result is great, you should really try it to see that yourself.

Before trying UE i was like you very sceptical, saying it's C++, it's big system, seems too hard. But i spend some 20$ after seeing beginners making some pac man or other basic games; and it's totally different opinion i have after using it and seeing it's not hard to handle.

Sure many non coders or people that prefer C# will not go C++. But coders and amateur people dealing with C++ from long time will be at home, and some C++ tutorial are coming for people ready to try it.

Finally it will be a matter of preferences between UE4 and UT5 for people that have tried the two solutions. You prefer some easy things of Unity, or blueprints, or tools of UE4 , or Unity plugins etc ... it's only personnal taste an what you think will be best for your project idea. There is always advantages/disadvantages, just take what give you more advantages and disadvantages that are ok for you.

 

For many complex bugs this is not true. The hard part is finding the issue for the bug. If the user that fixes the bug can tell you that in module A precondition B (e.g. value is NULL/wrong) is violated in case C that causes issue D in module E, then even if you do not use his fix, you can verify quickly that he is right and provide your own fix. This saves a lot of time.

And many of those community committers are top notch programmers, they won't normally provide those hack-fixes that you talk about. And even if, just seeing what problem this fix solves and how saves you a lot of time in the analysis of the bug.

The open source approach has huge advantages even if just very few community member have the skill to provide good stuff. E.g. the whole full body IK solution in UE4 was integrated by a community member.