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

Yeah, except their perpetual license is probably tens if not hundreds of thousands of dollars. If they had a $1500 perpetual license, no sane person would pay them royalties. Everyone would just switch to perpetual license as soon as they get $1500 in revenue.

That's the point people don't understand when asking Unity to match UE in subscription. They'll need to match UE in perpetual license cost as well if they want to survive. And I'm pretty sure you'll all be raging hard if they do that.

 

Note that it's for a source code license. Unity's source code licenses are probably similar in cost.

 

So you say you're fine with Unity raising the price to several hundred thousand dollars if they include the source? I bet 95% of the userbase won't agree with you.

 

Keep in mind that Epic's perpetual royalty-free option is for the entire team, not just one user. Unity's perpetual license is per user. So the difference in the price for royalty-free licensing is not nearly as big as it might seem at a glance. If you have a large team and are planning to make millions in revenues, you would need to call both Epic and Unity to see which company offered a bettered deal for your specific situation.

The $19/month + 5% is absolutely awesome for hobbyists, but it is not the same deal large companies would pay. Similarly, Unity offers custom deals to large companies, so those big companies would not need to pay $1500 per employee per platform. Neither company charge big companies the same rate that they charge individual hobbyists.

 

LOL, you can believe that and meanwhile over in the Showcase is Blek with over 1/2 millions sales. Must have Unity Pro and UE4 style graphics now!

 

Source code is open source now I thought? They've got this community bug fixing thing going now.

I'd say it's more for top of the line support. A business in the business of depending on such game engine SW would demand it (or should at those prices).

 

Unity has 'private' perpetual licenses for the big kahunas along with special support as well you can bet. They'd be throwing away a big business niche if they didn't with all the platform publishing ease they have. Businesses love write once, run any. Look at the popularity of the entirely mediocre Java ecosystem but the write once and run many saves $$$.

The $1500 per Pro license or Add-On is strictly for hobbyists, moonlighters, LLCs on a budget, whatever you want to call them.

 

I'm obviously NOT saying that.

Yes, but comparing a 1500$ perpetual NON-source license with a 1500$ perpetual source license is silly.

 

I wasn't. I am referring to UE4 and it's $19 open source license.

Ultimately they know the big bucks is for big time support and no royalties on established intellectual properties. We know that. Unity become popular because it's not reasonable to pay that much for to use a game engine without established intellectual property and with established intellectual property it's not reasonable to pay 5% of gross sales although that is very recent and Unity will have to adjust if they find their profits exiting to UE4. So UE4 handles both scenarios: established intellectual property and those without established intellectual property reasonably with their model. Unity does too but it never asked for royalties that I know of and their way of profiting from the big corporations and the individual is Unity Pro + Asset Store and Unity Free + the Asset Store.

And for all intents and purposes if you can't keep the source competitive and current $1500 for a perpetual source license is irrelevant. You've simply paid $1500 or whatever amount to keep the source current yourself or by your organization rather than the presumed experts that created the product. I won't even go into HW support. Now paying to have source it seems even sillier. Big corporations do that for CM, Support and Disaster Recovery scenarios the typical business needn't concern themselves with. Unity being a game engine, mentioning it disaster recovery in the same sentence seems silly at today's level of tech. You want to run Unity on punch cards go ahead.

 

Never said you did.

 

Honestly I have no idea what you're talking about and how is that related to what I said?

 

Honestly I'm surprised you can't connect the dots with a bit of tiny smidgen of irony then.

Multiple threads going on and on in the forums about Unity's failings as a game engine and Unity pricing and one must have that perpetual Pro license yet, somehow ironically, Blek is almost the quite the opposite of all that and is very successful.

 

My understanding is Unity already offers a custom license with source code access. It is just negotiated privately, and priced on a case-by-case basis, like Epic's custom licenses.

 

Well, actually I'm one of the supporters of a quite unpopular opinion on this forums that you don't need Pro to create great games. I also think that Unity Free is in many ways better for newbs than UE4. But, as I said, most people here have a different opinion.

What I'm saying is that it's just stupid to ask Unity to match the subscription model to UE4, ignoring the fact that UE4's perpetual license is times and times higher than the one offered by Unity.

I know that, and I don't understand why everyone brings up the source license? Not everyone needs the source, and I'm pretty sure that just a tiny minority of UE4 subscribers actually use UE4 source.

 

Having access to the source can be a major benefit as it allows you to integrate community-made changes. As was stated a few days ago in a news article on the UE4 website, the community successfully got the editor working on Linux before Epic could.

Now imagine if the community had access to Unity's source. We could very well have a 64-bit editor now rather than wait for the next major release.

 

Exactly. Also you know what is going on under the hood. Having full source makes it much easier to debug issues (even if it's in your own code source).

 

I'm just throwing out thoughts in response to the thread title.

Epic does negotiate prices, but I think they're per-game, not perpetual licenses to make as many games as you want. I could be wrong.

Source is a red herring in this price comparison; most UE4 users actually don't even download the source and just want the pretty graphics. Most people asking for the price match actually just want Unity Pro. Unity can't ship the source as it stands at that price because they would need to strip out middleware.

I just wanted to point out that the effective rate I see most people are asking is:

$19 with %5 royalties that are capped at $1500

which I think even Epic won't do.

The only other way this can work is if Unity drops the $1500 perpetual license in favor of a royalty scheme; a lot of Unity users would be up-in-arms if that ever happened.

 

Every UE4 user benefits from full source because Epic has integrated numerous fixes from the community. Full source is a wonderful thing and should not be underestimated

 

Yes, but that's tangential to what people are asking in the price discussions. The majority of the posters asking for the price-match are just asking for Unity Pro to be dropped to match Epic's sub.

I just wanted to point out that any royalty option is probably incompatible with a $1500 make-as-many-games-as-you-want option.

 

I actually thought this guy wrote the best post in the thread probably. Even if it's not 100% accurate it helps readers view this from UT's point of view.

 

It's a good try at an estimate.

It's even riskier in the context of what David said; even more people are buying Unity Pro even after Epic's announcement, why would they even risk it?

It's nice though that they've said they will look into options for low-budget hobbyists.

Disclaimer: we have tried UE4 at our office for a couple of weeks. We're one of those who are just probably going to upgrade our licenses to U5 when it comes it (probably before for the discount), iteration times and cross-platform reach make it a pretty easy decision for us.

 

But way off, Didn't David say Unity has over 400 people now?

 

I don't understand the aversion so many people have to the concept of giving away the engine for practically free but with royalties attached. If I happen to make enough that those royalties add up to at least $1,500 plus $750 every two to three years, how is that different from purchasing and upgrading normally?

Subscription is the ideal way to go as it keeps a potentially steady stream of money coming in. Especially if you require the subscription to keep access to Pro. Which may be fine with the community so long as the price is not ridiculous. The $75 per month price is frankly too much.

 

The aversion is for anyone serious about making good money. Or even running a kickstarter. Or getting any kind of advance. The 5% applies to any kind of income in tandem with the engine.

So for us, we'd have lost 20k or so out of the gate using it as opposed to losing practically nothing with Unity. So yeah, that's why Unity is actually situated in a pretty good place for small businesses at this point.

People harping on about every employee needing Unity pro with all addons are out of touch with reality. Most businesses will be smart and have only a couple of deployment licenses, perhaps a headless test server, and use source control for the rest. It's practical even for large teams to only buy 5 licenses or something with 30 staff. It's all about who uses it. Most artists, really don't, most programmers can use straight up c# without ever touching unity with an automatic build process. That's legit.

Your level designer will need a copy of just pro, none of the export platforms. Unity is actually cheaper by far for some people. It's just expensive for the hobbyist, or amateur developer trying to move away from the starting block. For these guys, Unity suggests they might want to use Unity Free. But now UE4 is out these guys want more.

 

I think took 2 weeks for the community to integrate HG and GIT into editor, just and example, so yeah, having the source is good thing.

So far UE4 seems to be stellar compared with everything else available on market. The 5% argument against Epic is just trolling. They give a $1M engine to play with...

 

Well I wish you much fortune and happiness with UE4.

 

I really don't want Unity to change it's licensing. Adopting UE4's model will satisfy the short sighted, but ultimately for ambitious projects I really don't want to pay royalties.

 

I would leave the royalty-free tier intact. The idea was simply a tier that allows new developers to gain access to features that are honestly expected in most game engines now.

I've seen attempts people have made to prove Unity Free is good enough and most of them are reminiscent of DirectX 7/8 era. They might work for low-end mobile but otherwise they just look awful. Sadly a lot of gamers actually do look at graphics and sometimes more so than actual gameplay.

Keep in mind though you can negotiate a custom license for UE4 and, while people are overstating the costs, if you are intending to be serious and make good money it really isn't that expensive. At least not based off the impressions I've been getting.

I had assumed that because everyone needed a copy of Pro that everyone automatically needed the addons. Nice to know.

 

lol, overstating the cost?
UE2 had a price tag of $350K for one platform +$50K per additional platform + 3% royalties.
And I'm not sure, but that might be for a single title.
I've read that UE3 was around $700K.

 

"Just trolling" ? For me I would have lost 20k immediately, how is this trolling? But, obviously, you're just playing at game maker, you don't finish and sell anything so I don't think you add anything to any of these discussions which concern 5%.

 

Maybe Unity could simply add another licensing option instead of getting rid of existing options. A lot of us "short sighted" hobbyists would love to get Unity Pro for the same price and terms as UE4. Maybe Unity could do that for us hobbyists while keeping all of their other existing licensing options. As it stands right now, hobbyists are forced to either use Unity Free or switch to UE4.

 

Unreal 2, and even Unreal 3 to some degree, was released during a time period when indie developers weren't exactly taken seriously. Yes, you could download and use UDK as an indie but the 25% royalties were pretty steep. As a result UDK came across more as a way to learn the tools and decide if the engine were appropriate so you could acquire a full license.

That Unreal 4 is available for practically nothing, both in terms of subscription and royalty costs, indicates Epic is now taking indie developers seriously. Obviously it would be unrealistic to expect an indie team to fork over a few hundred thousand. As I said, I am getting the impression from other development teams that the amount really isn't as high as people seem to believe.

Am I correct in assuming that also takes into consideration the new license terms that allow up to $3,000 per quarter per product before royalties kick in? Granted this is if Unity completely cloned Unreal's licensing terms. Still while we're wishing...

 

It's a non issue, you have a budget, you're going to cry about 1,500 or somesuch after getting adobe and autodesk licenses for your art guys? Come on. You've got art guys. Now you better be making a bunch of money with your game. A straight up non issue becomes very practical money saved when the royalty doesnt happen. I'm trying to think of any situation where the cost of the pro licenses are at all a significant figure in a studio employing more than er.. 2 people, whereas the royalty is a significant figure to anyone with a few games out there who is er, basically a genuine studio

Basically, the pro license cost is only an issue if you are small fry, and anyone who understands the cost of the licenses in terms of all the other pile of licenses being purchased for a team has dealt with enough money to know the bite that royalty takes

 

Hippo is saying he's made 400,000 quid off of one title is all, the $3000 per quarter would still be significant as UK is very expensive. At any rate, he'd be free to negotiate a perpetual license with Unity the same way one can with UE4 were Unity to decide to add royalties to their subscription model. I don't know how much the tax rate in the UK is or over how long a period that 400K is but those are comfortable sustenance wages in the UK, one certainly shouldn't hope to retire soon at that pay rate.

For a consultant royalties are extremely significant. It's not the same boat as someone actually publishing games they hope to profit on and working another job.

 

This is it, it's small fry whining about the pro license (Who don't really seem to reflect any idea of employing several people over a variety of fields that would most like use high profile software?), anyone running a business finds the maths pretty simple

 

That's negligible in terms of any significant budget. The maximum impact is $150 per quarter per developer. I'm not saying that $150 doesn't matter, but I am saying that if you're dealing with a large budget that there's probably more important considerations to spend your time on.

 

No need to change the actual licenses:

The Pro version is very good for studios/teams business.
The Free version is very good vs open source alternatives.

Between there is a gap that others engines fill with a monthly subscription.

Why not an indy license?
20$/mo with an obligatory year, 5% royalties or even 6 to 7, till the income is less than maybe 15000 to 30000$/year.
Possibility to upgrade at anytime to Pro, to avoid royalties.

As many said, advantages are so obvious with Pro: they would upgrade soon or later to avoid the royalties.
It would not cut off Unity income but it would extend it.

In the meanwhile indies could prototype and learn while bringing a little money to Unity instead to stay on the free version for months if not years, would give them more interest to buy in the market since they would not plan to leave someday.
It would even allow them to buy wider since some addons work only with a complete version/full features.

Why that would not work? Why Unity would have to change everything?

 

I do agree somewhat that Unity Free this time could do well to be quite a deal more powerful than previous free versions have been - theres plenty of things you can keep pro only that would make a pro license indispensable while giving the free users some more graphical welly too, more or less, show incredibly strong content coming out of the FREE version of unity (Publicity happy times) and unity pro be a 'dur' option for anyone moving these fancy graphics prototypes into real products

 

Certainly but then it isn't very difficult to beat practically every open source alternative. I had a similar discussion with a friend not long ago. Neither of us could name a single open source game engine that provided a decent editor and feature set while still maintaining the degree of platform support that Unity does.

 

While you have a point it still doesn't cover hobbyists or people with tons of free time but not a whole lot of money which are the vast majority of the market. Those will be the ones that will see UE4 as attractive and are more than willing to take on royalties.

 

Sure, but rationally* speaking Unity's free license is still every bit as good (or better) for plenty of projects. And, again rationally* speaking, picking the engine with the coolest out-of-the-box shaders and flashiest promo imagery isn't necessarily the best way to actually complete a project.

* But l we mustn't make the mistake of assuming people make decisions rationally.

 

You can't deny that OMG GRFX attracts attention and help in the sales department, even if people do buy it and dislike the game for being an empty shell of no game play. So it's not always based on rational thinking, more of a fear impulse after seeing the amount of projects jumped on for lacking fidelity..

Bad art and bad engine tech is the easiest way to chuck your project down the pan.

 

This is why i'm saying chuck some of Pro's OMGGRFX features into Free, it's mega publicity for what is a completely free product when it's knocking out some fine looking things. Someone else said the 100k income needing pro is pretty much the writing on the wall - you cannot run a proper business if you arent making that kinda money at least in my country, so the host of indispensible other pro features for the more mature projects would make pro a no brainer while giving free the eye food to make it very attractive to both casual or hobbyist tinkerers (They dont even have to find/beg their parents for their card!) and the reasons one might buy pro, and the maturity to see why the expense of pro is a worthwhile and sensible proposition, particularly when that expense is pretty trivial when thrown in with the rest of your setup bill (And increasingly sensible as your income grows and the cost of UE4's royalty starts to dwarf the one-off

If you ever expect your game to be successful, or even hope for it to, it's extremely naive to find the royalty a better alternative if you're just taking it cost for cost

 

Of course every one expects that and that's why I avoid those threads because when many good games get ignored that creates a mind set to everybody else is wrong and at fault rather than simply aknowleging people aren't going to spend 30 minutes and more browsing games on offer to find a game they'll play 10 minutes on the bus everyday if they really, really like it.

So without knowing the numbers of those types that are paying money for pro licenses, royalties are like a wink and a nudge to all them gold prospectors out there.

 

Unity Pro is great value if you develop for PC/WebPlayer.

It's the 'mobile developers pay treble' issue which is more of the problem (especially as mobile devs essentially get less features - mobile devices aren't powerful enough for postprocessing, deferred lighting, etc)

 

Only for so long, my htc one just kicks the arse of much that i put on it, so, looking forwards, mobiles arent going to be so limited afterall

 

Also consider that Unity + Epic have some other rather large additional sources of income besides the standard licensing model.
For example UT totally fleeces anyone who uses Unity for gambling apps. Plus there are support contracts. I bet there are loads of other sources of income we don't know about either.

These companies have business development managers whose job it is to find new ways how to squeeze every penny from any other avenue they can find.

 

Okay, at 300 employees with the average salary of $60,000 per year, the salary expenditure would be $18 million.
I am not sure if Denmark (where their "real" HQ is) has something similar to what you are talking about (2x salary for social security, health benefits, training, etc..) so I didn't include it in the calculation.


So, the total operating expenditure at that model would be $21 million (assuming the office expenditure stays the same but I doubt it as 250+ people in the Denmark main office would need to break up into at least 2 (or even 3!) floors for the required office space - doubling the rent and various office operating cost). To break even, it would require to sell 14000 Pro licenses every year (I made a mistake previously - at 200 employees they only need to sell 10000 Pro licenses per year). Also I excluded the tax as per your suggestion.


Now, if UT is to follow Epic's model - UT needs to get 92105 paying subscribers ($21 million/($19 x 12 month)) ASSUMING NONE OF THEM LEAVE THE SUBSCRIPTION FOR THE YEAR! But everyone is talking about just taking up subscription every few months just for the update instead of paying every month - that means that number needs to be at least 2x to 3x just to cover the cost of people leaving the subscription - which means at 2x (if most people only updating every 2 month) UT needs to get 184210 subscribers while 3x (if people only update every 3 month) means UT needs to get 276315 subscribers to break even! That's a little over a quarter of a million people that UT needs to get if it wants to follow the Epic's model. At the worst case scenerio - if every subscriber only paying for update once every 2 years (until the next major release) - that means Unity needs to get 2210526 subscribers ($21 million operating cost x 2 years) / $19) just to break even - that's 2.21 million subscribers ! That's kinda insane.



I didn't include the 5% royalty - because indie game market is such a unpredicable market and majority are not making any real money at all - also I do not have any data on this so I chose to leave that out and go for the most conservative estimate.


It all comes down to just exactly how many and how predicable the income stream it will be for people to go for the subscription model. If majority of the Unity users still chose to use FREE, or only paying for update once every 2 years (until the next major release) - This will definitely not be financially viable for Unity to even try this.

The truth will be somewhere between those two numbers - 92105 paying subscribers vs 2.21 million subscribers - it all depends on how often people are willing to spend $19 per month for the update.

 

The truth is very unlikely to be between those two numbers since the reasoning behind them are so flawed.

 

I'd consider this a trolling response since you need to explain why you consider them so flawed. At least have the decency to back up your accusation of a flaw with why it is flawed. Anyone can say "ooh that's flawed" with zero reason why. Ooh the moon is flawed. Ooh, intel chips are flawed. What context? If you'll post accusations, post them constructively or not at all.