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

That is impressive and that's kind of my point. How can a company with as many employee's (as Unity), drag it's feet with a lot of things? How can the PR/Social Media department allow such hype to be built around UE4 without directly combating it?

I understand that Unity doesn't want to step on anybodies toes by giving Unity 5 some built in features (because someone in the asset store has that for sale) that mimic what's popular in the asset store. But why not buy some of the assets from the asset store, hire the assets creator to manage it, then bundle it into Unity 5? They had to go get someone from nGUI to remake the new UI, why just stop their?


Unity should buy out:
Shader Forge and Bundle it
uScript (I use it so I'm bias and bundle it
Input Touches and bundle it
Shooter AI and bundle it
Behaviour Designer and bundle it

No need to reinvent the wheel when theirs so many wheels in the asset store.

 

A lot of bad assets there I'd hate to see bundled due to being unfinished and so forth. No, why bundle what can be bought? Instead Unity needs to (with the exception of shader forge, which would be a clever purchase by unity) build solutions itself.

 

Epic is not adverse to change. That may sound a little mean, but think about it. Look at the current state of Mono and how out-of-date it has become. If Epic were in charge, would we even have Mono any longer? I doubt it.

Not only did Epic completely strip out UnrealScript when they went to UE4, but they introduced a fabulous visual scripting system (that is very pleasant to use as glue logic) and gave C++ access to every single developer.

 

OMG let's reinvent the wheel, hell no, buy the best solutions on the asset store, then re-engineer them to be a modular component of the core engine!

GUI anyone?!

 

This conversation about Unity and UE4 has been running since March, when Epic announced their hobbyist friendly pricing for UE4. Since that announcement, Epic has been rapidly releasing updated versions of UE4, each with a list of exciting new features. Meanwhile, Unity released Unity 4.5, which included bugfixes, but no new features. The new Unity GUI is still not released outside the closed beta testing group. And Unity 5 can be purchased, but not downloaded. Epic has an public roadmap for upcoming improvements, but Unity cannot even tell us when Unity 4.6 and Unity 5 will be available. It is almost as if the two companies live in completely different universes when it comes to comes to time lines and updates.

On the hobbyist friendly pricing, that should be trivial for Unity to implement. Create an additional payment option for Unity Pro, where you simply match the price and terms of the UE4 deal. Hobbyists, including myself, would love to pay Unity on the UE4 price and terms. We have been begging Unity since March to take our money. It would be the easiest money Unity has ever made.

 

That's why I said I don't understand why Unity drags it's feet. 300+ people is a lot of people, why are things taking so long? Why are they not as "open" with us as Epic? Why not more Social media tweets? Why not some more videos on their YouTube channel? Why not a display at at video game conference? Why not email us whom have registered with Unity some "top secret" behind the scene footage? Why so much silence?

A lot of questions. That's why these threads have continued since March and show no signs of stopping.

On my previous comments, to me here are some benefits to buying a popular asset from the asset store to bundle with Unity 5 (even if they don't modify the asset):

1. That would save time and money. Unity will not have to create a similar asset from scratch.
   
2. Many people in the community (whom are familiar with that asset) can create tutorials and answer questions.
   
3. The creator(s) of the asset can now focus on tech support for that asset and possibly make official updates to it.
4. Unity can allow those creators to continue making updates to the asset, then sending it over to them. Thus Unity won't have to waste time constantly having to update the asset, the assets creator(s) can manage that.
5. The community for that asset can continue to make user made plugins for that asset. Thus expanding the functionality of that asset (again,...less work for Unity).

But,..as logical as this may sound to me (or you), Unity is still "hush" about Unity 4.6 and 5. While the gaming world is all worked up about UE4, this silence is only making things worse.

 

I don't know, the biggest things I could suggest are the amount of platforms they support whilst trying to remain backwards compatible with older versions of Unity. Which has to be a tough job in itself, Unity are damned if they do damned if they don't.

 

Good point UE4 dropped a lot of legacy stuff with e.g. UnrealScript when it released UE4. And look at Mantle it bypassed the legacy of DirectX and OpenGL to shake things up a bit.

But it sounds like Unity 5's .Net to C++ converter could be just the ticket, bypassing Mono and allowing for native builds.

 

I dont think thats the problem. I think the problem is a lot of those 300 positions are purely fluff positions.

Anyone who follows UT on Twitter sees all the job postings and a lot of them are completely useless fluff positions. You can also see a few of the UT employees with said fluff positions post up things of how they basically waste away the day by f-ing around and not doing anything. (Reminds me of 3DRealms and how a crap load of employees didnt do S*** all and they wondered why they f'ed up so badly on various projects).

If they slashed those fluff positions and actually got hardcore engineers and artists then Unity would probably surpass UE4 quite rapidly. But that will never happen if they keep housing fluff positions that dont contribute to the meat and potatoes of what Unity is.

 

Ok, lets agree to disagree on the rest, 'cause this is the important bit. Yes, all they changed was some business model stuff to be more competitive at the low end of the market... where Unity had already decided they'd prefer more users over the little bit of money they were getting.

 

I'm sorry to say it, but there's plenty of stuff on the Asset Store that I'd rather re-roll than use, even after having paid for it. There's a lot of great stuff on there, but there's also a lot of... not so great?

And this is coming from someone with a very much "get the job done" mentality. When I decide against using something I've purchased it's not for academic reasons, it's because I think that in the long term sticking to something that... doesn't fit in with the workflows I'm designing for a project... will cost far more than spending a day or two rolling my own purpose-built solution.

 

I don't think it is the sole problem. Epic is simply used to dealing with AAA studios and not having to rely on a base largely composed of indie developers.

Their business model is completely different. Namely they use royalties in addition to initial one-time fees. Unity, because they rely solely on one-time fees, will tend to push really nice features off to future major versions. Epic will simply put it in their next release if it is ready.

SpeedTree is a good example of this. SpeedTree is being integrated into UE4 in such a way that it is treated as a static mesh. This allows it to be used in any other system that expects a static mesh and makes it very flexible. Whereas Unity is waiting for their next major release, UE4 is scheduled to get it with the next semi-monthly release.

 

One of the biggest requests we get from everyone is to make Unity more stable, this means fix bugs and make sure those shiny new features actually work properly when they are released. The new stuff is coming in 4.6 and mostly 5.0, this is taking a while because we don't want to release it broken.

Meanwhile we are constantly fixing more bugs than we ever have to improve the overall quality of Unity, this is also thanks to our Sustained Engineering team who are fixing bugs for our enterprise customers, but making these fixes available much faster to everyone with weekly releases.

^As above, we want everything to work when we release it.

We don't have anything stopping any dev talking about anything we are working on, on the blog or on the forums.
(http://blogs.unity3d.com/ and check any "Official" thread on the forums, or devs dotted around)

We have lots of tweets, what do you want to see?

We also have lots of videos, https://www.youtube.com/user/Unity3D/videos what more do you want to see.

When you say videogame conference, I assume you mean the likes of E3 and Gamescom. We were at E3 and we will be at Gamescom, as we don't have a games development arm we are more focused on helping and servicing current and new users at these shows.

We have a monthly newsletter we send out to those who have subscribed, what more would you like to see in these?

Off the top of my head, over the half of the company is made up of R&D, the rest is made up of Support, Marketing, HR & Biz Dev.

 

Sorry to say Aurore but no matter what you say or show, people are always going to bitch and moan. People have no clue what goes on at Unity so they guess and assume.
Nature of the beast.

 

Aye, but it doesn't hurt to give those people a little caressing in the right direction.

 

I think this is a good thread and I can't blame anyone for being more intrigued by the pricing model of UE4 (I know I am), but this comment is a bit insulting to be honest, and only makes you look bad.

Running a real company is hard, you need HR, Finance, Operations, IT (not Engine Developers, instead people who run the physical hardware plus things like the marketplace, process payments, etc.), Sales and Marketing, etc. From your overzealous usage of the word "fluff" in your post, I can only assume you believe anyone who does any of these jobs are useless, where as in reality, Unity wouldn't exist without these people.

If you think Unity is slow to develop new features (as I do), that's fine, if you think their pricing model is horrible (as many do), again that's fine, but calling anyone who isn't working on the actual engine itself as useless "fluff" is just silly and ignorant.

 

While I disagree with the poster who said that UT is full of fluff, overall this entire thread does have a valid point, so just dismissing it as "people are always going to bitch and moan" is also silly.

Unity Pro has a serious barrier to entry for small team developers, plus the development cycle is much longer than other engines, so there are actual issues, not just rantings of whiney forum trolls.

When their Marketplace gets up and running with User based content, that'll be another check in the box that will be equal to Unity.

In a way it's ironic that Epic and Cyrtek are doing to Unity what Unity did to them a few years ago, and it's Unity that is slow to react.

 

But yet people do. Unity states one thing with a big disclaimer about dates subject to change and it passes that date people are all over them.
Go with whatever engine you want to use. Simple as that. Unity or unreal are not putting a gun to your head stating you must use their engine.
Yes things need to change and they are but to always jump on a company without knowing the ins/outs of it isn't professional.
I have already seen threads jumping on epic about release dates being missed but guess that is ok because they are epic.
Use whatever tool that will streamline your production. Simple as that.

 

Unity hasn't given dates for anything since 3.x.

 

Regardless of how long Unity pushes back the release date, there will still be bugs in both 4.6 and 5.0. That is simply the nature of software. Even v4.5 had bugs when it finally shipped. The key is to develop systems for getting as many testers as possible to use the beta versions, give quality feedback, and then quickly fix the reported bugs.

The weekly releases are a huge step in the right direction, but there is still more that could and should be done. For example, release beta builds that can be installed in addition to, instead of in place of, the existing stable version of Unity. For example, right now, Unity should offer both Unity 4.5 Stable and Unity 4.6 Beta. Let users install both onto the same system, so they can use the stable version for productive work while playing with the beta version on the side.

Next, release the beta version updates as frequently as humanly possible, including a scripted bleeding edge nightly build. This would create massive buzz, and it would let Unity improve software much faster. Additionally, it would give asset sellers a chance to get assets designed for an upcoming version of Unity while it was still in beta, and that would lead to more assets being ready the moment new versions went stable. Right now, examples would be GUI skins for v4.6. For v5, the examples would be things like PBR based assets.

Anyway, delaying releases "because we don't want to release it broken" is the wrong solution. Open the beta up to everybody and make it easy for everybody to install the latest Stable and Beta versions side by side. You'll find and fix more bugs in less time that way, and you'll create a massive amount of buzz in the process.

 

You can install two different versions of Unity at one time, so you can have the full release and a patch or beta build (if you are part of the beta) at one time. http://docs.unity3d.com/Manual/InstallingMultipleVersionsofUnity.html

 

So it no longer automagically uninstalls the old one for you?

 

It will if you just install another one without renaming the folder of the other install.

 

That is a terrible solution for a problem that could easily be solved with an option in the installer.

 

Always negative arent you.
Change the install path just like any other program you install.

 

That doesn't work on OSX.

 

I think Unity should have a new visual scripting languange for non-programmers like UE4 has...an official one.

 

I have to agree with these since in professional software development it's often a requirement to have multiple versions of an SDK or whatnot on hand as a result of running multiple projects side by side. I don't understand why the installer would just assume that we want to remove prior versions of the software. For my hobbyist stuff I'll update whenever there's an update available just 'cause I can, but as a professional you typically don't update something unless you've got a reason for doing so.

The documentation is a good first step, but I'd really like to see the installer updated so that on both Windows and Mac we get an explicit option about removing prior versions (and, if I may suggest, the option should default to not uninstalling anything).

This is especially relevant with major versions, e.g.: 3.x to 4.x, which the documentation seems to imply is also impacted by this. We were still using 3.x for some projects for something like a year after 4.x was available.

 

This will be ridiculous.. in many aspects.

If they do that, they should also fire 70% or more of their devs and go back to indie roots, just like in the beginning, and lower the prices to match UE4 offer.

 

UE4 is pretty much like Unity in 2009. sinny editor + cheap price + great communcation.

One of the feature I like in recent UE4 build is one click publish to android and ios device on windows, (no Mac needed), that's the feature I would dream on Unity years ago.

 

I said it because their's a lot of good assets in the asset store. Assets that should already come standard with Unity.

Instead of unity wasting time creating a generic version of their own (which will most likely be worse than an assets that does the same thing), they should just buy out the assets from it's creator then allow the creator to manage it and continue development for it.

It honestly doesn't make sense how Unity does not have a standard visual shader (and some other features).

 

UE4 is already talking on 4.3 and 4.4 at this point, we only had 4.5 as a bugfix release, and still have no idea when 4.6 is going to hit, let alone Unity 5.

It is nice that you guys are talking, but saying you are aiming for 5.x release means absolutely nothing, as it can mean anywhere between 8 months to 2.5 years.

When compared to the Epic's videos about Unreal Engine, where they do weekly streams, discuss the progress of the engine and the new features coming (not to mention community highlights), you can see why Unity and its live training fall extremely short. It is nice to have older Unite footage on youtube, but frankly, it doesn't compare.

 

And they are trying to make things better. Don't people see that at all? Or complaining and telling Unity they are full of BS makes everyone feel better?
Aren't there enough things to worry about besides if Unity meets Epic's standards of information?
Before everyone jumps on the "Fanboy" bandwagon... I use what will help in my little project. I have 4.2 of UE4. cancelled the subscription there to save a couple of bucks (well it is the cost of 2 packs of smokes for me). It is a big learning curve to get everything figured out. Nothing is out of the box perfect and I am far from understanding how everything works in both Unity and UE4. What you see from Epic are people that KNOW the software inside and out, so of course their stuff looks beautiful! It sure as hell better! Now give it to a new person, without prior understanding, it will take awhile before they get up to that standard, that goes for ANY software package!
Constant negativity isn't helping anyone. Either that be towards Unity or people that post things.
Yes Unity sucked at communication, but they stopped due to the constant complaining from people that they didn't do this, missed that date, etc. I would stop too if you tell people "look at what is going on! I can't wait to get it in the next build. JUST understand that we are working on it and it may/may not make it due to bugs or things outside our control." Then the mass of posts stating Unity sucks! They lied! etc.. etc..
Now Unity is trying to go back and work on the communication part and putting out weekly bug fixes while working on new features, expanding old ones, REWRITTING code to make it work better, faster. But that stuff falls through the cracks and people just hang onto the negative things.
Give props where needed and give constructive criticism where needed to help them understand where to improve.
And by all means, if you think you can do better, go for it! Build your own AWESOME game engine incorporating everything that Unity/UE4 gives you. Or go some use the other programs that are out there.
Now enjoy your Friday, make some awesome game or go outside and take a walk and breath.

 

Hi Ataloss!

I usually lurk the Unity Forums, but felt like I needed to post here to address some of your questions. Aurore, and some other posters, has already responded to some of them, but ill comment aswell. (Disclaimer: I am a Product Evangelist for Unity Technologies, in Europe, Middle East and Africa)

300+ people is a lot of people, why are things taking so long?
Not every single Unity employee types code into the engine; Siddown summarised this perfectly in his post earlier in this thread.

Why are they not as "open" with us as Epic?
Define "Open". What would you like us to be more open about?

Why not more Social media tweets?
We have social media tweets and postings going out at all hours of every day! There is also #madewithunity Fridays, on Twitter, for showcasing a variety of projects made by Unity developers. Is there anything we should be tweeting about more?

Why not some more videos on their YouTube channel?
We've posted 6 videos in the past week covering:
- A hands-on look at the new UI system
- A case-study talk, from Fat Pebble, on how they make handmade games
- A talk from our lead 2D tools developer covering common 2D issues and how to solve them
- A video on tips and tricks for the Unity Editor
- A couple of videos on how to make an Angry Birds style game.

However, is there anything else you want a video on?

Why not a display at at video game conference?
One of my tasks in Unity is to represent the company at game development events and to interact and demonstrate new features in Unity to our community in-person. This year alone, I have given talks and live hands-on demos of our 2D Tools, new GUI system and Unity 5 features at conferences in England, Scotland, France, Germany, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Italy, Bulgaria, Russia, Switzerland, Poland, Turkey, San Francisco, Seattle, Montreal, Los Angeles and Houston (Although, I have probably forgotten a couple). Other than myself, there is a team of other Evangelists who attend events, demonstrate Unity to attendees and communicate with our developers to see what they are doing with Unity and how we can help them make the most out of the engine.
I will also be at GDC Europe and Gamescom this year, so if anyone would like a hands-on demo of new Unity features, feel free to grab me and ask! 9Ill probably be wearing a Unity t-shirt)

I also attend non-development game conferences in my spare time for fun, but still end up talking about Unity at some point; it is always inevitable!

Why not email us whom have registered with Unity some "top secret" behind the scene footage?
I can't speak on behalf of the content creation team; but I think that if we have a new demo or feature we would prefer it was of a demonstrable level of quality and then share it publicly to all developers, instead of just our currently registered users.

Why so much silence?
We aren't being silent.

But,..as logical as this may sound to me (or you), Unity is still "hush" about Unity 4.6 and 5.
Hardly. We have regular blogposts on new features, videos, tweets, facebook posts and public talks on whats coming in Unity 4.6 and 5. The main thing we are keeping "hush' about is the release dates as they tend to be subject to change in development. Although, to keep up with Unity tradition, they will be available 'soon' and 'when they are ready'.

Of course, I welcome any further questions, and if any of you are attending Develop Conference in Brighton (England) next week; i'm giving a talk on the new GUI system on Wednesday and can give a 1-on-1 demo on Unity 5 features if you find me at our booth.

 

Archania, I think you might be missing the point a bit. Beyond the very few people hurling direct insults as the staff of UT, most people posting in this thread have presented legitimate concerns/questions.

Unity is a for profit company, and frankly for Epic to change their business model completely, it means Unity's business model must be working to a fair degree (that or Epics business model was failing to a bigger degree, which is effectively the same thing).

So people comparing UT to what is now effectively their competition in Epic, is a good thing because competition tends to breed quality.

The people who work at UT are all adults, and I'm sure they can take constructive criticism just fine, and as I mentioned most of the comments in threads like this have focused on actual concerns or questions which in no way should have insulted them.

I've built software for years, and one thing I've learned is that everyone thinks its easier than it is, which is why transparency and communication is so important. Regardless of that, a successful company will always have it's trolls, and I imagine UT knows this, so hopefully the few insults they do received on threads like this just roll of their backs.

 

Change the name to its version after installed. You can install the next omen and do the same. Works here since 2.6.1

 

Again, this should be handled in the installer itself. I shouldn't have to jump through hoops just to have concurrent versions installed.

 

@Andy Touch

Andy, personally not as a company rep I'll say I'm not a massive fan of UE3 or UE4. I feel much more comfortable with Unity and I find the ease of base use incredible. That being said, I have a deep respect for Epic and UE4 as a product it is in essence a fine tool for game making.

One can't deny out of the box the toolset (Cinematics / VFX / Terrain system / Post / Material editor / TOD / 64-Bit editor / post etc.) Is mighty impressive and when you compare feature for feature, I'm not sure in the 3D market how anyone can deny UE4 doesn't have a major leg up on Unity 4 Pro. Especially for the price when $19.00 a month becomes irrelvant if said indie does fall flat when it comes to releasing a game.

It offers all the toolsets that SHOULD be in a 3D engine, not that any of the competition have been able to match them anyway.

Playing devils advocate with myself here, Unity has not released their competitor yet. Unity 5.0 will be the answer, but this is highly dependant on time. Unity can't afford to play catchup for years to come whilst Epic keeps evolving, so where exactly is the disconnect? Epic moves at a rapid rate, I see the official threads asking for feedback on components. That's amazing, Unity are listening which is step 1 and I'll give kudos where it is deserved, they are doing a cracking job.

But again, time.. If Unity have more engineers, why is it the case that UE4 is not only much more advanced but evolving 10:1?

Reason I ask is as a community we should help Unity ease the burden in some places, it's not our jobs neither is it our right. But your performance affects us as teams, the better Unity is the more rapidly we can develop. So if it is Mono / legacy support / platform reach etc. holding things up.. Then let us know, get some feedback on the situation.

Also I will say, if you want to drag Unity by the scruff of the neck and bring it up to UE4's base defaults you have your work cut out for you (if possible, I've not tried like for like). The main responsibility of an engine in my eyes is to save us time over using a DIY engine, in a closed environment we seek Unity to fill in the gaps.

 

Thank you for taking the time to answer my questions.

As you've read I came from UDK. I honestly started using Unity because someone wanted my services as a game designer for their project. Everyone else on their team was using Unity. I had to be honest and turn down the contract (because I had no knowledge of Unity), but I decided it was time that I learned Unity (I didn't want to loose any more money from lack of knowledge). I will admit Unity is much easier to use than UDK (I haven't played with UE4, but my friends are constantly harassing me to "come back" and try out UE4), because of that ease I was able to get a good grasp of Unity in just two months. The Interface is also much more appealing than UDK.

I've grown found of Unity because of it's potential for growth. I mentioned how the lack of "out the box" features makes Unity look bad (and I still stand by that). Because in this game engine war (and let's not kid ourselves Unity, CryEngine and Unreal Engine are not all buddies that have lunch daily and take Selfie pictures together), Unity is looking like the weakest of the pack. Why would I perceive it as being weaker?,...because I haven't been shown all that will come with Unity 5. I don't consider a professional Wrestler like John Cena as weak because I've seen what he's capable of. Therefore anyone that he'll fight or has doubts about his abilities I can quick inform by sending them YouTube links of his fights. I can't do that with all of the new features of Unity 5. Their is not a multitude of Unity 5 videos (each one dedicated to a particular feature), that I can send to a person. For example I can't send just one YouTube video dedicated to how easy it'll be to convert/Import 3D models (for example), then make minor changes once imported.

I mentioned purchasing popular assets from the store then bundling it with Unity 5 as a quick fix to that problem (rather than your programmers having to create a visual scripting tool from scratch which would cost a lot of money). As mentioned before you are a "for profit" company, and in this world when you're out to make money you have to generate as much hype about yourself and or your services as possible. Just look at how every year cash cows such as ; Call of Duty, Assassins Creed and the 2k Sports games (MLB & NBA) generate so much hype and attention about their upcoming games that you have no choice but to be curious about it. Thus, watch more and more videos about it, which in-turn causes you to want it more.

I mentioned being more open in the sense of hyping Unity 5 (let's be honest,...Unity has a lot riding on the success of Unity 5). Without the social media attack it seems like Unity is being silent. It seems like Unity is placing it's hopes on it's current fanbase (which at the time is being persuaded by another Game engine, mostly on the premise of the other game engine being more "bang for the buck,...UP FRONT versus on the back end).

In closing, if a majority of people are complaining about Unity 5, then that tells me that they don't have enough visual proof of what's to come. No one can say they haven't seen a Call of Duty or Assassins Creed being mentioned while surfing online (or on their Social media accounts). With so much hype about their upcoming game people can confirm and discuss certain features, because they've been put on display,...repeatedly.

 

It is definitively NOT possible to build/publish an iOS app without a Mac (Xcode, developer certificate, signing...)

 

It works on UE4 github version and on upcoming 4.3. But only for blueprint only projects, so not for C++ projects. But they will have remote C++ compiling on a Mac server, but no idea if Unreal will offer such a Mac server for the users that don't have access to a Mac.

 

Well, you still need certification from apple (unless you jailbreak), and you need a Mac to export your developer key (which is one time effort). Other than that, you can build / sign / deploy to your iOS device all on windows ( blueprint only as thxfoo pointed out ), that's what I'm doing now for my prototype, it really boost productivity when play testing game play and performance on device is a must. (I'm mainly a windows guy) And you are right about publishing, when it come to publish stage, you have to use Mac for up loader.

 

@thxfoo, yes, they are talking about cross-compiling on PC and live streaming content from editor to device in this week's live stream. While these are definitely wonderful features to have for mobile developer, but I'm not sure whether apple will like the idea of cross-compiling (That's pretty close to a total Mac free ios development)

 

I think you're severely underestimating how rough a lot of the assets are. They work as a fun experiment but they're nowhere near pro quality esp in terms of garbage allocations, bugs and so on. The asset store is no replacement.

 

Anyone who thinks $1500 is more expensive then 5% isn´t building a game to sell, they are entertaining themselves with an engine. If you aren´t serious about making a game, then just use Unity free.

 

I don't know if they're still around, but there used to be services that let you do all of your development work on Windows, then have a remote Mac build and deploy to your device, manage certificates, upload, so on and so forth. Basically you subscribed to a service that gave you remote access to a Mac and automated tools for the Mac-only parts of the iOS build pipeline.

Then there's stuff like Icenium, where all of the development including the full build process happens "in the cloud".

So yes, while you certainly need access to a Mac, you don't need to own it or even physically have it.

 

I agree. We often buy stuff at work from the Asset Store and then, even after having already paid for it, decide it'd be better to have one of our own guys implement our own rather than use the purchased one.

Stuff on there is so cheap that we're still way ahead even with a gorwing bunch of unused purchases in our Asset Store list, so in that regard I have no complaints. And the stuff that does pay off does so many, many times over in comparison to the purchase price.

 

You do not need to make money to be serious about game development anymore than you need to make money to be serious about developing a major operating system. You have heard of Linux I assume? It originally had no commercial intentions and look at where it is now. It is currently dominating the phone industry, the supercomputer industry, and is a major player in the server industry.

If your statement were true, then games such as Battle for Wesnoth, and Dwarf Fortress would not exist. These are just two examples of the open source and closed source free games available. There are many more.

As for Unity Free, it cannot compare to Unreal 4. Best part is, you don't need to stay subscribed. Just subscribe once every six to twelve months for an update and you're good to go. Not like those royalties matter if you don't intend to sell a game.

If you do decide later to sell it, you've already been developing with the full features so it is as easy as submitting the game to various distribution services. If you wanted Unity Pro features before selling, you'd have to waste additional time to get them integrated.

 

Nothing is perfect, but my point is their could be a near optimal solution already available. Well I was not just thinking about the Asset Store there is a whole wide world of middleware solutions.

From a business perspective do you design build and test a new widget or buy in an existing widget and then customise it or have the maker customise it to fit.

Mind you there are a lot of Crytek developers leaving their jobs about now so if Unity pull in some great engineers they could really start kicking things up a notch.

 

That is unless you are a team of more than one and you also want to deploy on iOS and Android, then that $1500 figure starts getting a lot bigger.

It's always easier to give up a small percentage of profits down the road v. paying money up front if you are starting a new project and funds are tight. If your project fails, you end up paying $20 a month per User with UE4, if your project fails with Unity, you will be out tens of thousands of dollars.