Unreal Engine 4 FREE...

What's funny is most people who go from Unity to try UE4 will come back.

Still cool for UE4 though.

 

Would be nice to have a choice, wouldn't it? Some folks believe they will make a lot of money and even though they could always renegotiate the fees, they prefer knowing they don't have to pay anything other than the initial output.

Then there are those who don't have the initial output or have small teams to support, or whatever, that would prefer low initial output and pay more later.

The first group is probably people with lots of industry or indie experience. The second group are probably people who are hobbyists or who are starting their studios.

 

Can't agree more on this. Love Unity but after trying out Unreal Engine 4, I drooled at there asset store... rlly... why don't we have it that responsive, clean and beautyfull? New Unity 5.x feature?

 

Assuming that I understand the new pricing model,

Unreal: First $3,000 is yours, then 5% after that.

Unity (Pro): $1,500 flat. ($4,500 with Android Pro and iOS Pro)

So, here is the calculation:

1) 5/100 = 1500/x
2) 5x = 150,000 (Cross Multiply)
3) x = 30,000 (Solve for x)
4) x + 3,000 = 33,000 (Add the initial $3,000 that Unreal offers for no royalty)

So Unreal is more cost effective (from a purely pricing standpoint, not usability or any other standpoint) UNTIL you make $33,000. If you make more than $33,000 then Unity is more cost effective (based on the pricing structure).

In other words, once you make $33,000 on a game built with the Unreal engine you will pay Epic $1,500, which is the price of a Unity Pro license. For every penny you make after that you will be paying more to Epic than the cost of a Unity Pro license at 5% - and just for that game, whereas you pay Unity $1,500 once and you can make as many games as you want without paying anything more to Unity.

If you wish to factor in Android Pro and iOS Pro:

1) 5/100 = 4500/x
2) 5x - 450,000 (Cross Multiply)
3) x = 90,000 (Solve for x)
4) x + 3,000 = 93,000 (Add the initial $3,000 that Unreal offers for no royalty)

No promises on my math. .

 

You are right, but almost indie game developers in the world (the mayor target of Unity and Unreal) has not this us$4500.

 

whats $4500 ?? for all the mobile crap upgrade crap? (screw mobile lol) .. im just interested in PC games (power, interface)

..or i guess a team of 3?

 

Yeah, but I used to like them. Admire

Somebody took the time to make this and post somewhere... rofl

 

It appears to be $3k per quarter, so the $42k figure was correct. I still feel that once you get out of hobbyist level, that isn't a very large number. The difference between $42k and my incorrect $30k isn't a large number to a professional studio. The fact that most of the people raving about Unreal are the ones making the decision purely on initial costs seems to indicate that the appeal is particularly strong at the hobbyist level. If that isn't who Unity wants to go after, then that is their choice.

Edit: I should add that it would be a larger number for a professional studio, who would need more than one Unity Pro license. But even then, the numbers just aren't as great as the hobbyists are making them out to be.

 

These same threads over and over and over again. You choose to use Unity. If you don't wish to use Unity any more, then don't.

 

I'm currently working as an Employee in a Studio, and we use the Studio's Licenses... So My own personal Unity license is sitting at home doing nothing because I don't have time for personal of freelance work.

So Unity cost me $245 per month directly to the trash can... I would like to have at least the option to Pause the license, but I can't.

and is not a 1 time Payment of 1,500 If you want to deploy to mobile wich is a big share of unity users, that's a 4,500 per seat... were we are working we're like 8 people.

I have no problem giving a % of royalties if I make a succesful game, but If it is not succesful, It really hurts my economy, I can't invest too much time on making my own stuff with unity, because I have to pay the $245 per month, and I don't live in a First world country, so it is really a big deal with the currency exchange to my own, it is more expensive than my own apartment!... I could live in a place twice as big, or pay another year of rent while I develop something if it wasn't for that.

So if Unity Add that option of royalties that would be great... and It's really a big deal to me to think on changing to Unreal because I've already invested about $ 2K on Stuff from the Asset Store.

 

Those maths are missing the terrible fact you have to pay $1500 for each professional on your team that works on the engine.
Unless there's some pricing model I'm not aware of? I'd love to know.

 

Ah ok. So my equations still apply, but a time element has to be added (quarterly). No problem.

I think it is almost important to understand that for most games built by hobbyists and even a lot of indie games that Unity Pro is not necessary.

 

Well, well, well.... Its certainly is an exciting time to be working in the game development industry.
More tools for more people is always a fantastic thing and I am pretty jealous of all the younglings who have lots of options now when picking a career in something game development related. I wish I had this much choice when I was a rugrat wanting to make my first 'mario'! Its brilliant to see that game development has been democratised and that companies who used to sell their tech for 6 figure sums now give it away for free. Democratising game development tools has always been Unity's goal from Day 1 and its fantastic to see tons of companies doing that now.

Tomorrow's announcement marks the next step in Unity's chapter and you will hear alot of new and exciting things we have been cooking up.

 

That's not entirely fair because UE4's store has much less content than that of Unity.

 

You guys are saying exactly the same thing you did last year! It's disgusting to see people defending their engines religiously, can't we just make games?

 

Are we finally going to get that *Create MMO* button?

 

Absolutely. People are mistaking wants for needs. As I said in a previous thread, as an asset store developer I've had my first taste of Unity Pro. I certainly want it. But I don't need it. The notion that you can't make a great game with Unity Free is crazy talk.

BTW, the fact that this thread has been allowed to continue leads me to believe that the announcement tomorrow is about the pricing model.

 

But then all these people wouldn't know what to do! Much easier to type crap on a forum then make something...

 

Nobody at UT seems phased by Epic's announcement at all - as if they know something we don't.... confident that their own announcement will be better maybe?

I'm trying to keep my expectations for tomorrows announcement down low, but you're all making it very hard

 

Silently thinking the same... too quite at UT side. They are planning something we haven't heard before? But I keep mine low as well, except Unity 5 release. Maybe Pro completely free, but for non-commercial use? Sounds cool.

 

Yes - Unity should make the Free or Pro Version available for free for Universities. This is where they might lose people. And it's also where they might lose important people (multiplicators). At the very least they should allow the free version of Unity to be used at Schools etc.

Apart from that - my perspective hasn't changed much by the free price of UE4. It is very competitive and I will download the engine and have a look now. But it will not change that I like using Unity. And if Unit doesn't get somehow worse with newer versions I see myself upgrading in the future just as much. And I can't be the only one.

What I do see Epic achive with that is getting all the people who are new to the rodeo. And the idea is simple - people learn the software and they don't change it later on because of invested time and knowhow. It's the same idea Unity had when they introduced Unity free as one of the first companies in that scale. It's the same idea why legend has it that Autodesk inofficially released their own cracks for 3DS Max many years ago - before the cheap indie versions like Maya LT were a thing. People who use something for a long time are likely to keep on using it and make others use it. And after that the 5% are much more likely to pay off. If not - it's still a good promotion for all the people who say: "Look UE4 is free. It's the best - Unity is doomed!". It's a different strategy but it still is a strategy that has to pay off for Epic.

I also expect Unity to do their thing even though it might be different. Maybe the big announcement will be Sourcecode?

 

I hope that means something really big, cool and unexpected. Also, you changed your avatar again. Ominous!

 

Goat Support 3/3/15.

Be ready.

 

This is all a marketing tactic by Epic to gain more attention and change everyones perception to think UE4 is superior even though Unity 5 is just as capable and in many ways superior.

But the thing is. Perception is important. Marketing is important. It is more important than anything else.

It's not simply enough for Unity to say "We have enough sales, we're doing just fine, our tech is just as good."

The perception of the masses is that using Unity is an idiotic thing to do now, and this has been increasing. Unity developers are idiots. It hurts the ability for Unity professionals to maintain its usage in comparison to others when group opinion is involved. It hurts the ability of Unity professionals to convince new companies to take on the use of Unity. It would be EXTREMELY hard for me to argue against an Unreal Engine 4 proponent. Unity must actively work to help it's professionals make arguments in it's favor. It is not enough for Unity to just release fancy marketing material and say look at all the awesome stuff it's made. It's not enough for a Unity professional to walk into a company and just be a dick and say "Were all using Unity, you don't understand enough about this subject". The collective community impression is more important. Arguments can't be won in actual social dynamics by just having fancy marketings materials, the cumulative feeling of the entire group/company comes into play.

 

Really this tactic of Epic dont change my perception, I was used both engines (and UDK, Torque, Shiva, XNA) and ever have clear that Unreal is superior.

 

So this is interesting and will be waiting to see if Unity decide they need to respond to it.

Couple of points about the UE cost though. Firstly its on gross revenue (not net profit) after the $3k per qt, per app, developers are going to have to watch for that. Secondly you can't really calculate it against Unity on a yearly basis for a few reasons.

For one thing Unity's $1500 price is based on approx 2 year cycle, though then of course the cost is greater if you need mobile platforms.

On the other side most 'successful' games/apps tend to make the majority of their sales within the first few weeks of release, so whilst a game might make < $12k p.a, if that $12k happens in one quarter you are going to end up paying $450 not the 'nothing' had it accumulated in $3k chucks per quarter over the year. Indeed with the sale mentality in digital PC stores, you could easily exceed the $3k per quarter several times during the year and thus end up having to pay royalties that you might not expect when looking at your gross profits over a year.

I'm not saying the UE model is bad, just there are more nuances to it to be aware of and overall along with a few other reasons is why i'd stick with Unity regardless as its just much easier to deal with for me in terms of my business.

 

That was fun:
See 2:33

 

Where on earth are you getting that information from?!

 

It is and you can negociate if you become very successfull.

I think also you can't be a taker only, and should return something, it's universal law also

 

I think this depends on the circles you are in.
E.g. I often are around people rolling their own engines. For some of those anybody not able to roll his own engine is an idiot.
And it seems Unity is more hated than the AAA engines in this circle. Maybe because they lost more members to it.

 

OMG...all the Pricing BS starts again

If I make this much using UE4, Unity is cheaper...UE4 is cheaper to start, but will cost more in the end...blah blah
It will be a book keeping nightmare, so i'll stick to unity...blah blah

stop posting this crap, both sides can show how it would be better if you used Unity or UE4
done to death, and why these threads get locked

 

That's not the reason. They simply use a cache system over there.

 

The Unity community was one of the reasons I started using Unity in the first place. The game engine I used before had very little of a community. If you had a problem you were pretty much on your own to figure it out.

However with Unity this is not the case. I love the fact that if I have a problem I can look and see where it has been asked/solved before. The fact that great tutorials exist on how to implement various things or on how certain things work.

The great community was what brought me here, and it is also a major factor in why I stay. So although UE4 is probably a good engine, I have no desire to leave either the community nor the time I have already put in to learning Unity.

 

This is great news for game developers. I know $19 wasn't a huge barrier to 'serious' people; however there are a lot of youngsters who simply have no means of paying that and this gives them another option. Assuming tomorrow's Unity announcement doesn't change the landscape in terms of pricing/licences, then people have lots of great choices to start game development for free (Unity free included). The Unity staff comments in this thread and their willingness to let it run its course suggests something special might be announced tomorrow!

 

These same posts over and over and over again. You choose to post in this thread. If you don't wish to use to contribute anything useful, then don't.

This is big news from one of Unity's top competitors. Of course people are going to post about it.
I use Unity because it's the first game engine I started with. I don't want to learn and port my project to a different engine. I like Unity but I also like improvements. I want to see Unity improved.

 

ANYONE can create their own engine. It's about whether or not it's a smart business decision to do so.

Personally I think anyone that thinks that "rolling your own engine" is a measure of whether or not you're a good game developer is an amateur at best.

 

lol royalties, no thank you.

 

Yeah you're right. My post was S*** compared to all these really useful posts. Thanks for pointing that out to me.

 

Not really. Not even nearly. Very few people here could create a good game engine from scratch.

I have much respect for any successful indie on steam using a custom engine. And honestly, most of them are better than most games there that have just been glued together with some "GameMakerKit".
Being able to do it is a seal of quality for the programmers.

 

As someone who was forced to upgrade to Unity 5 to get a single bug fix, I can tell you this is not true. To use software you need ongoing support, and Unity is full of components that have become neglected pending replacement in later versions. My case was Cloth which worked well enough in Unity 3 then broke early in Unity 4. Joystick and Terrain support have both been called "legacy code" by UT reps in public.

 

I'm staying. Here's why:
1) Unreal is a bloated beast and is not for web, phones, or tablets. I don't care what they say.
2) Unity is way more stable, portable, and user friendly.
3) The community and the Unity team.
4) The learning resources.
5) The content in the asset store.
6) The heaps of successful indy games.

 

What people are saying/complaining about on forums doesn't really figure into what professional use to make decisions.
Larger studios aren't using the royalty model of UE anyway the free price for hobbyists doesn't change anything. Unity is solid and mature. UE is still a bit all over the place. With 3 price changes (drops) in a year, and not a significant dent in Unity's market share, there is little faith that they know what they are doing. They are even paying developers to use their engine now. There is no reason to believe that their model is sustainable at this point. Don't forget, not to long ago Epic was nearly bankrupt and only saved by Tencent. From a professional point of view, it appears that Epic is flailing and has little in the way of a plan. No good reason to bank on core technology that proven their own business model yet.

 

Like many of us predicted, $19 was pointless, and merely just a thing that enabled epic to later drop the price for marketing purposes. It's good they did so soon though...

This thread is not going to be moderated by me so breathe easy!

 

Who says you have to go or stay?

Stop talking about the price people! That horse has been beaten to death over and over again, with plenty of locked threads.

But of course, it was instigated by a Unity team member:

 

Oof.

I meant "you're done paying" in a very basic, according-to-the-license sense. It figures that reality would differ on a case-by-case basis. In this case, it sounds like you literally paid the price for negligence on Unity's part. That's disturbing. Sorry about that. ;(

If this was an open source, community project, I could understand and even excuse letting components lapse, in anticipation of future updates. But this is major money being thrown around, by companies that have a lot riding on Unity holding up their end of things. It's support issues like this that can make or break someone's willingness to use (or advise the use of) their product in a future project. I know it'll certainly be in the back of MY mind. :/

 

Just noticed this on Ars Technica.

It's OK, I guess. More competition is better, as far as I'm concerned.

The good news, though, is Unity wins. Now Unreal 4 can't claim to "make better games because all the bad games are made with Unity." They're on-level with the rest of us, now.

 

Wow, had no idea that existed. Looks like somebody spent a lot of time studying their supposedly inferior competitor.

 

Awesome, time to start pooping out AAA games with AAA graphics! That $20/month was just killing us, but with that out of the way it's all smooth sailing from here. I mean we still have to drop $3.5k on 3ds Max, $800 on Zbrush, and more on the rest of the tools to make said AAA graphics, but hey at least the engine is free.

Seriously though, while this is good for ultra low budget hobbyists, am I the only one detecting just a hint of desperation? Like, $20/month wasn't enough to secure market dominance so now they're dropping that. Or maybe that was the plan all along for marketing purposes. Mark my words, next year they'll be dropping the 5% royalties for indie developers as the big announcement. IMO, this race to the bottom isn't very healthy for the market, didn't work out too well on the app store. But I guess we'll see what happens.

In either case though, I'm pretty confident Unity will be fine. UT knows what they're doing. Last year people were busy predicting Unity would be dead within a few months and lo and behold, Unity is actually stronger than ever. So lets wait and see.

 

Emphasis on...



...You know what, I accept your point and move on.