If unreal cost money up front, would this have been built? No.
Unreal is saying: hey, we contributed to 1/20th of your success, because you could not have done this without us.
Thus, in the event that you're extremely successful, yes, you'll owe unreal a million dollars. But that's only because you made 20mm and keep 19mm for yourself.
Surely better than this engineer having to pay $100k upfront which would likely mean he never made the game at all. 5% over a million seems pretty reasonable to me. I guess it'd be an issue if profit margins were thin, but that wouldn't be the case here.
But it is free up to $1mm in revenue. Anyone can go and download the engine and use it as much as they want free. It is really smart and honestly $1mm is a generous entry point to capture a royalty for everyone involved.
Unreal is like venture capital or a book advance (or the equivalent in music record deal)
Can you self publish? Sure, of course, have fun.
But if you want the support and infrastructure of a company that understands the business of books, you take a deal and it is just like this: if a bunch of authors get book advances, that is generous to the ones who are unsuccessful, and they can only do that _because they capture the upside of those that are successful_.
Without that, you don't get advances for anyone.
So the point I'm making here: unreal provides variance reduction for all game publishers and yes that disproportionately benefits the ones who make under a million. But they're the ones who need the help!
And in exchange, if you're one of the lucky few, you pay a shockingly reasonable 5% in perpetuity.
I don't think it's a good analogy. You don't have to "self publish" (go without a game engine). You can choose a game engine, just a different one that doesn't require you to report your income etc.
Ok, then do that? The game you make will be limited by that choice. If those limitations are acceptable, then great!
My contention is that people can build more ambitious games that are more likely to make their creators rich if they use Unreal, and if the creators also think that they should use Unreal and if they don't they shouldn't.
I was replying to someone who said how fantastic it is that the guy was able to make it for free. I'm not saying it's all completely bad, again Adobe subscription model and past piracy tolerance allowed many people who couldn't afford their stuff to use it while paying less or nothing, just adding nuance about "free"
Of course! And I think it's fair to require people to be honest.
I just fundamentally disagree with this line of thinking:
> even a subscription is better than royalties
Royalties are a great business model that allows more creators to create. You can dislike it, but I genuinely don't know that this game would exist with a different business model, and I want it to be easy to make art (or other things!)
And while there were a bunch of interesting side effects of piracy (people who pirate more music were bigger fans of music and spent more later - correlation/causation questions obvs), I would strongly prefer that the easy thing to do (ie cheapest/lowest friction to get started) be legal
> I genuinely don't know that this game would exist with a different business model, and I want it to be easy to make art
I think the guy did it on enthusiasm and if he used say Godot he could probably have a pretty good result too, if less impressive visually. But you have good points, sure.
I know you’re trolling but come on. The entry price for what you are suggesting would never be obtainable for folks like this kid. You can absolutely negotiate pricing if you are a big enough studio but for hobbyist they let you use it for a royalty. It’s great because it opens it up for everyone. If they charged a fixed fee it would have to be at a very high price.
Sure, and then he can afford it, because he's making over $1M/year revenue on this sim, and taking a very reasonable 5% off the top of that. So it blunts the profits a bit at that point, but it hardly seems like such a terrible thing at that point.
By that logic we should be OK with Adobe's subscription model. It makes it affordable to people who can't otherwise use it. Ultimately it means we can't own it (and just like we can't own UE, we owe Epic income reports for life).
I'm not saying it's a terrible model and it's great that games are made with it but let's be honest it's not all rainbows.
I don't know anything about Adobe's model - I have (pretty happily) never bought anything from that company. But the two are not very similar, and I don't buy the argument that you're trying to make - I think you're trying to bring in dislike of Adobe's model as an argument against Epic's, despite the two being pretty fundamentally different.
"it's not all rainbows" - I would also not let perfect be the enemy of the good here.
You do, becaude I explained... It's subscription based. It's fundamentally the same because in both cases you don't own it. Epic's is just with the added element of freebie at first
weird how HN is up with pitchforks against that but OK with Epic's.
To be able to use this tech in the first place? I have no glue about business problems but this sounds far better then the 30% rip off by apple and Google app stores....
By the way you don't only have to file a report for Epic whenever you release a game using UE, you also have to report them your yearly sales and calculate what income is "directly attributable to UE" for that game. For an ordinary small person, for whom you imply lifetime 5% off gross worldwide revenue is a "happy problem", this is way more involved (and prone to legal liability) compared to app stores. You will probably have to hire people well before the million mark to make sure numbers are OK and you don't accidentally owe Epic $$$$$.
I know which model I would choose. Probably the one where I raise prices by 30% and don't have to deal with anything else.
At the point where you have 1 million in revenue you for sure have an accountant even just to do your yearly business taxes. So reporting to Epic just becomes an extra hour of work to make the report.
There is this high correlation with low quality comments and smiley faces, that and when people like to insult others and put a little winky face at the end.
You are simply making up nonsense. It is not a lot of work as most likely sales are being driven through a handful of platforms. Reporting is simple and no different than doing your taxes. It is very much a happy problem. Similar to having to pay more taxes. There is more burden but you are making more money.
Your argument is insane because Indonesia average income in USD on the high side is around $300. If you make $1mm USD, having to do some extra paperwork and pay $50k per $1mm of revenue is an awesome problem to have.
You're calling my argument insane, you're saying my comment is low quality, and imply I'm the one insulting. What is my argument then, in your opinion?
If that’s all you have to respond then you sir are the one with no argument. I have listed my points multiple times. All you keep saying is “they could offer it at a fixed price”. Well that price would be well above any hobbyist. It is kind of an insane argument. They have had fixed pricing before without royalty and usually that price is north of $1mm. Free + 5% is pretty amazing. There is enough competition in this space that you could always go elsewhere.
Classic now the “what are you upset about”. Sorry not upset here just love to push back on ridiculous people. Businesses are free to operate however they choose. There are other options in the market outside of unreal ( though they definitely have some of the best tech). 5% is incredibly cheap for small shops. Larger studios will negotiate better rates or potentially a fixed fee. You have still yet to support your argument.
If you get a million dollars in revenue as a solo dev, it's pretty much just winning the lottery. You've already spent all the working hours to make the game, so it's pretty much all profit at that point. What costs do you even have?
It's a free choice to use the engine, you can use another engine or make your own if 5% is too much for you.
You typically only win the lottery once as well... It's 1 mil at the release date of the game and the following maybe 3-6 months. Game sales usually happen at the release date and then there's a pretty much insignificant "long tail" of sales.
Anyway, while 1 million isn't really enough to retire instantly, for sure it lets you retire 10-20 years earlier if you're just a little bit smart with money.
Should unreal give away their work for free? What is your argument. They don’t take a single royalty until $1mm and 5% is not a wild number considering it’s making use of the engine.
Heck steam takes 30% which is much more egregious but factoring in costs of running steam, payment processing and the free marketing its almost always worth it.
Share a counter argument to how it should be please.
There's many ways that are better than royalties. Just sell the engine as a one time purchasec have a non-profit foundation where sponsors fund development, etc.
If Adobe sold their suite as one time purchase many creatives who can just afford a monthly subscription couldn't use it. Does it make it a great business model.
What are you trying to say? You can't even get the name of the company right. "unreal" won't give their work away for free. UE is a product, Epic is the company that develops UE.
Sorry I still could not understand your point about Adobe. Instead of getting defensive and attempting to deflect “what’s unreal?” in the context of unreal engine you should try to defend your position.
Edit: NM you are a new account. Shadow banned on my end. Enjoy!
I mean, if he makes a boatload of money then it's fine if a fraction of it goes to the engine. When his immediate needs are met, he can choose to either stay with unreal or move to an alternative later on without cost pressures.
Yep, and then we always get those regular posts "project XYZ is no longer", yeah people not paying.
Unreal is free to the extent it contributes to bringing even more people into the ecosystem, eventually becoming paying customers, Epic doesn't make it available out of their kindness, rather also taking into account there are other competing alternatives.
It's important to keep development going but commercial projects is not the only way. Godot Foundation exists and there are plenty of others in open-source space.
A nonprofit means actual reports about how money is used, and it's not as if commercial projects are somehow better because they don't fold or get sold or canceled.
And even between commercial ways, charging royalties is one of the worst. It doesn't cost Epic extra if my game starts making more money. Just make the engine a one-time purchase (per version, so you get to keep sales going) and everyone will be much happier. Sell additional services which actually do cost you money to keep up (multiplayer hosting).
I love Godot but it's not a particularly brilliant example of what you are trying to say. Many games made with Godot generate more profit than the entire budget of the engine itself.
The engine itself is far from cutting edge and missing several features that are now quite common elsewhere, like texture streaming, bindless textures, etc. The speed of development isn't blazing fast either (see the implementation of the traits system).
Devs are excellent at what they do but one could wonder how much faster and further it could go with more fundings.
Nothing against Godot, it's a great project, but looking at the wikipedia list of notable games using the engine, there's a single one I have heard of. Meanwhile about 28% of the market share of all video games is using Unreal. So I don't really see the need to make "everyone much happier" honestly.
> Sell additional services which actually do cost you money to keep up
After a game has been released a solo dev often has very little work to do, since they've already invested all of the development time ahead of release. So, by this logic they shouldn't really be allowed to charge anything for the game, except to cover potential work on updates.
Perhaps game projects don't need to operate like nonprofits, but then why do game engine projects?
There are notable games missing from that list. Unrailed 2, for example, which is, in my opinion, one of the best games ever created. I am not even a avid gamer and I recognize several games from that list.
Well then exactly what I was saying. This is a business & it's a commercial product, not a freebie. This is why I see many people look at UE but go with Godot. It's nice when you don't have to notify a megacorp about every game you release & then follow up with yearly revenue reports.
... and paying Epic 5% of all lifetime profit is a blessing too (if he makes money appropriate for "the best train sim ever made")