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Unreal Engine 4 license costs (w/ source code): $19 monthly sub, 5% royalty rate

It's basically "If you're indie you get it cheap, if you're making Deus Ex 4 you're going to pay us a lump sum instead of 5% of your revenue."

So they're assuming no one will release big titles that are PC only with UE4? That's probably a pretty safe assumption.
 

UrbanRats

Member
Spend ten minutes trying to make a GUI in Unity and you'll find out for yourself. ;)

Honest answer: Unity is good for small-scale 3D games, but anything more than that and you're gonna need a bigger boat. Having a major engine like Unreal available to indie/small developers will provide them with an engine to match their ambitions, and not shackle them with Unity's restrictions.
Thanks!
It's basically "If you're indie you get it cheap, if you're making Deus Ex 4 you're going to pay us a lump sum instead of 5% of your revenue."

I was wondering how they were gonna diversify the types of clients.

Still, if you're making a big PC exclusive (say, The Sims) now you can use their engine for basically free.
 

syko de4d

Member
first month should be free, way more people would try it this way (like me) and if they are happy they would pay for the next months/years.
 

EDarkness

Member
Spend ten minutes trying to make a GUI in Unity and you'll find out for yourself. ;)

Honest answer: Unity is good for small-scale 3D games, but anything more than that and you're gonna need a bigger boat. Having a major engine like Unreal available to indie/small developers will provide them with an engine to match their ambitions, and not shackle them with Unity's restrictions.

I haven't had any problems working between Mac and PC using Unity. Just get a good GUI off of the Unity Store and call it a day. I see no reason someone couldn't make something big with Unity. Seems like Unity is still the better deal and more options for porting without too much trouble.
 

Durante

Member
Why, is Unity bad?
Don't tell anyone, but in my opinion and experience (as a user), for large-scale games, compared to other established engines, yes.

Note that this is an evaluation based on user experience and the performance / technical quality of final products, not based on ease-of-use for development, at which it apparently excels. I also had a closer look at the Direct3D interaction of lots of different games for a project I'm working on, and the Unity titles I looked at are rather ... notorious.
 

Orayn

Member
What are the differencies between current UE4 model, UE3 model and Unity current model, in these terms? Thanks to whoever answer :)

Corrected summary:

Unity Free = Limited capabilities, PC, Mac, Linux, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Android, iOS, Web. Can download And release for free (upon obvious ios licenses, etc).

Unity Pro = Full capabilities, still need to negotiate console licenses separately*, $75/month or $1500 for the PC Pro and keep it. There are also separate "pro versions" for iOS, Android, etc.
* WiiU and Vita licenses are for free when you get the devkit, I think.

UDK (UE3 based) = Limited capabilities, PC, Mac and iOS only, $99/year, royalty free under $50,000 rev. and 25% royalties over. Can download for free.
Can't export to consoles without Full license, which is thousands of dollars
They deleted everything from their website it seems?

UE4 = Full capabilities, PC, rough Mac and Android, iOS (only with a Mac at the moment), $19/month, 5% royalties. Can't download for free. Source code is provided.
Seems that you need another license to release on consoles.
 
Holy fuck. Full source code?!

Epic ain't tucking around. The royalty rate is a bit steep, but for 19 a month, it doesn't seem terrible. Unity's subscription is 75 a month and no royalties afaik. You have to pay 40 a month extra for iOS and Android Pro though.
 

Rafy

Member
I am more comfortable with having something I truly own because I purchased it. I didn't like when Adobe offered sub-only CS and I like this even less. I think they should also offer a complete purchase with no time restrictions. I can see how the sub model can be invaluable for certain situations but long term it's more expensive.
Just my 2c.
 
It is a very good price, but I don't think I will use it if I cannot try beforehand, like with UDK. And let's see how much they have done with easy of development.
 
Unity Free = Limited capabilities, PC and mobile

Unity Pro = Full capabilities, still need to negotiate console licenses separately, $75/month

UDK (UE3 based) = Limited capabilities, PC and mobile, $99/year, royalty free under $50,000 and 25% royalties over

UE4 New Model = Full capabilities, PC (and mobile?), $19/month, 5% royalties

Full licenses of UE3 and UE4 both run in the hundreds of thousands of dollars and are required if you want to release on consoles.
Epic also offers different models for console releases, if every console game required half a million+ in licenses UE3 XBLA games would never had happened.
 

Orayn

Member
I am more comfortable with having something I truly own because I purchased it. I didn't like when Adobe offered sub-only CS and I like this even less. I think they should also offer a complete purchase with no time restrictions. I can see how the sub model can be invaluable for certain situations but long term it's more expensive.
Just my 2c.

They do offer that, it's just done on the same terms as Unreal 3. (Read: Fuckexpensive)

Epic also offers different models for console releases, if every console game required half a million+ in licenses UE3 XBLA games would never had happened.

I was vaguely aware of those existing, just didn't know any of the details. Makes sense since I do know of a few console releases based UDK whose developers probably couldn't afford a six-figure license for a game engine.
 
What are the differencies between current UE4 model, UE3 model and Unity current model, in these terms? Thanks to whoever answer :)

UE3 is 99 license per game, a huge 25% royalties for what you earn after $50000

Unity is 1500 per license for PC and 400 for each of iOS and Android, but has zero royalties. 1 license can be used by one guy, so Unity isn't cheap. But not having royalties is huge

Ultimately though those of you hoping indie will flock to UE4 are setting yourself to be disappointed, because Unity is more user friendly than UDK and most people will still prefer Unity to UDK. Unless you are a believer that indie gaming will eventually start producing AAA games UE4 will be overkill for most indie devs.
 

Orayn

Member
UE3 is 99 license per game, a huge 25% royalties for what you earn after $50000

Unity is 1500 per license for PC and 400 for each of iOS and Android, but has zero royalties. 1 license can be used by one guy, so Unity isn't cheap. But not having royalties is huge

Ultimately though those of you hoping indie will flock to UE4 are setting yourself to be disappointed, because Unity is more user friendly than UDK and most people will still prefer Unity to UDK. Unless you are a believer that indie gaming will eventually start producing AAA games.

Well, the UE4 subscription giving you full access makes it a different ballgame, doesn't it? IIRC you could only use UnrealScript with UDK, which sounds like it could be pretty limiting.
 
UE3 is 99 license per game, a huge 25% royalties for what you earn after $50000

Unity is 1500 per license for PC and 400 for each of iOS and Android, but has zero royalties. 1 license can be used by one guy, so Unity isn't cheap. But not having royalties is huge

Ultimately though those of you hoping indie will flock to UE4 are setting yourself to be disappointed, because Unity is more user friendly than UDK and most people will still prefer Unity to UDK. Unless you are a believer that indie gaming will eventually start producing AAA games UE4 will be overkill for most indie devs.

Yeah, as much as I would like something that could handle bigger games, UDK is not anywhere near as user friendly as Unity right now.

I mostly just wished they would start optimizing Unity instead of keep adding features as the performance can get absolutely dreadful very fast.

Well, the UE4 subscription giving you full access makes it a different ballgame, doesn't it? IIRC you could only use UnrealScript with UDK, which sounds like it could be pretty limiting.

Limited features was not the issue, user friendliness is.
 

daxgame

Member
Unity Free = Limited capabilities, PC, Mac, Linux, Windows Phone, Blackberry, Android, iOS, Web. Can download And release for free (upon obvious ios licenses, etc).

Unity Pro = Full capabilities, still need to negotiate console licenses separately*, $75/month or $1500 for the PC Pro and keep it. There are also separate "pro versions" for iOS, Android, etc.
* WiiU and Vita licenses are for free when you get the devkit, I think.

UDK (UE3 based) = Limited capabilities, PC, Mac and iOS only, $99/year, royalty free under $50,000 rev. and 25% royalties over. Can download for free.
Can't export to consoles without Full license, which is thousands of dollars
They deleted everything from their website it seems?

UE4 = Full capabilities, PC, rough Mac and Android, iOS (only with a Mac at the moment), $19/month, 5% royalties. Can't download for free. Source code is provided.
Seems that you need another license to release on consoles.

Fixed for you.

edit: re-edited for the better
 
Hmm I thought Unity didn't allow for the same high end graphics? Perhaps not. I'm not really too familiar with the unity engine truth be told

It can allow for high end graphics, if you want that. It gets easier with every new big version, and it appears that the new big version will do big things with the lighting.

But you need people to optimize the performance and create good art assets to keep up with the bigger titles. And Indie developers do not have a lot of people.

Also Gone Home and Slender: The Arrival already have performance issues, so developers would need to do a lot of work themselves if they want it to work well.
 

Rafy

Member
They do offer that, it's just done on the same terms as Unreal 3. (Read: Fuckexpensive)

You are right, then let me rephrase. Why along with those options not offer some kind of trial or an updated version of the UDK based on UE4 w/out the source.
 
How about free to try and then the monthly sub if you want to release your game? Otherwise, no thanks...

Well, because that you would subscribe for one month to release your game. At that point you are better off just having a one-time fee for releasing your game.

I do think there needs to be some sort of evaluation though, but I am just expecting a one month trial or something.
 
I'm a little confused about the payment plan. Suppose a company buys the subscription and then completes their game within 3 months does that mean they would have paid 57$ + 5% royalty rate? Also on what is the royalty rate applied? Sales?
 
I'm a little confused about the payment plan. Suppose a company buys the subscription and then completes their game within 3 months does that mean they would have paid 57$ + 5% royalty rate? Also on what is the royalty rate applied? Sales?

Pretty much, you have to pay 5% of what you earn with your game. You seem to understand it perfectly fine.

EDIT: Well, not precisely of what you earn, but:

When releasing a product using UE4, you're signing up to pay Epic 5% of gross product revenue from users, regardless of what company collects the revenue. That means: If your game makes $10 on the App Store, Apple may pay you $7, but you'd pay Epic $0.50 (5% of $10).
 

Senoculum

Member
Just an anecdote:

Visual effects companies should do this for the work they do on motion pictures.

"You want lightsabers? 1% please."
 

eot

Banned
That's a huge improvement over UDK, you didn't actually get source code access with that. It was all UnrealScript.
 
Well, because that you would subscribe for one month to release your game. At that point you are better off just having a one-time fee for releasing your game.

I do think there needs to be some sort of evaluation though, but I am just expecting a one month trial or something.

I don't want to create a game and publishing it, I just want to explore the engine, like I did with UDK 3.
 

Horp

Member
Quite incredible. I'm downloading it now and will give it a try. Had a hard time with UE3; it was just a bit too cumbersome for my taste. I hope this is better!
 
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