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[wwm0nkey]

Hello Durante - This post for Students and Universities may help:
https://www.unrealengine.com/blog/unreal-engine-4-for-schools-faculty-and-students

The long story short is that any student can personally subscribe for $19/mo, install the software on your own computer(s), and use it for any combination of educational purposes for free.

This is great, currently taking my gfs class in game design and we are using Unity....while a great little program UE4 seems MUCH more in line for what the professor wants so im going to pass this along to him and hope they start using it by the time I start college back up this year

 

[BibiMaghoo]

Seems counter productive that a starter project cannot look at the engine without making payment. I think that will lead to people looking elsewhere first, just because they can.

The percentage seems ok on it's own though. It's only huge if you make huge money.

 

[Fried Food]

more indie games for us, good.

 

[Blizzard]

Hi moneal - yes, definitely! If you cancel your subscription after one month, your login will still remain active and you'll be able to use the version of UE4 you got while you were a subscriber. That said, you won't get any future updates without resubscribing.

For any user who is not selling a product, you don't owe a royalty. Here is the full list of royalty free applications for reference:

No royalties are due on the following:
Ancillary products, including t-shirts, CDs, plushies, action figures and books. The exception is items with embedded data or information, such as QR codes, that affect the operation of the product.

Consulting and work-for-hire services using the engine. This applies to architects using the engine to create visualizations as well as consultants receiving a development fee.

Linear media, including movies, animated films and cartoons distributed as video.

Cabinet-based arcade games and amusement park rides.

Truly free games and apps (with no associated revenue).

Thanks for the reply! I think I'm starting to understand, two clarification questions:

1. Will there be a free version, like the UDK, for hobbyist/educational purposes?
2. Can I do the following?
a. Subscribe, download engine, cancel subscription.
b. Work with engine to develop game over the course of a year.
c. At the end of the year, decide that I need an engine update, renew subscription and download the new version.
d. Cancel subscription again, sell product at this point until new versions needed.


If the situation described in 2. is accurate, that does sound reasonable, like the UDK setup. However, if I may make some suggestions (I'm a bit of a fan of the UE3/UDK):

• I think Epic may run into situations like this thread where developers are confused by the subscription model, and how the cancel/renew/continued use options work. Plus, if complete source code is available for each new version, is there anything preventing people from illegally publishing the entire thing anyway?
• How often would the engine update? UDK updates became very rare over the last year or two, if I recall correctly. If the only reason to have an active subscription is to download new versions, I think Epic may run into some vocal user complaints if new versions release too rarely, or multiple times in a month. "Why did I pay for those months?! There was no new version!" "Maybe Epic delayed it so I have to pay the next month's subscription!"
• Granted, $20 a month is very little for a serious developer. But because of the potential for the engine source spreading anyway, and because of the potential for the userbase to be confused or upset about things like this, I think it would be very nice to have at least the option of some alternate payment plan -- perhaps $120 for an entire year package.
• A more drastic option might be to ask, how much money is going to be made from the subscription fee alone? If you assume X number of users will pay $20 once, and Y number of users are going to pay by the month, could that same amount of money (or more) be made back by doing something else? Maybe changing the royalty to 6-10% instead of 5%, and outright making the engine available for free like the UDK? This would get instant HUGE userbase access, be an advantage over other engines, and possibly result in more users selling games with the engine (which then feeds back into Epic with the royalties).

Thanks in advance for any answers! Just throwing out some ideas since I always felt like it was very rare to get the attention of anyone at Epic in the UDK forum days.

 

[Tuxmascot]

How much coding knowledge is required for things like cryengine, unity, UE4? Are the development kits largely self contained enough where you can get a lot done primarily just through the editor? My only real experience is learning how to use the terrain editor in cryengine 3, and some early level programming courses.

A lot. The basics won't cut it with CryEngine or UE4. Maybe you could get by with Unity. CryEngine requires knowledge of C and C++.

 

[Reg]

So just to confirm when they say "5% gross royalties on consumer sales" that's before any distributor takes their cut?

For example, your game is priced at $20 on steam. Of that Epic will take $1 (5%) and Valve takes $6 (30%). Leaving the developer $13. Is that correct?

 

[Moneal]

How much coding knowledge is required for things like cryengine, unity, UE4? Are the development kits largely self contained enough where you can get a lot done primarily just through the editor? My only real experience is learning how to use the terrain editor in cryengine 3, and some early level programming courses.

Depends on what you want with Unity. Unity has visual scripting addons, that can help someone that doesn't know how to program. I have done some prototyping on a few like Playmaker and uScript. They don't require any language specific programming knowledge. But they do require you to understand how to think like a programmer, if/when statements variables, and basic programming logic.

Cry and UE4 probably require a lot more to get the results. I know UE has its own visual scripting editor, but I have never used it. So I can't speak on how it is.

 

[Wishmaster92]

Ok new thread I'll post what I said in the other one

So now we may start seeing more indies try more graphically intensive games?

SHIT I hope so!!

 

[UnrealEngine]

So just to confirm when they say "5% gross royalties on consumer sales" that's before any distributor takes their cut?

For example, your game is priced at $20 on steam. Of that Epic will take $1 (5%) and Valve takes $6 (30%). Leaving the developer $13. Is that correct?

Correct, we even have a handy chart on https://unrealengine.com/register

 

[Tuxmascot]

SHIT I hope so!!

Perfect timing! Considering that a lot of people were getting really bored with pixel art.

I'm still waiting for someone to come out with a 3d graphic modeler that is so easy, a non-talented programmer could do it.

 

[Moral Panic]

Here’s an example of what we mean by “attributable”: Assume you provide two tiers of offers, a signed poster for $20, and a signed poster plus game access for $50. No royalties are due on ancillary products like posters, so no royalty is due on the $20 tier. On the $50 tier, the user is paying for the poster with a $20 value, and that implies that the remaining $30 of value is attributable to the product. So, for each $50 tier sale, you’d pay a royalty of $1.50 (5% of $30).

So what if I have a $40 tier with 2 posters and a $41 tier with 2 posters and the game?

 

[Gothos]

It didn't take long...

http://www.cryengine.com/news/crytek-announces-its-cryengine-as-a-service-program

 

[zoku88]

Since there does seem to be a Linux editor in the plans (at least, there was a Twitter message thread that made it seem that way) I might do what someone said earlier and check this out for a month.

 

[Vigilant Gambit]

Thanks for the reply! I think I'm starting to understand, two clarification questions:

1. Will there be a free version, like the UDK, for hobbyist/educational purposes?
2. Can I do the following?
a. Subscribe, download engine, cancel subscription.
b. Work with engine to develop game over the course of a year.
c. At the end of the year, decide that I need an engine update, renew subscription and download the new version.
d. Cancel subscription again, sell product at this point until new versions needed.


If the situation described in 2. is accurate, that does sound reasonable, like the UDK setup. However, if I may make some suggestions (I'm a bit of a fan of the UE3/UDK):

• I think Epic may run into situations like this thread where developers are confused by the subscription model, and how the cancel/renew/continued use options work. Plus, if complete source code is available for each new version, is there anything preventing people from illegally publishing the entire thing anyway?
• How often would the engine update? UDK updates became very rare over the last year or two, if I recall correctly. If the only reason to have an active subscription is to download new versions, I think Epic may run into some vocal user complaints if new versions release too rarely, or multiple times in a month. "Why did I pay for those months?! There was no new version!" "Maybe Epic delayed it so I have to pay the next month's subscription!"
• Granted, $20 a month is very little for a serious developer. But because of the potential for the engine source spreading anyway, and because of the potential for the userbase to be confused or upset about things like this, I think it would be very nice to have at least the option of some alternate payment plan -- perhaps $120 for an entire year package.
• A more drastic option might be to ask, how much money is going to be made from the subscription fee alone? If you assume X number of users will pay $20 once, and Y number of users are going to pay by the month, could that same amount of money (or more) be made back by doing something else? Maybe changing the royalty to 6-10% instead of 5%, and outright making the engine available for free like the UDK? This would get instant HUGE userbase access, be an advantage over other engines, and possibly result in more users selling games with the engine (which then feeds back into Epic with the royalties).

Thanks in advance for any answers! Just throwing out some ideas since I always felt like it was very rare to get the attention of anyone at Epic in the UDK forum days.

The subscription model seems pretty clear to me. For $19, you get full source code access + updates for a month, and a license to use the engine. You keep the engine + source access after your subscription lapses, but you lose github repo/editor update access. So if you wanna pay $19/year for yearly updates, you're welcome to do that.

The thing is, giving everybody source code access means that a lot of bugs will be found. Hosting the code on github means a lot of pull requests to fix those bugs will also be generated. This means there will be far more fixes/updates than if Epic was working on it solo, or if only a handful of studios had source code access (and was able to pass fixes on to Epic).

I think they did the math and figured that at $19 a head, they can afford to provide what they do. If you wanna just download it and check it out, you can just pay $19 once and do whatever you want with it forever; they'll make money even if you never do. They're (practically) freely giving away the source code, yes; but due to the licensing requirements, you can't actually make any money off of it unless you buy UE4, one way or another. Their legal team will make sure of that.

If you make a 100% free game using a pirated copy... I'm not sure they can differentiate that from an inactive subscription, anyway. I think they just eat the $19 you didn't spend and call it a day.

How much coding knowledge is required for things like cryengine, unity, UE4? Are the development kits largely self contained enough where you can get a lot done primarily just through the editor? My only real experience is learning how to use the terrain editor in cryengine 3, and some early level programming courses.

UE4 launches with at least two sample projects that don't use any C++ at all. One of them was made by a solo artist.

Man. As a developer, this is the single, most insane thing I've seen in the industry. Granted, I've been watching it from the outside almost the entire time, but still. This has pretty wide-reaching consequences. Unity is in a lot of trouble if they don't change their tune, and quick.

This is the development equivalent of... I dunno. Sony charging 99 cents for all of its digital games on all of its platforms. It would pretty much force Microsoft and Nintendo to do the same thing, as they charge MSRP for years old games.

 

[SpookyFries]

Will there be a free version like UDK?
The price is reasonable, but not for just fucking around and trying things out.

 

[Vigilant Gambit]

Will there be a free version like UDK?
The price is reasonable, but not for just fucking around and trying things out.

The price is more than reasonable for just fucking around. Every single other game engine on the market that has any kind of free version of their product available hamstrings it in some significant way. Unity does so in a way that limits both productivity in development and the quality of your games. Construct 2, for example, limits the amount of essentially lines of code your game can have. It's a pain in the ass either way, since you don't get to see what development is really like unless you shell out for the whole thing. And in almost every scenario, source code access runs upwards of $50- to $100k. For UE3, I believe it was almost a million dollars if you wanted the level of access that a single $19 payment can get you.

This is priced such that the vast majority of developers will be able to get it and mess around with it. And they'll want to keep the subscriptions so they can keep getting updates.

 

[snarge]

How much coding knowledge is required for things like cryengine, unity, UE4? Are the development kits largely self contained enough where you can get a lot done primarily just through the editor? My only real experience is learning how to use the terrain editor in cryengine 3, and some early level programming courses.

From what I've heard, the new "Blueprints" are an upgraded version of Kismet, which was a visual scripting language in previous versions. I'm not sure how easy it would be to do large games / detailed stuff with that, but they have demos built only with Blueprints in the download (a flappy bird clone, for instance). I believe that if you're looking to learn, even if these visual methods of scripting aren't too thorough, they can at least get you started on learning programming.

 

[JNT]

Talk about awesome times for indie developers. It's like a smörgåsbord of engines to choose from.

 

[crazygambit]

Maybe I've been watching too much Shark Tank and Dragon's Den, but 5% on each sale sounds like a lot.

And it's 5% gross. So on iOS You'll be keeping 65 cents for every dollar you make.

 

[Lautaro]

For the people hoping for better looking indie games: custom art is still expensive, engines can support better graphics but somebody still need to make good 3d models (or pay for them).

 

[SpookyFries]

The price is more than reasonable for just fucking around. Every single other game engine on the market that has any kind of free version of their product available hamstrings it in some significant way. Unity does so in a way that limits both productivity in development and the quality of your games. Construct 2, for example, limits the amount of essentially lines of code your game can have. It's a pain in the ass either way, since you don't get to

Yeah I get that but at least with say, Unity I can download it and play with the tools and see if its right for my project and then upgrade when I made a decision. Construct still has Construct Classic for free as well. I suppose Unreal 4 wont be much different than 3 as far as interface goes though

 

[crazygambit]

It didn't take long...

http://www.cryengine.com/news/crytek-announces-its-cryengine-as-a-service-program

Can't read at work. Can you provide a summary please?

 

[Lautaro]

Yeah I get that but at least with say, Unity I can download it and play with the tools and see if its right for my project and then upgrade when I made a decision. Construct still has Construct Classic for free as well. I suppose Unreal 4 wont be much different than 3 as far as interface goes though

UDK still exists, so you can try that.

 

[2+2=5]

Can't read at work. Can you provide a summary please?

Cryengine 3: 9.90€/$ montly, no royalties for indies.

 

[Vigilant Gambit]

Yeah I get that but at least with say, Unity I can download it and play with the tools and see if its right for my project and then upgrade when I made a decision. Construct still has Construct Classic for free as well. I suppose Unreal 4 wont be much different than 3 as far as interface goes though

Well, it's $20. A lot of people spend triple that on the latest COD or whatever.

And it's important to note that, like I said earlier, the product you get to try for free isn't really quite like the product you get when you pay.

 

[element]

Cryengine 3: 9.90€/$ montly, no royalties for indies.

But no source code access.

It is a little upsetting to see people "where is the free version?". Pay the $20 for one month and don't go to McDonald's for a couple days. There you have your copy that you can tinker with.

 

[M3d10n]

Source code access means I'll definitely take a look at it. I was an avid Torque Game Engine user (released a few commercial games on it even) and having source code access was the biggest point, by far. It fostered a community that developed amazing new features and it was amazing being able to fix a bug or annoyance on the spot without having to wait for a new version.

 

[Blizzard]

Thanks for the feedback. I'll probably grab at least one month's version once the 0.1 patch hits or however it works.

And I agree having source code access is huge. That's one of the biggest scary things about Unity/Game Maker/various engines, that you may run into something that is nearly 100% impossible to fix unless the engine providers correct it. With something like this, at least there's the POTENTIAL that if you're technically competent enough, you can do it yourself.

 

[Mavromatis]

I think their market is enthusiastic people who believes that they can make a great game, buy/rent the engine and forget it forever.
This is becoming the next "gym membership".

 

[Demon Lizardman]

Hopefully the people at my school in the game design major receive this update.

 

[VisceralBowl]

Is there an answer to what happens if someone were to do something similar to what Valve did with GoldSrc back in the day? - modify the engine to the point where they call it something different

 

[shandy706]

Ugh, I've had a game brewing for 18 years that I want to make.



One day......one day I will find the time to put work into it. (Probably 16 years from now when both my kids are in/out of college )

 

[AndyD]

This may not be the right place to ask, but I see a lot of happiness over the price points of the various engines and I have a question. What were the prices before these changes if $10-20 per month and 5-10% royalty rates are a good place to be at now? Or were the pricing models and terms different entirely, not just more expensive?

 

[VisceralBowl]

This may not be the right place to ask, but I see a lot of happiness over the price points of the various engines and I have a question. What were the prices before these changes if $10-20 per month and 5-10% royalty rates are a good place to be at now? Or were the pricing models and terms different entirely, not just more expensive?

Well in terms of UDK it was 99$ to publish and then 25% royalty after you made $50,000
But that was UDK, which was limited

Full blown engines, especially with source access, required you to contact the company, work out a deal, and also pay the amount you worked out (not cheap)

 

[D4Danger]

This may not be the right place to ask, but I see a lot of happiness over the price points of the various engines and I have a question. What were the prices before these changes if $10-20 per month and 5-10% royalty rates are a good place to be at now? Or were the pricing models and terms different entirely, not just more expensive?

UDK was $99 and then 25% after the first $50k.

I think Cryengine was free to use and 20%.

 

[Durante]

UDK was $99 and then 25% after the first $50k.

I think Cryengine was free to use and 20%.

And neither of those offered full source access.

 

[VisceralBowl]

UDK was $99 and then 25% after the first $50k.

I think Cryengine was free to use and 20%.

The FreeSDK publishing license was variable but you had to pay. Full CE was expensive.

 

[Sini]

UDK was $99 and then 25% after the first $50k.

I think Cryengine was free to use and 20%.

Cryengine licencing terms were never made public.

 

[D4Danger]

Cryengine licencing terms were never made public.

I got that from here. http://www.crydev.net/viewtopic.php?p=827113

“For those who want to make the step into commercial gaming, we’ll offer a royalty-only license model for games made with this SDK, where Crytek require only 20% of the developer’s revenues from the commercial launch of their game.”

the original link on the crytek site seems to be dead because of the new site

 

[tamaster92]

Played with UE4 for about an hour tonigh and I'm loving it.

Got a very basic shadow complex-esque game up and running with one level (all dev art). Runs smooth, easy editor, Blueprint is great once you start to understand it.

 

[belushy]

Played with UE4 for about an hour tonigh and I'm loving it.

Got a very basic shadow complex-esque game up and running with one level (all dev art). Runs smooth, easy editor, Blueprint is great once you start to understand it.

Yeah I was watching youtube videos of Blueprint yesterday and it looks really nice. Seems like a nifty feature. Especially for someone like me, who doesn't know how to program at all haha.

 

[UnrealEngine]

Played with UE4 for about an hour tonigh and I'm loving it.

Got a very basic shadow complex-esque game up and running with one level (all dev art). Runs smooth, easy editor, Blueprint is great once you start to understand it.

I just wanted to say, "DUDE, THAT'S AWESOME!"

As someone who has the fine pleasure of getting to do a lot of community outreach stuff, I very much look forward to being buried in an onslaught of new games from indies, students, and hobbyists.

New ideas can cultivate a lot of amazing things!

As a side note, Blizzard, I saw you PM'd me, but it looks like you got some pretty awesome responses in the thread. If you need anything further or have more questions, ping me! If I don't know the answer, I'll try to find out for you.

 

[Blizzard]

I just wanted to say, "DUDE, THAT'S AWESOME!"

As someone who has the fine pleasure of getting to do a lot of community outreach stuff, I very much look forward to being buried in an onslaught of new games from indies, students, and hobbyists.

New ideas can cultivate a lot of amazing things!

As a side note, Blizzard, I saw you PM'd me, but it looks like you got some pretty awesome responses in the thread. If you need anything further or have more questions, ping me! If I don't know the answer, I'll try to find out for you.

Thanks for the responses. I think I have a pretty good idea since it sounds like the intention is for people to subscribe to try it out, unsubscribe, and only resubscribe if they need updates later.

Do you or anyone else know how the Oculus Rift support is, if any, in the currently available version of UE4? I know there was a special version (I think lower latency etc.) of the UDK provided by the Oculus people, but it seemed like Epic wanted to keep those features separate from the normal UDK.

Will there be a different branch for Oculus again, or is the support already there?

 

[UnrealEngine]

Do you or anyone else know how the Oculus Rift support is, if any, in the currently available version of UE4? I know there was a special version (I think lower latency etc.) of the UDK provided by the Oculus people, but it seemed like Epic wanted to keep those features separate from the normal UDK.

Will there be a different branch for Oculus again, or is the support already there?

Oculus work is already there, but in the Source. Where the PC, Mac, iOS and Android deployment capabilities are ready to go in binary "out of the box" so to speak, Oculus, HTML5, and Linux are in the Source side on Github.

You can extend and modify this code, and also build and ship games with it.

 

[IncandescentPrecept]

I don't think that means that we'll be getting better graphics in indie games. Good graphics still costs a lot.

 

[Durante]

I don't think that means that we'll be getting better graphics in indie games. Good graphics still costs a lot.

I know lots of indie (or even non-indie but small budget) games which have really great art but are held back technically by their engine choice, either in terms of visuals, or performance, or both.

 

[John_RiticelloEA]

Played with UE4 for about an hour tonigh and I'm loving it.

Got a very basic shadow complex-esque game up and running with one level (all dev art). Runs smooth, easy editor, Blueprint is great once you start to understand it.

Nice. I am an extreme neophyte programmer, and from the tutorials I saw on UE4 from Epic, they have made what seems to be one of the most developer friendly engines out there

Great job Epic.

 

[Terrell]

That has nothing to do with Epic or Unreal.

Edit: NVM, misread the post you quoted and thought there wasn't a Mac version of UE4 yet.

Then we are in agreement. Complaining that you can't publish for iOS without a Mac is like complaining that you can't make console games without a console dev kit.

 

[Dali]

I've only ever used unity which is easy as fuck to utilize. I've read I think in the indie dev thread ue isn't nearly as user friendly. Anyone want to comment on this?

 

[Blizzard]

I've only ever used unity which is easy as fuck to utilize. I've read I think in the indie dev thread ue isn't nearly as user friendly. Anyone want to comment on this?

It wasn't very easy previously, but it sounds like they've made improvements now. Depending on what you're doing it might be decent now, if you can use the Blueprint graphical stuff. Maybe there are some videos of the new system?