
Lumberyard and Amazon GameLift and Twitch for Games on AWS - jeffbarr
https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/lumberyard-amazon-gamelift-twitch-for-games-on-aws/
======
renownedmedia
Note: This isn't Open Source, though the source code is available.

> Q. Is Lumberyard “open source”?

> No. We make the source code available to enable you to fully customize your
> game, but your rights are limited by the Lumberyard Service Terms. For
> example, you may not publicly release the Lumberyard engine source code, or
> use it to release your own game engine.

What's really interesting is that you can't use Lumberyard to communicate with
game servers if they are hosted on a competing cloud platform; only AWS or
server hardware you own:

> Q. Can my game use an alternate web service instead of AWS?

> No. If your game servers use a non-AWS alternate web service, we obviously
> don’t make any money, and it’s more difficult for us to support future
> development of Lumberyard. By “alternate web service” we mean any non-AWS
> web service that is similar to or can act as a replacement for Amazon EC2,
> Amazon Lambda, Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon RDS, Amazon S3, Amazon EBS, Amazon
> EC2 Container Service, or Amazon GameLift. You can use hardware you own and
> operate for your game servers.

~~~
gadders
Did you think they were giving the game engine away out of altruism? They
obviously want to have someone create the next World of Warcraft tied to AWS.

~~~
scrollaway
That'll never happen and it's very unlikely to be their intention. Any game on
a similar scale/scope as World of Warcraft doesn't need such atrocious license
terms.

UE and Source both have much more reasonable license terms and smaller-scoped
games will go with Unity unless they build their own engine.

My guess on what they are probably looking for is probably desperate indie or
small-size studios that want something bigger than unity, they'll give a bunch
of AWS credit to them in order to try lock them in. Even that is a long shot.

Edit: Had another read through this. Honestly I still don't see what the
attraction is. There's bigger names out there with better engines and more
favorable agreements.

Edit 2: Mixed up engines.

~~~
themartorana
UE wants 5% of revenue full stop. (After the first $3k/quarter.) But even for
a small shop like ours, with 7 employees, that's very expensive, PLUS we pay
for servers on top of it.

Forced/licensed integration may not be for some people, but this isn't that
expensive, comparatively, in the end.

~~~
corysama
If you are making a AAA game in UE4, Mark Rein fully expects you to visit him
in his office and negotiate a custom license. That's the way UE1-3 operated.
5% is the default for the masses and for most projects it's much cheaper than
a custom license would have cost.

~~~
themartorana
Right, but we're not making AAA games. When comparing Unity Pro licenses to
UE4 and others (now Amazon) for smaller game studios, UE4 is still compelling
technologically. That said, it's licensing for a small studio like ours if far
more expensive than Unity.

My point was basically that Amazon's pricing isn't outrageous, comparatively.

~~~
scrollaway
Their pricing is fine (it's very competitive as I mentioned below). Their
license terms are _not_ fine. Lock in is awful.

------
jdub
I asked Jeff Barr if there were any plans to build an open source community
around the Lumberyard code. Answer: "Yes, I believe so!"

Whoa.

[https://twitter.com/jdub/status/696975443606396928](https://twitter.com/jdub/status/696975443606396928)

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girvo
I'm guessing this is to take on what Microsoft has been doing Azure?
[https://mva.microsoft.com/en-us/training-
courses/microsoft-a...](https://mva.microsoft.com/en-us/training-
courses/microsoft-azure-back-end-for-gaming-10548) that sort of thing? It's a
great idea, because I think there's room for improvement in this space!

~~~
ggambetta
It's interesting to see what's happening in the cloud-backed gaming space.
We're working on similar ideas at [http://improbable.io](http://improbable.io)
but with more emphasis on persistent and unsharded worlds. I have the feeling
that Lumberyard/Gamelift does "scaling" in the sense of _" adding more
shards"_, not _" adding more compute power to the single unsharded world"_.

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thrckpo
This seems to be a fork of an old version of CryEngine

~~~
tristanj
Makes sense. There were rumors last year that Amazon spent $50-70 million to
license CryEngine from the near-bankrupt Crytek.

[http://kotaku.com/sources-amazon-spent-big-bucks-on-
cryteks-...](http://kotaku.com/sources-amazon-spent-big-bucks-on-cryteks-
engine-1696008878)

~~~
saddestcatever
Is it just me, or does $50m seem like a deal in terms of buying a top-end
video game framework that will compete with the likes of unity and unreal?

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gfodor
Uh. It's late, so I might not be processing this right, but this might be the
most insanely amazing thing I've seen Amazon do, or maybe any technology
company. They just, from what I can tell:

a) Commoditized game engines

b) Released an open source game engine that can build AAA games

c) Are going to bootstrap an open source community around the game engine
while supporting it

d) Are not forcing the use of any of their services to develop games with this
engine

As someone who has been working in VR the last year or two I've been saying
for a while that it's going to be important that we see a rise of open source
in game engine technology the way we've seen it with the web before we really
have arrived at having VR be the next platform. This has felt more like a
dream than a real possibility: I didn't in my wildest dreams think we'd see an
open source modern game engine anytime in the next 5 years since I assumed
it'd have to be developed from scratch. And here we are having Amazon put this
out, which might very well overturn the entire industry overnight.

~~~
abrookewood
IT IS NOT OPEN SOURCE - though you do get read access to the source code.
You're right that you aren't forced to use their services, but you are also
NOT permitted to use other cloud providers. So, it's either AWS or your own
hardware. Still, this does seem rather amazing. One thing you left out is that
there are no revenue sharing requirements either. You're not even required to
use this for game development - you can use it to build movies, training
simulations etc.

------
soowd
Might want to check the ToS also for Lumberyard as there's some interesting
terms.
[https://twitter.com/XenosNS/status/697069050837475328](https://twitter.com/XenosNS/status/697069050837475328)

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pjc50
It's not open source, but games tend not to be anyway. It's certainly a very
impressive development as Amazon are the most trusted "PaaS" vendor even if
they're not the cheapest.

(have Amazon ever shut down any of the AWS services?)

~~~
alexbilbie
SimpleDB is the only service I can think of that they've shut down since I've
used the service

~~~
jdub
SimpleDB is still operating. In fact, I imagine it'll get way more popular
alongside Lambda.

------
greggman
Maybe Amazon is serious but I personally doubt it.

If you really want to be the next big engine you need large support teams. Dev
rel people, tech support people, you need to organize conferences, constantly
put up tutorials, evangelize, etc..

Maybe Amazon will do that but most tech companies that barf out an open source
engine have generally not really committed to support them past the 2 or 3
engineers that started them and who will only continue to support them for 6
months until either they get bored or until their boss tells them to get back
to their real job

Of course if Amazon is serious and they actually have a budget for 100s of
people on the teams supporting this then great!

~~~
m12k
That's sort of the vibe I'm getting too - they're dipping their toes in, but
not investing too much until they've gauged developer interest. If they'd been
really committed to this, they'd have outright bought Crytek instead of just
keeping them alive by licensing their engine.

~~~
SXX
Crytek is likely one of few companies that is nearly impossible to buy as it's
privately owned family business. Almost like Valve that isn't most expensive
company exist, but unlikely going to be sold ever.

~~~
m12k
Rumor has it they'd have gone bankrupt without this licensing deal - if that's
true then I doubt they'd have said no to an acquisition offer if the price was
reasonable.

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dustingetz
Can I use GameLift client SDK for browser games? It doesn't look like it but
can't find a clear answer.

(Also GameLift server SDK is Windows only, requires visual studio
[http://docs.aws.amazon.com/gamelift/latest/developerguide/se...](http://docs.aws.amazon.com/gamelift/latest/developerguide/setting-
up-prerequisites.html))

------
forrestthewoods
"$1.50 per month for every 1000 daily active users."

I'm not sure what that means precisely. But any interpretation seems
prohibitively expensive. (That's for GameLift)

~~~
jdub
That'd be $1500/mo for 1,000,000 daily active users, right? (Which doesn't
include infrastructure costs.) That doesn't sound prohibitively expensive...

~~~
forrestthewoods
You're off by 30x. It's $45,000 per month for 1 million DAU.

Here's an example from the horse's mouth.

"10,000 DAU (10,000 / 1000) * $1.50 * 30 = $450"

[http://aws.amazon.com/gamelift/pricing/](http://aws.amazon.com/gamelift/pricing/)

~~~
jdub
Ouch, yes: It's $1.50 PER DAY per 1000 daily active users. (I think everyone
is so used to AWS prices being per month...)

