Everyone seems pretty focused on the pricing - I thought the inclusion of an asset-marketplace directly into the editing environment was brilliant.
You could imagine Adobe following suit very shortly here withs something similar and invalidate all those graphic/template/icon/texture/animation sites. You just open the "marketplace" inside of Photoshop and browse around for the assets you might want.
Same would go for video-editing. No more buying Action Essentials, just load up Final Cut and look for the perfect blood animation.
You could imagine at some point your IDE having a marketplace inside of it to allow you to purchase proprietary platforms directly and integrate them into your project without much hassle.
It's a really cool proposition, ripe for monopolization unfortunately, but surely convenient if executed on well.
I've been saying there will be a huge middle man market for assets for years. A whole studio specializing in different models for boxes - every era, every state of decay, every material. A studio dedicated to the most realistic rain effects possible - at the lowest price and graphics overhead. You don't have to worry about the "Wilhelm Scream" of boxes or rain effects though because there will be a lot of choice, a lot of options, and probably a tracking system for which assets are being used by which projects. Oh, Crysis 4 bought up all the high-def palm fronds? Sounds like there's a market for a tropics-based object studio!
I got carried away. But yeah, an asset marketplace will be essential in the future if only to keep art team sizes manageable.
Unity3d has this already ( https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/ ). I'm pretty sure the reason why they made their engine/IDE free is because they're making so much money from their asset store.
No, the reason they made their engine and IDE free is to cater to indie developers, hobbyists, and students. Unity is to these people now what Flash used to be ten years ago—an initially simple but ultimately powerful game-making tool. And the small percentage of those that graduate beyond just doing it as a hobby or experiment end up sticking with the tools they know. It's a very bottom-up approach to the market.
Remember also that they offer a Pro version that costs money, and that they restrict the use of the free version to companies that make less than $100k per year.
There are a lot of people wanting to get into game-making these days, since tools have gotten better and the indie market has proven its worth. It's telling that Epic is putting even more emphasis on their tools than their games these days. In a gold rush, as it's said, the ones that get rich are the ones selling pickaxes.
I know, I actually started developing with the Unity engine for a side project about 6 months ago (I'm primarily a web developer with no previous game-dev experience).
The fact though is that you can publish commercially (even to mobile app stores) without a Pro license. The reason why making the base version free is commercially viable for them (aside from their hope that some users upgrade to Pro) is because of the success of their asset store.
Pretty much all Unity developers spend money on the asset store even if they're on the free plan. I myself have spent a few hundred dollars on the asset store of which Unity gets a cut thus allowing them to immediately monetize their free users.
It'd be interesting to know what proportion of their revenue the Asset Store accounts for. My own guess is very little compared to the revenue from licensing Unity itself. When a 20-person company licenses Unity Pro with iOS/Android support and the Asset Server, that's either $100,000 in licenses up front (plus upgrades later), or $2450/mo for the subscription option. And there are quite a few companies that size (not to mention bigger). I would be surprised if Asset Store revenue is really rivaling that. Hence my guess is that the free version of Unity is mainly intended as a "freemium" product to drive later sales of the Pro version.
This sounds nice from the point-of-view of somebody looking to put something together in a hurry, but this sounds awful from the point-of-view of the guy getting hired to model boxes all day.
Maybe that's not a huge difference from what a lot of people are doing at AAA studios anyway, but my god.
Some people get really excited about boxes. I could see making a collection of boxes in different styles being a neat project, though there's certainly some busywork involved.
That's more of a management issue. If you decide to be (or are assigned to be) the "box guy" then it may be mind numbing. However, reasonable management would shift you around to different projects to keep work stimulating.
heh, I think you'd be surprised. Doing it well would mean hiring photographers, texture artists, illustrators, and so on. I'd think it would be like a collaborative still life if anything — people working together to create a perfect depiction of something, even if (as in the original still life paintings) it's just a plate with some grapes. The fun is in the process, and people will pay for it too!
The market might exist, but I predict it won't be nearly as large as you're suggesting unless there is a departure from Unity's model. In Unity's asset store, the real money-makers are editor plugins. Given the effort put into some of the visual assets on the site, I can't imagine pure one-time sales are anywhere near profitable enough to sustain a business. A small indie shop that churns out a diverse array of content, maybe.
Perhaps Unreal will introduce some new ideas there such as a first-come, first-licensing or bidding model. Another idea might be a royalty system.
Once the channels for management can provide a painless experience to customers (studios, artists, etc.) this will do to assets what iTunes did to music.
While this may be convenient for developers, I doubt gamers are going to want to see the same rehashed textures, objects and effects with each game they purchase. Reusing art assets - to me - just sounds lazy. Like something you'd find in one of those poor 'Game Creator' apps.
I've heard this kind of comment about reusable content throughout my career in many different contexts and it's always equally true and false.
Here's the reasons I think you need to be a little bit more nuanced on this topic:
a) Sometimes it doesn't matter - The plate and chair in the background don't need to be invented from scratch everytime
b) Sometimes it's just a starting point. You won't know it's library content because it's been edited, enhanced or used in new ways.
c) Sometimes it's just part of a bigger whole. You're not going to notice the brushed aluminum bump map when it's combined with the libraries 'scratched specular map' and a few other ingredients - a cook isn't cheating when he uses bouquet garni or a garam masala from the catering supplier.
people aren't talking about that as much because Unity already has that, so it's not quite as new. It's just keeping up with the competition at this point.
Agreed, and it's been an amazing success for Unity. I imagine it's why they now give standard Unity away for free, they make more from the asset store than from the editor licenses.
uhm no. Unity is not free, only the limited indie version is, Pro is $1500 which anyone who is serious about making games needs. Making a bigger game with a Team of 10 for iOS ? Get ready to shell out $3000 per seat, another $1500 for Android and basically youd also need Teamserver which is another couple of thousands.
I think revenue from the Asset Store is relatively minor compared to that. Ive heard of success stories that sell plugins worth a couple of thousands per month, but thats about it and those are not many.
In 2012, the NGUI programmer stated that NGUI was making him three times what his previous job had paid, and that his starter kits were making $700-1500 a month.
http://www.tasharen.com/forum/index.php?topic=2126.0
So that suggests there's certainly some revenue there.
NGUI was also one of the most successful plugins in the entire Store, so his revenue, while significant, should also be treated as a ceiling on what a company can expect to get.
Great idea!
If Adobe charges a smaller commission to the asset designers than the existing marketplace sites then it would be better for the designers because they could build their profiles in a centralized, trusted place instead of bouncing between the hottest marketplace for each "asset class". I'd imagine that would make it a double win for designers because it would not only lead to net more "asset" sales but also more design work because you'd be able to search by "highest rated" asset creator etc. Adobe could even extend to being a freelance marketplace in the sense that they can be the asset creators' pimps by showing the current highest rate per hour that the designer is being paid and that you'd have to pay to get access to them as a freelancer :)
Pretty much every TV show uses the same stock newspaper, brown lunch bag, guns, and even a lot of sets among a ton of other props. You build what you need to, but don't build everything from scratch, especially if it's not integral to the narrative.
"5% of gross revenue resulting from sales to users."
As others have pointed out, that is a huge amount, that is probably 25 - 30% of your "profit". The accounting is pretty easy though. Units * SRP * 0.05 == royalty.
That said, it is a lot simpler than investing $25 - $30K up front while building the game, only to have it go poof because the market or your designer flaked out. Figure 3 year development at $20/month that is less than $1,000 at risk. This gets people using their engine early and often perhaps hoping they can negotiate a different royalty later on. It would also be interesting to see if it had a cap, like $1M or something.
Kudos to the Epic folks for coming up with a pretty creative strategy in todays market.
Access to Unreal Engine 3's underlying source code cost hundreds of thousands of dollars previously (the CryEngine will run you over a million). You could also license v3, with no access to native code, for $99 and they took a % of sales after $50,000 if I recall. So this is a massive upfront savings in the use case where you need access to the engine code itself.
Previous licensing was along the lines of 25% of net profit after $50k. Plus $100 for access to the dev kit.
I call it a wash, but the lower numbers (5 vs 25, 19 vs 100) make for some good marketing. And full access to the source is new and welcome.
Also I'm not sure if this change to their royalty scheme will make any difference to their flat $400k-per-game license that the big studios probably use.
Not so fast. Retailers' gross is SRP*Units. Dev's gross is what the next link in the supply chain pays him. That is still true in today's distribution model since Apple/Play/Steam store take some cut of the retail price and pays you the rest. One could even argue that you developing and you selling are two distinct companies and that gross is what dev you makes (actually they are quite distinct business functions, so I'm not bending anything here).
Unreal redefined "gross revenue" in the EULA for Unreal 4 Engine, so they are not using the standard meaning that's used everywhere else in the world. Their definition of "gross revenue" is actually something similar to "total retail sales."
It's a dick move on their part. They could, and should, have used a different term to avoid the confusion.
Come to think of it, you could wrap it around a thin wrapper program and provide that as a product for a nominal fee over which you'd have to pay 5%, then develop your game over the wrapper.
What is to stop anyone from doing this? Maybe the license says your product must be licensed the same way, so if the end user mods your game and sells it they too have to pay 5%.
License says if you sell your game for 10 dollars on the app store and Apple takes 30% cut of that Epic is taking 5% of 10 dollars and not 5% of 7 dollars.
"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)."
Still, you'd have to legally define end customer because you could have, as I pointed out, much more complex cases. I didn't search much, but couldn't find the actual fine print license to see how they did it, but they probably did it well and ironclad and don't need legal advice from a guy with no formal legal education. I stand humbled.
Being the guy who gets to spend tens to hundreds of thousands in legal fees to convince jury they aren't just trying to cheat someone out of their royalty.
I doubt it. You've already "bought in" and agreed to their terms. They have you by the contractual balls at that point. The fact that your game is exceedingly popular and raking in cash makes the contract you've already agreed to worth more, not less.
You'd have to find something that they would think was a better deal. Like "I pay you lump sum $X in exchange for no more royalty payments. At which point, it becomes a gamble for both sides.
You have a much better chance of negotiating something like that before your game even begins development. Expect to spend a metric ton of cash on that license deal, however.
This seems like an attempt to cash-in on the next Minecraft more than anything else. They want to come along for the ride when someone hits the jackpot. That's the whole point.
I've used UE at previous jobs, and while I'm not gonna say it is the best ever engine, allowing this piece of software in the hands of indies for 19 bucks a month is a bargain. I will probably not use it as I left the games industry, but compared to other commercial offerings out there, the 19 bucks a month plus the 5% is a bargain if any team is doing high end graphics games. You can bitch about Linux or try to do all the math you want to say Epic are being money grabbers, but seriously, unless you had access to full source code before and see what the engine can offer you, please take a moment to step back and appreciate what they are doing here.
ps: not affiliated with Epic at all. Just from many years in the games industry, Unreal has been the best engine I worked with and this is a FANTASTIC offer
By making games. There are lots of engines and frameworks these days to cater to people who want to create a game, but don't want to or can't do it from the ground up. Game Maker Studio and of course Unity come to mind.
Same as with any position in the tech industry. It's not about job applications and education anymore. It's about networking. It's about demonstrating skills through projects. It's about online presence. It's about conferences and events. It's about reaching out to people who have done it before, and learning from them.
Depends, if you want to make your own idea in to a game start simple. Implement 1 core mechanic, you can't care about UI, Multiplayer, performance, or anything like that. Make a proof of concept, make it as simple as you can.
Iterate.
Unreal is _very_ good despite its flaws. I have used a bunch of them and Unreal was the clear winner among them. I too have left the games industry but may come back in some years and this is a good sign for me. I may start with Unreal. If I were better off financially, I'd try right away with the 19$ a month thingy.
Architecture wise, an in-house engine we built for the PS2/Xbox (this was over 10 years ago). But as an overall package (editor, visuals, code, etc) I do think Unreal is one of the best out there. It isn't as simple to start working with as for example Unity3D, and the content processing for consoles used to be very slow, (and personally) not a fan of UnrealScript. But still, I've worked on an FPS, hack and slash and a strategy game with it. It is quite versatile and if you have access to source code (which you do now, but before with UDK only you didn't) you can do some amazing things with it.
Or just regular accounting. Profit is taxed, so every company will always try at the end of financial year to sink profit into something that'll deliver future revenue to defer tax and fuel growth. Unless you have shareholders who expect/demand a dividend like MSFT has, this is usually the best approach. Several very large businesses even thumb their noses at their shareholders demands and reinvest profit for revenue growth, like AMZN, and get very little credit from shareholders for how tax efficient their decision is.
I haven't used Unreal but I have shipped AAA games. To those who have used Unreal 4 is this really something an indie would want to use?
My impression is Unreal is designed to make giant games, not small ones. True?
My impression is Unreal is not nearly as iterative as Unity which lets you change code as it's running. True?
Also Unity targets more platforms?
Of course it's great the Unreal is accessible. Appearently Crytek now has an even better deal. But, I just wonder is Unreal really suited to indie development and quick prototyping or is it more designed for large teams who don't care as much about iteration time and expect to spend way more time getting started
Since I haven't used Unreal I have no idea. Please enlighten me
The 5% is a bit misleading too because it's 5% of "sticker price" (what they call "gross revenue" which means purchase price not including sales tax). So for a $10 iTunes game they get $0.50 (5% of what Apple gets) and not $0.35 (5% of what you get).
This is particularly bad for retail games where you're getting 30% or less of retail price (and that's hardly pure profit).
Unity, in comparison, costs more per month (or $750 per upgrade cycle) but no revenue share at all.
Indeed, if you're writing a AAA title you'll probably go for a one-off six figure licensing fee instead of 5% of back end, but that's hardly going to be more attractive than these terms. I imagine Rovio or the Candy Crush guys might similarly prefer a one-off license deal (were they to use Unreal).
You dont get access to the source with Unity though, which is a huge thing. You can get Sourcecode licenses for Unity but thats where they start charging big money. The same is true if you want to publish for consoles.
What about downloadable content, in-app purchases, microtransactions, virtual currency redemption, and subscription fees, as well as in-app advertising and affiliate program revenue?
Revenue from these sources is included in the gross revenue calculation above.
Are any revenue sources royalty-free?
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).
For retail titles I don't think your number is correct. You're not operating the retail store, so that 30% is all the revenue you get and their 5% would be 5% of that 30%, because the other 70% is entirely devoured by the middle-men.
The things that make up your revenue vs profit gap are probably things like salaries, insurance, and (in the case where you have no traditional publisher) marketing. Even now when an indie game is sold at retail, the retail side of things is typically handled by a publisher and those people handle the retail income and distribute the cut to the developer.
This is huge. Unreal Engine 3 was used in a lot of AAA games, including the Arkham games, Borderlands etc. And this is the new version. Basically, the state of the art 3d game engine for 5% gross royalties.
Also, this gives you access to the engine source code, which for Unreal Engine 3 meant paying a fee on the upper scale of six figures (some engines are even more expensive, CryEngine costs over a million bucks).
5% (even considering it's gross) is really really competitive, considering what you're getting in return.
"You can cancel your subscription at any time and keep using the engine, though without monthly updates."
If you are really tight on cash then I guess that you can check the change log and only pay the 20$ for the month for crucial updates. Paying for product updates is usually a big red flag for me but since it got down from several tens of thousands of dollars up front then this is not such a bad deal.
That's pretty standard. I spoke to a guy working with the Cryengine, and he said that it was so full of unfinished features and bugs that you were absolutely forced to work on the engine's codebase.
the $19 paywall complicates all things. complicates distrbution. their github repo cannot be public. etc. If you going for indies, why not just go all in and make it free to start. The money they make is on the 5% not $19
If I had to guess, it's designed as a threshold barrier so they don't have to deal with trying to track down thousands of "projects" where the developer is someone who had big plans to build a game but got bored a week in.
At least now, presumably the $19 at least covers the operating costs of tracking all the people you might need to be collecting license revenue from.
well thats the whole point of opening it to the community. that 'failed project' developer will himself gain a lot of experience that he can freely share. I dont think they care about hunting down extremely tiny devs and even $19 doesnt cover that cost.
The key thing to understand about game development is that everyone wants to be a game developer, in the same way everyone wants to be a rock star, or a famous actor.
It's a prestige profession, which means most self-professed practitioners of it don't actually practice at all.
Put plainly, that "failed project" developer is in all likelihood not a developer at all. That "failed project" developer likely has never written a line of code in his/her life. That "failed project" developer is much more likely to be some schmuck with starry-eyed naivete about game dev and thinks the UDK is some magical unicorn that will carry them to fame and fortune.
That won't stop said "developer" from flooding the forums with inane questions that anyone who has written code before would have figured out already. They are noise in the system, and as far as game dev goes they outnumber the people who actually know what they're doing.
There are tire kickers (people who are technically proficient but don't really want to license your software), and then there are tire kickers (people with little/no technical ability who have played many games and imagine themselves capable of making them, and downloaded your SDK on the assumption that they can point and click their way to success). The latter group generates a stupid amount of customer support load.
They they should have added stipulations like "5% of all sales over $10k" and they could have put a cap of like $5 - 10 million for the real big titles as well.
$20 is just the tire kicker filter... all those people who would never actually ship a game (most devs) are not going to waste the time of the unreal engine team with their beginner requests.
To target passionate enthusiasts while retaining control, they could have waved the initial $19 fee to anyone who signs up only during GDC week. IIRC Unity did something similar a couple of years ago with their 3.5 non-Pro mobile plugins, shortly before releasing Unity 4, and the experiment eventually convinced them to provide free non-Pro licenses across the board (consoles excluded of course).
They likely realize what they're doing. I'd wager it's a friction fee. Markets often have fees just to add friction to eliminate some problems that derive from completely free access. They clearly don't care about the $19, it's meaningless except for one plausible purpose.
Even for Indie developers, if $19/month is not a trivial component of your budget, for something as foundational as this, you can't afford to be making games.
Epic's marketing is correct here; if the engine is worth anything to you at all, it's worth way more than what they're asking here. If it can't save you $200's worth of time and effort in one year, it was a bad choice to ever go with it. (That's not rhetorical; there are certainly cases where this is the wrong engine and isn't worth it for your project, even free. Being industrial strength comes with its costs, and you may be better off with something that has traded power for ease-of-use and speed of development.)
It's not a meaningful fee at all. Particularly given the technology in question. You do realize how valuable this technology is, and how much it would otherwise cost? You don't build a serious UE4 based title with no budget.
If you have an interesting project and want to get started, but don't have $240 to cover a year: raise donations, try kickstarter, borrow $60 from your aunt to get started. At $19 the options are plentiful.
If you can't find $500 for your UE4 engine game over time, I'd argue you stand zero chance of ever completing it. UE4 is a beast of an engine, it's not a one man job to build and launch a serious game. So if you can put together a real team of developers to build a serious game, $200 or $500 is the absolute least of your worries.
And if you're just looking to learn, $19 is not a lot of money to have unfettered access to one of the best engines in gaming.
As others have noted, even the FAQ basically says you can pay $19, get the source code, cancel, and develop away without further subscription fees. The /mo part keeps you up to date, and you'll still be on the hook for giving them 5% of any revenue based on that code.
$240/year for full access to a state-of-the-art graphics engine is cheap. Your cable TV probably costs more than that.
Regarding the tire kickers, could you just subscribe for 1 month, download the source, and then cancel? You wouldn't get access to the forums and the latest code, but if you wanted to get your feet wet and see where your skills take you, you can try it out (for $19) and then come back on board when you have a game coming close to finish.
When you cancel your subscription, you won’t receive access to future releases of Unreal Engine 4, however your login will remain active, and you are free to continue using the versions of Unreal Engine 4 which you obtained as a subscriber under the terms of the EULA.
The difference between AAA and indie is several hundred full-time content creators and millions of dollars worth of marketing.
One area Epic win here is that by making their AAA-grade engine affordable to individuals they'll end up with a lot of budding game developers self-trained in Unreal. This creates a sort of lock-in: AAA studios are more likely to chose Unreal because it's easier to hire people with Unreal experience.
Which is exactly what Unity has been busy doing for the past 3 years. Epic and Crytek knew that as soon as someone released a major AAA game based on Unity, it was game over for them, and the beginning of a console generation (where developers are still leaving a lot of power unused) was the perfect time for this to happen. They needed to react, and they have.
What platforms can I access under the subscription plan?
If you access the source code, you'll see that there is early work on other platforms, including Oculus VR, HTML5 and Linux. You are welcome to extend and modify this code, and also build and ship games for these platforms.
If Icculus pulls it off, then I'm 100% switching. I'm currently building my engine for an atmospheric survival horror game, and I would throw it all away if the Unreal editor worked on Linux.
5% of Minecraft, LoL, Candy Crush is pretty good moneymaker. If you catch early the next indie breakout hit ... you could look at millions down the road. You also make sure that any indie is well acquainted in the engine - so if the studios get aquihired ... you have your own free sale force on the inside.
Although I would really like Unity or Carmack to make an engine that is potent enough to threaten UE. The unreal homogenization is probably not that good in the long term. Healthy competition is a must.
If there are enough teenagers like me, that dreamed of making there own game and researched game engines only to find that there weren't really any available for (almost) free, that could potentially be a nice enough additional revenue stream. I.e. amateur programmers, that want to play with an engine and probably will never release a commercial game.
From the link: Anyone can ship a commercial product with UE4 by paying 5% of gross revenue resulting from sales to users. If your game makes $1,000,000, then we make $50,000.
$20/mo for access to the source code. 5% of revenue to sell something using it.
Interesting model for software distribution ($xx per month access paywall to source code, leveraging GitHub private repository). It's crossed my mind for smaller-scope projects.
Not sure if this will 'break the spirit' of GitHub and open source, but the next logical feature the GH team could do to accommodate this model more effectively would be to implement a "subscription button" users can click on to instantly get access. The fee is then tacked-on to the user's GH account (some of whom will already have their credit card on file), which is then distributed back to the repo owner less a small commission.
don't see anyone else talking about this, but this seems to be the first time ever you can get access to the source code of a state of the art game engine essentially for free.
Now I'm looking forward to when the ultimate code dives start coming out, like they did after ID released their source code for Quake / Doom / ect... All the interesting tricks / shortcuts that people found when they really started picking into the code base. Heck, even style, and how they've organized and managed such an enormous code-base would be neat to see a deconstruction on.
What happens when one stops selling the game?
Can one then say it is free? Would one still be required to pay them 19 USD per month, one cant actually take the software back, it is already out there using the engine and all.
FAQ: When you cancel your subscription ... your login will remain active, and you are free to continue using the versions of Unreal Engine 4 which you obtained as a subscriber under the terms of the EULA.
$19/mo is for code updates. What they really want is 5% of your revenue, which ends when you stop making money from it.
How do I submit Unreal Engine 4 changes back to Epic?
GitHub is our channel through which the community can fork and modify Epic's code alongside our own engineering team. Source code changes you check in at GitHub will be viewed by the community, and if the vetting process goes well, we'll incorporate your code into UE4. This means you'll help lots of people!
I would imagine that is the plan in some way. From their legal FAQ:
"Through GitHub you can access UE4 C++ source code from Epic and also see code contributions from other developers across the community. We have lots in store for this channel, and we're looking for feedback on what you'd like to see here as well."
Essentially allowing all devs to use the source code and hosting it on github is brilliant. I imagine bug fixes and other improvements will be shared much more quickly and openly amongst developers. I'm not even sure if this happened at all before. I assume the few big studios who have the source code simply maintain their own fork.
A lot of mobile games and apps could make use of this. So, while the price seems cheap for a Triple A studio, it's a price that individuals and small mobile devs can test out. More mobile games and apps with an incredible engine behind it is good for all of us.
People don't just suddenly drop their prices dramatically for no reason; this move is directly as a result of how well Unity is doing; and how big name studios like Blizzard are taking it up.
...but hey, I would be 100% not surprised to see the guys from Unity pull a similar
'cheaper but with profit share' for pro licenses.
Of course it is. Binary support has always been an afterthought in git. I do hope someone eventually fixes that, but I don't know of any informed person that claims git is an ideal management utility for binaries. It merely kinda works if your binaries are small enough.
We develop and sell a game making tool as well, we've thought about this sort of option but decided not to go down this route as it appears impossible to police. Anyone know how Unity intends to police 5% profits?
Wow is this ever a change! I remember when I worked in the simulation industry we had to hand out a cool $350k for a license of Unreal 2.5 (and this is when Unreal 3 was already out).
As others have pointed out, $19/month is just the friction fee to keep it from being completely free/public. The actual monthly cost is negligible; the real cost is the 5% royalty.
I honestly think it's far more likely that game developers of the future will make use of virtual reality to create realistic games, rather than photorealistic graphics rendering. The latter would be hugely expensive both in computational power and manpower (although procedural generation could eliminate much of the latter, it still depends on your goals).
Also, the great thing about games is that they're not necessarily meant to conform to reality as a standard. If you want photorealistic graphics, go outside. A game that relies primarily on its graphical fidelity is doomed to obsolescence, but a game with good mechanics and an aesthetic is potentially timeless.
I read a blog post recently that outlined why we may never actually see photo-realistic games even as the technology improves.
Basically, it's a MASSIVE amount of work/cost to create individual blades of grass that independently react to a person walking on them, vs just pasting an static grass texture on the ground. And unless the movement of the grass is really important to the story, it will never be cost-effective to create all the art work, physics, CPU processing time, and disk space to include it.
Getting to the point where that's in the eye of the beholder. Those intimately experienced with nuances of rendering may see glaring indications of unrealism, but many are starting to just not see the difference. At one extreme we have movie CGI special effects which nobody notices isn't real; at the other are viewers who don't notice a 4:3 frame stretched across a 16:9 screen.
I haven't read that post. But I think you could have said the same thing about things like global illumination - well, in terms of processor time - yet look at how much more advanced realtime lighting is today than a decade ago. As for artwork and disk space, grass for one can easily be procedurally generated.
Remember when 640kb was ought to be enough for anybody? Never say never in tech world. Someone might and probably will come up with tech to realistically render individual grass blades, just like they did with TreesFX, hair strand simulation technology used in most recent Tomb Raider game.
I'm betting some combination of procedural generation and scanning tech a la Kinect will start taking a lot of the workload off the artists. This has already begun to some extent, with many if not most AAA titles using procedural generation of terrain and vegetation.
The algorithms to control grass reacting may be difficult to write, but that only has to be done once. You could as well have said ten years ago that it would never be cost-effective to create photo-realistic CG films, but that has been pretty much accomplished at this point, and game developers are already borrowing techniques from films.
So, they are opensource non-free. It will be interesting to see this model progress. If successful it could be a turning point for openness in software, but would pull requests be accepted into main? Would they get a cut of the cake? It would be interesting to see github handling this instead of patent and secrecy.
According to https://www.unrealengine.com/register, "Mac OS X support hasn't undergone serious developer testing yet". So, it's supported but may be buggy
You could imagine Adobe following suit very shortly here withs something similar and invalidate all those graphic/template/icon/texture/animation sites. You just open the "marketplace" inside of Photoshop and browse around for the assets you might want.
Same would go for video-editing. No more buying Action Essentials, just load up Final Cut and look for the perfect blood animation.
You could imagine at some point your IDE having a marketplace inside of it to allow you to purchase proprietary platforms directly and integrate them into your project without much hassle.
It's a really cool proposition, ripe for monopolization unfortunately, but surely convenient if executed on well.