Unreal Engine Made Free By Epic Games

[Passso]

Considering the time needed to create a game, 19$ per month was really nothing...
Anyway it is a good move from Epic : much more developpers and (I think they compute well) much more money from big titles

5% is a big win/win here, the 30% tax for market is far more arguable...

[Txukie]

Anyone tried UE4 on Linux ? Reading the official page on Linux Support, seems that is better to cross-compile from Windows which I don't have and don't want to install.

I do use it, mostly to build linux packages, as of right now it works quite well but is a lot less user friendly than in Windows or Mac. It really needs the launcher and to iron a few annoying bugs that persist through the versions.

[SXX⁣]

I tell you what. How about you invest millions into developing an equivalent product that both Unity and Epic develop for you to use.

I don't need to because my post isn't about that. My post is about why is many developers still going to prefer Unity Pro over Unreal Engine.

[Bucic]

I really hope indie devs like Frictional Games will cut the bull and move to proprietary engines. It hurts to see ingenious projects like Amnesia and SOMA hindered by 'hey, I'm learning OpenGL!' piss-poor engines. Applies to other ~3 person indie teams relying on in-house engines. F$%^ geniuses...

[pal666]

Epic charge you 5% from gross, not from net income.
So if you earn 1,000,000 then there :

1. Your expenses to make the game.
2. Distributor cut like 30%. (Steam, App Store, Google Play)
3. Taxes.

Depend on country and development expenses at this point you'll likely have something like 15-30% of this 1kk. So you'll have to give them 16-35% of your profit.

well, that is simple. don't pay 30% to distributor and then you can buy six engines. what makes you think than distributor is more important than engine?

[gerddie]

They have assets separated just as well as third party components. They have a directory called "Restricted Assets" just for things like that. Not shipping them with the FOSS version would be trivial.

That's not what I meant. I meant that if Epic would offer a GPL version of the engine, then some game developer could make a game, distribute the software part according to the GPL and thereby be free from any obligations to pay Epic, but still charge for (independently created) textures, models, and in-game items. I.e. the incentive to get the commercial license is not as big as it is with some pure software project because there is more to sell than the executable, which in turn means that if Epic wants to make a cut from every successful game developed by using the engine then they can not offer a dual licensing scheme with a FOSS option included.

[Kano]

I don't get the point why you should not pay for something you use to create cool things and earn money. Basically you have got several engines out there and you can choose whatever suites best. Currently Unity is most likely the most used one in the mobile world - an lots of Linux games use it as well. Unreal 4 is so new, that you can not really count it, bu there are Unreal 2.5 engine games like Killing Floor (with bad Nvidia support on Linux), several Unreal 3 engine games (with unofficial Linux ports) and of course custom engines and some GPLed ones. If you use something and even get support for it, why don't you want to pay for it? I don't think that you get so many GPL engines with full support for basically every major platform, but feel free to tell me.

[GreatEmerald]

That's not what I meant. I meant that if Epic would offer a GPL version of the engine, then some game developer could make a game, distribute the software part according to the GPL and thereby be free from any obligations to pay Epic, but still charge for (independently created) textures, models, and in-game items. I.e. the incentive to get the commercial license is not as big as it is with some pure software project because there is more to sell than the executable, which in turn means that if Epic wants to make a cut from every successful game developed by using the engine then they can not offer a dual licensing scheme with a FOSS option included.

Ah, I see your point. But can any license prevent you from doing that to begin with? After all, if you made the additional resources, they're yours and you can do whatever you want with them.

[davcri]

I tried it, and it works nearly perfectly. The only things that aren't ideal right now is that it may crash on certain specific conditions (but they're usually quick to fix those if you report the bugs), and renaming assets doesn't work correctly yet. Also, depending on your distribution, you might need to install dependencies manually (right now only Debian and SUSE derivatives are supported, and the latter courtesy by me).

I do use it, mostly to build linux packages, as of right now it works quite well but is a lot less user friendly than in Windows or Mac. It really needs the launcher and to iron a few annoying bugs that persist through the versions.

Thank you very much, it's sad to see that Linux support isn't not on pair with Windows Nonetheless I'll try it in the next weeks.

[Tiger_Coder]

I tried the Editor in Kubuntu. My pc is AMD Phenom 2 X4 955 3.4Ghz Quad core + 16GB Ram + Nvidia 970. The editor seems heavy for my PC. The shader compiling takes much time(Known Issue). Also the tool tips flicker a lot. After using 5 min, it said my framerate drops below 10fps so it lower the ui. Still usable, but might not for professional use.