Unreal Engine becomes Free

Off Topic
#21

While it’s a lot of $$ for an engine, it’s not “expensive” if you just made $100M. For example, let’s say you need to hire 1 extra developer if you go with cocos2d-x instead of Unreal. Because you won’t have any cash right now you negotiate that you’ll pay that developer in 5% rev share just like your other developers. You as the owner of the game project make 5% less in both cases. I don’t see a whole lot of difference other than the psychological aspect of thinking you’re paying too much for an engine. Of course if you don’t need Unreal for a mobile game as you mention, then the expense is irrelevant.

It’s still a “depends” issue, just like choosing any engine, framework, or tool. I’ve just found it interesting hearing and reading all the different view points. It’s been a pretty interesting week in that regard :smile:

#22

I think you are comparing the wrong things here. Don’t compare the engine costs to the revenue you made. Look at the cost for the engine alone! Just cause you could easily afford it, does not change the fact, that the engine itself costs you 5 million. It’s just not “expensive” for you(now you made 100m), but that does not change the fact of the engine costs itself. Selling stuff for higher prices, just because you can afford it, is some kind of “racketeering”. Well, I admit that this sounds harsher as it really is. Anyway, it’s kind of “against the principle of equality”.

Just being rich, does not make a sports car “cheap” :smiley: A lollipop for 100 bucks is an expensive one, regardless if you could afford millions of it.

But this is exactly the point. The developers contribute to your project, they are making the game. The engine is just a tool that sits there.

Well, not really. In the engine case you have an engine for 5% less. In the developer case you have a game for 5% less.

But which amount is to much? 1k? 10k? 5millions? Would you buy Photoshop for 5million bucks? Even if you could afford it with your 100million revenue? :wink:

I just think the 5% look like a cool deal in the first place for most people, but if you put in some numbers, it can easily turn out as a deal breaker.

Sure thing. I’m just always puzzled, why people are always kinda hilarious about such deals/announcements.

Yeah. Not I’m suggesting people should stay away from that deal, but I would, I guess, depends… :smile:

Hehe. One company announces going free, and all kinda follow. Unity, Source2, Corona SDK… and CryENGINE has to come forward on this…

Seems they all want their piece of the cake, especially with the new Nvidia Shield.

1 Like
#23

Hehe, on this we fully agree!

Value is mostly relative. I do think a rich person thinks that a sports car is cheap, it doesn’t matter that I think it’s still expensive. If Unreal is “cheap” to a company then it’s still cheap whether they’ve made $1M or $100M.

There are so many places where % can be a “bad” deal for some, and good for other, as you mentioned.

Should you take on a publisher for 50% cut if they gave you $100k, their brand, and marketing support? Maybe the cut is only 15%, but no cash to help fund development. Maybe they can bring in 2x in sales? Maybe 10x? Either would be worth it by the numbers, but what about the IP? What about them rushing you to release too early? Many have and would, some would never again having been burned. This is a real game dev/team/studio business decision. Is this publisher worth more than the engine? Tough call IMHO.

Paying $10k for photoshop licenses (at least a few years back) when your game makes only $20k
Paying $1500 for 3 users of Unity+iOS when your game makes only $20k
Paying 6% to realtors on a purchase price of house - what did they really do? hehe
Paying an App Store 30% - it feels like a rip off, but I’d rather make something than nothing :-
Paying 40% to ad networks/services - google/iAd/others all take approx this standard cut (see previous)
Paying 30% to publisher - will they bring in enough sales to cover the difference in lost revenue?
Paying 25% to an early investor - they put no work after, but you wouldn’t have been able to make the game otherwise?
Photoshop is pretty expensive. I’m sure some have paid more than 5% revenue, at least until they went out of business.

Unreal can value their engine (and source) as they please. Also, you mention that cocos2d-x is apparently worth $600M+ :smile:

However, It would be great if Unreal had a more friendly offer without requiring negotiation with their sales team. It seems wrong to ask for % of Kickstarter or pre-sale funding. It’d be great if it was more like 5% 3k-25k (per quarter), 3% 25-50k, 1% 50-100k, and maybe 0 above that :smiley: I would love the app store platforms to do the same thing.

I still find the Unreal stuff funny and interesting because it used to be expensive+5%, then it became $20/mo+5%, and now it’s free+5%. If you don’t like the 5%, don’t use it, or send feedback to them, or call them up and ask if they’ll guarantee a lower % if you make $100M.

1 Like
#24

But who cares about Unreal. Let’s help get cocos2d-x 4.0 out the door :-p

#25

This is great news!

#26

Good Read!!!

#27

Lol engines war…

For me , I prefer unity… Why?

Unity is awesome, easy and very powerful…

Cocos2dx , is very very away from unity…

Cocos2dx , cost alot of pain , even nightmares , the engine , need tons of improvements…

And don’t forgot , the multi resolutions issue… In unity , you don’t to care alot about multi devices…

And many many things, makes unity is better

For me, i used cocos2dx for couple projects, and im not gonna use it again .,. My all projects will be unity…

Regards

#28

I totally agree with you on all those points regarding “is X worth it”. Publishers, platform holders… someone/plenty of devs could write a book about it, why they suck/or maybe not. :wink:

I don’t know for sure, if it is still an option for UE4, but with previous versions of UDK you were able to switch from the revenue cut model to the one-time fee model, ones your game reached a certain revenue limit. E,g, the cut revenues were higher, than the one-time fee for the engine.

Also I would like to see an introduction of capped fees.

Well said :smile:

It’s not about engine (“flame”) wars(features, pros/cons), but a discussion about engine costs.

Never experienced a problem with cocos2d-x. Please name the improvements or where the engine is lacking.

I don’t really get, why people have issues with that. It’s just how you plan your assets and their usage.
I also don’t care a lot about multi devices, it just works for me with very little effort/automated scripts.

Can you please name why Unity is so good regarding multi-resolution and you don’t have to care a lot?

Which are?

It’s totally OK if you are going with Unity, but please bring argument why this is the case.

I guess people would like to here about them.

Best.

1 Like
#29

Unreal 4 is suck for Android and iOS.

#30

It comes down to what engine works best for what kind of game/app needs to be make. If I’m making a strictly mobile 2d game for iOS / Android, then Cocos Cross is a perfect fit. It has everything needed to make a great game with source code access and no royalties.

If I need to make a 3d game or something that might be distributed on consoles, then I would choose Unreal over Unity because I’m much more skilled with C++ than I am with C#. I also prefer the access to source code and the fact that Epic actually makes games with their engine.

I don’t think 5% is an issue. If your making games, and 5% is going to break you, there is something wrong with your business model. Time is the enemy in any form of development. The best tools reduce the time to develop, and therefore save you money.

And for all you haters of any particular engine, you are just trolls when you don’t provide facts to back up your complaints.

#31

Try it for yourself if it can make a better game than cocos2d-x.

#32

iQD:

First, I really love cocos2dx ,but there many things must be covered in 4.0…

1- one engine, one app, one stage

We really , need a engine , have powerful Built in tools, UI editor and scene editor, animations maker, and physics editor, spritesheet maker, for all devices also particles editor…

Just like Spritebuilder , they build awesome tool, but only works for ios ,

2- still the engine cost a lot of pain for making simple things, like main menu buttons, in unity with the new UI , is just wow and easy to use , just place elements, boom you got UI staff

3- asset store… Why there no asset store like unity , maybe there developers want their complete projects or assets or plugins

We still looking for anything in github,

4- one click publish, just like unity , for android , just setup sdk path , and press build , Boom you got your release build

No commandline tool , no pain

This is awesome feature,

5- about multi resolutions

Yea there alot of pain, i design my assets ready for ipad retina , i used texturepacker for spritesheet,

I have to do alot things in appdelegate , to let the assets fit many devices…

Unity , just one spritesheet , and its working on all device like magic…

I told you, cocos2dx is good but , cocos2dx team should combine everything in one app

---- Cocos2dx studio ----

Feel this , open the studio -> File -> new project

Boom start making and coding

No command line tool , no pain , just foucs on your code and how the should be looks like ,

Hope cocos2dx team read this , and try make this alive…

I will be the first developer using cocos2dx , if become just like that…

Even no problem if there paid version

Best regards

1 Like
#33

I hear you, it’s actually what we want as well.

2 Likes
#34

Happy to hear that…

I will be more happy if we have a roadmap for 4.0…

Thanks too much for response

#35

Thanks for explaining.

I agree to that, but cocos2d-x is just what it always was: an engine. Unity itself is more of a game development platform.
Because of the fact that there are great third party tools and apps available, which can do what you want, it’s not necessary to have all that features provided by cocos2d-x tools.
Of course it would be a nice thing to have, but how would they compare to the third party tools? Could the cocos2d-x stand up to them in regards of quality and features?

I never liked the fact, that the tools are closed source and implemented in C# utilizing Mono.
So I’m proposing to use Qt for upcoming tools. You get native widget rendering and cross-platform support along with the possibilities for the community to expand the tools.

CS also supports UI drag&drop placement. Maybe not with that much features, but it’s there. Additioanlly there are already plans to incorporate a third party UI solution.

I guess that’s because it’s part of the Unity business model. Unity takes a 30% cut in revenues.
Personally I never had the need of using third party assets, because I need assets tailored for my needs/game.
Nether the less, it would be a business model for cocos as well.

I admit, that this would be a very convenient feature. Personally I don’t need it, cause I’m more of a console-devotee.
You just need the console, if you want to integrate the system with your pipeline, build system or scripts.
That’s why some of the third party tools like texture packers come with a console version.
So I think both features have their advantages and having both worlds would be the best solution.

To fit them to any devices you basically just need a few lines. You just have to do “a lot of things”, if you want the best graphics quality possible on all devices.

If you create one spritesheet in Unity it will of course work on all devices, the same as with cocos2d-x, but your assets will be scaled and you are losing a lot of graphics quality.
Or do you mean, that you are making one spritesheet with different resolutions of the same assets, and Unity is choosing the best fit from the spritesheet?

Doesn’t that limit the user in choosing the IDE of their choice? Maybe the asset editor is great, but the code editor is not? The user still has to switch between different apps.

The feature I’m looking forward to is: getting the easing functions form CS 1.x back into 2.x and the possibility to drop the asset suffixes. Unfortunately you cannot drop them in the generated binary files, as it will corrupt the flat buffer encoding.

#36

Well… Everyone’s going Unreal this, Unity that, even Corona… But If I wasn’t using Cocos I’d be poking around at Godot (which is also open source and cross-platform).

#37

The stable version Godot was released just few month ago (Dec-2014) and it is quite popular. If you have tried it, please let us know :smile: The repository could be found below.

There are some features that are missing in Cocos2d for years
For example, one-click deployment


#38

It’s first time I heard about gobot engine

Looks great from screenshots, i will take a close look about it.,.

If it’s can make 2d games and 3d as well and have rich editor, and simple scripting like unity… Why not

Plus its free and cross platform …,

#39

The editor is super fast to boot up, and it has all the niceties from Unity, but it’s rearranged in a possibly easier to use way. That’s what I think cocos is lacking the most: if we could have cocostudio integrated with cocos code ide and freely edit the game visually in the former while coding in the later and simply click “run”, that’d be awesome, but I’ve so far failed each time I’ve even tried to use cocostudio files in cocos2d-js. I’m looking forward very eagerly to sonar system’s new tutorial series which I’ve been told will cover this :smile:

#40

Unity is a great engine and is the most popular it seems. Something that people fail to realize is that by abstracting too much away you lose knowledge of the underlying technologies. This is where I see an advantage in the open source realm cocos2dx/unreal

Unity doesn’t let you look under the hood and unfortunately people using unity who move to a new engine are going to have a hard time. C++ is the industry standard for a reason and will continue to be.

Something ironic is that if you look at the unity careers page they won’t hire a c# developer. You need that knowledge in c++ and to know the underlying concepts. Good luck getting paid if unity fails and you can’t code in c++ and have issues with multi resolution that people are talking about.

Cocos has come such a long way its only going go get better. When the all in one app deployment comes out you will save some time but its still great now.