It´s just me that think that almost everything to buy in the marketplace is overpriced?
Much of the content costing as much as a complete game?
Sorry, that makes no sense to me.
I know some of these works cost a lot of time to do, and Epic wants to get only premium content in the marketplace, but as i said, i thinks most of them is overpriced for what they are.
A 3D artist will charge anywhere from $500 - $2000 for a model when freelancing. This is untextured, unanimated, and without a skeleton. Adding these features often times will increase the cost exponentially, and many times will need to be handled by other artists, as they specialize in a given field - texturing, modeling, animating, rigging, etc…
Now, take into consideration that most of these packs will include at least 5 models, rigged, textured, animated, with the addition of using the Epic skeleton, so that there is some modularity between the free animations released by Epic, and the models you choose the purchase.
Assets are expensive, that’s for certain, but buying from an asset store is infinitely cheaper than working 1:1 with an artist for most cases. And if these prices are still not acceptable, there’s no reason to not pick up some skills and make your own! Gamedevmarket, TurboSquid, and other asset stores might also offer content of the quality you’re looking for, but it most likely won’t work “out of the box” with UE4.
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You may be right. If an asset is overpriced, and it doesn’t sell, then the developer may need to lower the price to make any sales. That’s how markets work. If they are too expensive for you now, then maybe wait for a sale. From what I have seen, they seem reasonable. I would expect many assets to be more than the price of a game, it’s not a reasonable comparison. You can’t just use assets from a game you buy to make your own and sell it. Remember, many assets would cost hundreds or thousands of dollars if they were custom made.
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Maybe but do not forget that for every item sold, developers receive 70% of the base price of the item minus any country-specific withholding taxes collected and remitted by Epic.
But you, how much time and money you will win?
This is true, but in a marketplace where you might sell a large quantity of these, then significantly lower prices would be better. It’s all about the perfect price point. If something is priced too high then only a few people will ever buy it. If it’s priced too low then you have to sell too many to make it worth the artist’s time. You need to find a price that is going to be desirable for low-budget indie developers and sell in mass quantities. Considering all that, I would agree that some of the content is too high priced.
Also the terms are very favorable to the buyer (not limited to one game). I’m not a content creator but the terms seem reasonable to me especially since right now there is little competition. I’m sure the prices will come down once lots of similar content exists.
I’m genuinely curious what you see as overpriced? If anything I thought 1 or 2 things on there were under priced. You have to take into account the quality and quantity of the work.
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Maybe because at the moment, the market place content is intended for students, it should be a little expensive, except perhaps professionals who dont have access to motion capture studio or lack of time or something else.
The fault in your logic is thinking that since the item is not a full game, and contains less content than a full game, it should cost less than a full game. If you’re a game developer buying stuff on the marketplace, the most important thing you’re actually buying is time. You pay for somebody else’s work because it’s cheaper and more feasible than spending a huge amount of your own time developing the same thing, in addition to whatever else you need to do to make your project happen.
The standard, if we’re valuing labour properly, should be that most assets cost more than a complete game costs at retail, and you should be surprised to get anything cheaper.
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You buy single assets pack for 60$.
You make game with it.
At most after three sold games you will break even.
I honestly don’t see any logic in the statement that assets should be cheaper than single game. If anything they should be more expensive.
If you would want to get unique assets for your game, the price would probabaly be from 3 to 8 times higher.
You’re talking as a game developer, so the cost of a game is NOT $60. That’s the consumer’s cost. Your costs are WAY higher.
2010 average game budget estimate: $23 million
Where are these assets in the marketplace costing millions of dollars? Highest I’m seeing is $90 for a pack with 7 monster models with rigging and textures and possibly (Though not mentioned) animations.
Now, indie games don’t cost nearly that much, but unless your game is made in 12 hours at the United States of America’s federal minimum wage of $7.25, you’re going to pay a LOT more than $90 to finish a game.
How long do you think it took to model, rig, and texture those monsters? You want monsters like that in your game, you’re going to either spend the time to make them yourself, or you’re going to pay someone to make them for you. Either way, EXPENSIVE. Or you could buy them off the marketplace where the artist can sell to multiple people at the same time, and that way you get it cheaper and the artist can make more money. Everyone wins.
There’s two ways of looking at this. Are assets on the marketplace overpriced? Yes and no. The reasoning is rather simple, really. If you’re going to be using them in a retail game, then there’s fantastic value for money. However, if you’re using them simply for prototyping purposes (which, I expect a fair amount of people will), then they’re overpriced, in my opinion.
Admittedly, you’re paying for the time it’d take to create them yourself or the money it’d cost to hire someone to do so. Though, you’ll likely want custom assets at a later date, anyway. I rarely see titles published that contain assets available on various marketplaces (such as the Unity store), because they simply become overused and so common place. As such, could the assets be cheaper? Sure. However, there’s always certain things that can be re-purposed, such as the animations. Those are handy to have and can save some time on custom characters!
It’s best to simply buy the assets you’ll actually need or can find a use for, really.
Besides receiving 70% only, Also developers have to compensate since every item in there once a dev buys it can be used for every project he has afterwards.
I think there are some overpriced items on the marketplace (simply cause I’ve seen better stuff priced way less than that on other platforms), but I’m not going to point any finger.
On the other hand, IMHO, some of the currently “most expensive” items on the marketplace are absolutely worth the money, I’m looking at you Top-Down Interiors!
I’m just glad that the topic made some discussion.
All opinions are very interesting.
I agreed most with here.
He got the point that i was intended to give.
Much of the people using UE4, and i say very MUCH of the people will never ship a game. I thought most of the marketplace should be for studing the power of the engine, so should be the assets (that was my thougth).
But ok, i agreed with the others here too. tnx to all.
At the end of the day, based on what I have seen, you are getting an asset (pack) that would have taken someone, for example, 150-200 hours to make (character packs), which at $30/hour (which is cheap for high quality stuff) would cost $4,500 - $6,000, and you are getting it for $90. That is a **** good deal, period. I personally believe that items on the marketplace are generally underpriced. Now on the other hand, that is part of the point: the artist/developer makes the asset and sells it for essentially a 90+% discount to hundreds of people. But these items are all turn-key solutions that work out of the box in UE, which is well worth the minor premium that you pay. I am not complaining at all.
I don’t see anything on there as overpriced. Just don’t buy if you think something is overpriced. It’s the developers product, they can charge whatever they want.
I don’t see anything on there as overpriced, either.
There is nothing on there that’s over priced especially when compared to non targeted asset marketplaces. Most of what you see on there costs less than what you would pay an asset creator for a single hour of their time if they were your employee. and much less than you would pay a contractor per asset.
I really wish those interiors had texture resolutions that were at least 2x what they are. As soon as you get a bit close to the pieces, they look very blurry.
That being said, it’s a lot of pieces, that fit together pretty well, for not very much money, so from my point of view, it’s still a good value.
Anyway, I learned a long time ago: If you think something is too expensive, either don’t buy it, or make your own. And once you do that for a while, you’ll learn what kinds of things you, personally, are prepared to pay for.